{"id":855,"date":"2013-04-29T10:00:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T17:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/?p=855"},"modified":"2023-03-06T18:25:32","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T02:25:32","slug":"tynker-in-the-news-newschools-venture-fund-beyond-the-job-three-reasons-all-students-should-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/tynker-in-the-news-newschools-venture-fund-beyond-the-job-three-reasons-all-students-should-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Tynker in the News: NewSchools Venture Fund: Beyond the Job: Three Reasons All Students Should Code"},"content":{"rendered":"

NewSchools Venture Fund<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h2>\n

04\/29\/13<\/h4>\n

NewSchools is proud to announce their most recent investment in Tynker.  We\u2019re supportive of more robust K-12 computer science education and Tynker is an anchor investment to help reach that goal. Tynker is a web-based visual programming language initially targeting elementary and middle schools and has just raised a seed round of $3.25 million from NEA, Felicis, 500 Startups, Ed-Mentor, GSV advisors, and others. While there is high demand for Tynker in the private sector (and they are working hard on churning out a high quality product for parents \u2013 fret not!), they are focused on serving teachers and schools first. NewSchools is backing entrepreneurs Krishna Vedati, Srinivas Mandyam, and Kelvin Chong in this mission. You can read more about their funding and recent schools release on Techcrunch<\/a>, Gigaom<\/a>, or Venture Beat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut wait!\u201d you might ask, \u201cWhy should schools teach coding in the first place? And how?\u201d Good question, and one I\u2019m excited to explore in this post.<\/p>\n

Lately, learning to code has been conflated with getting a programming job. Given the market need<\/a>, pressure is growing in schools and universities to teach coding to prepare students for the job market of the 21st century. Yet training young techies also has the New Yorker <\/em>worried<\/a> that liberal arts are being pushed aside for vocational pursuits. Does such an outcomes-focused education belong in our schools? Yes, because computer science education solves more than simply professional demand. Coding should be taught in schools for (at least) three reasons: it is fundamental to the world around us, instrumental in self-expression, and essential to modern thought.<\/p>\n

1. The world runs on code<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My friends, my money, and my words all have a facsimile in the digital world, in little electrons and wires and decision trees, yet I am shamefully ignorant of how it all works. Even with two terms of undergraduate computer science coursing through my neurons, something as simple as how a letter goes from my wireless keyboard to pixels organized on a screen still baffles me. Yet even just a half-year of CS education, with projects<\/a> like word ladders, boggle, and maps, has changed how I see the digital world. When I open a folder I think about what its coordinates are on the screen. When I take money out of an ATM, I think about who coded its behavior. Computers are not magical, or responsible \u2013 they do exactly <\/em>what someone tells them to.  Schools have always evolved to explain the physical world to students through teaching physics, biology, etc. The code that comprises omnipresent technology must be taught to all.<\/p>\n

2. Digital creativity is the art of the future<\/p>\n

Coding enables self-expression. For example, here\u2019s a quick snapshot<\/a> of my current desires fostered by using Tynker. To be able to communicate in the future, computational fluency must be attained. While many students are figuring this out on their own as social media develops (see Pinterest, Tumblr), I believe it is complex enough to warrant being taught. My old professor, Mehran Sahami, would talk about writing a program as if it were an essay. Michael Staton referred to the poetry of syntax just last week on a \u201ccoding as core curriculum\u201d panel at ASU\/GSV. And functionally, schoolteachers like Jeannie Smith are already finding ways to implement computer science in the curriculum. In an elective class called \u201cCreative Computing\u201d at Jordan Middle Schools, Jeannie guides 7th graders 4 times a week in the creation of digital content. They create flash animations using action script, edit photos and videos using Photoshop or movie editing software, and of course they create stories and tales using Tynker. Other classrooms are having students code animations of historical events in place of Powerpoint. The flexibility that comes with an understanding of code changes the limits of self-expression.<\/p>\n

3. Coding is a liberal art<\/p>\n

Coding should be thought of as a liberal art, which is to say an essential prerequisite for participation in a free and civil society. What counts as an art of the liberated has evolved over time and has come to include harder sciences like mathematics and astronomy in addition to the study of art and debate. What bonds the liberal arts together is an attitude that the knowledge should be pursued with a non-vocational intention. I opened by talking about the market pressure to produce coders. I think they miss half the point \u2013 learning to code is about learning to create, and the foundation of this is non-technical; it lies in the study of computational thinking. These are logical basics like iteration, for-loops, \u201cif\u201d statements, and data structures. To understand how this can be broken down for education, Karen Brennan has a very nice paper published<\/a> out of MIT\u2019s Media Lab categorizing computational thinking.<\/p>\n

So where can you go to learn?<\/p>\n

I hope to have shown by now that the need for schools to embrace coding is more than a need to prepare workers for the jobs of tomorrow. It is about preparing citizens to understand their world, express themselves, and be modernly educated. Beyond outliers like Jeannie Smith, K-12 classrooms are far behind. According to code.org<\/a>, fewer than ten percent of high schools even teach Computer Science, and 41 states do not count a CS class towards graduation. Some companies, like Tynker and CodeHS<\/a> (founded by my old CS teachers!), have been aimed at K-12 schools from the beginning. Others, like Treehouse or Codecademy, have adapted direct to consumer products to include offerings for schools. As readwrite.org<\/a> points out, there is in fact a boom lately of companies that will teach you to code, most not aimed at K-12. I have an initial framework for thinking about them below, and it can be accessed and edited on this hackpad<\/a> (please add and edit away! I will update this list as you add to the hackpad<\/a>)<\/p>\n