Back in the day…
When I was in High School I recall signing up for a free Geocities website, a pretty dorky thing to do in the mid-nineties. What was perhaps even more dorky was it was to create a webpage for my High School marching band’s drumline. A friend of mind and I started the site one night during a sleepover (or something) and fought for hours figuring how to get a simple image to show up via the raw HTML code we were just learning about. Eventually we got it to work, after realizing we were forgetting a trailing slash or something. Humble beginnings. From there I went on to help with the school’s web development club in which I engaged early before school (usually 6AM?), because of course I had drumline after school.
For me, this simple start led to my teaching myself web coding throughout the rest of my High School years and continuing into college, where I also got formal graphic and web design training at Ohio University’s Visual Communication school. After some other windings in life, I found myself in my marketing leadership which has been the theme since I joined the workforce.
Code Camp Launches – CoderDojo Cedar Rapids
Fast forward about 15 years and now I have kids. The digital age is no longer in the pre-dawn stage it was when I was learning to code websites. My kids and the generations around them are expected to be very computer proficient. In the future they will likely be expected to know to how to manipulate computers in ways my generation will only marvel at. This is where the “CoderDojo” kids coding camp comes into play.
On April 5, 2014, a full room at the Cedar Rapids Metro Alliance held Eastern Iowa kids from pre-schoolers to teens, along with many of their parents, meeting up to start a journey not unlike mine two decades ago. However, as seen by the excellent first time turnout of kids/parents, people obviously now understand the need for future humans who are able to code. Even when my boys join the workforce in another 15 or so years, there likely will be a dearth of skilled coders to enable the future and some of the kids in that room will help fill the void.
Can a Five Year Old Code? Yes.
I took my five year old to the event and he was one of the youngest there. My pal David Tominsky, who I supported in getting the event started by developing a website for the chapter, encouraged kids of any age to come. We planned to have both a Sphero robot ball and Lego robot to help the younger ones to engage. However, upon some suggestion from other mentors from Iowa City’s CoderDojo, our event started with all the students, regardless of age, working with the Code.org’s Hour of Code tools. The first lesson included a simple “game” based on the characters in Angry Birds. It allowed the kids to learn the basic concepts of Computer Science with drag and drop programming involving repeat-loops, conditionals, and basic algorithms.
My youngin did amazing well working with the intro to programming tool. He loves to play Angry Birds, so I think this helped. At one point, as he worked through one of the puzzles almost entirely on his own, I was shocked. This lesson included math, logic, motor skills (via mouse use), and reading which he used together in ways I had never seen him do before. As one of my friends in attendance Jarod Smith noted, computer languages are not unlike foreign languages, children tend to be able to learn them better at young ages. My son proved this with his interest and display of understanding.
After we ate our brown bag lunches, the varying age/skill-level students tried out other programming tools like Tynker, Scratch, Lightbot, and Gamesalad. We also gave the kids the chance to play with the Sphero ball and Lego robot which changed up the activity style enough to keep them interested, yet still was in the realm of technology to teach them about what is possible with programming.
More Dojos To Come – Father Like Son?
The plan is to have CoderDojos in Cedar Rapids regularly into the future. The exact schedule, agendas, and lessons to be learned will be developed in time, but if you or your kids are interested, you should follow the group at http://coderdojocr.com. The group is free to join and run by volunteers, so let the group know if you are interested in supporting us as an organizer or mentor, with ideas for programming, or as a funding sponsor.
In the meantime, I plan to keep working with my little guy and see how engaged he remains with coding. He is starting around 10 years prior to when I began to learn to code. Imagine the possibilities.