Midlothian aCODEmy

While attending TCEA 2014, I fell into a coding presentation by Kim Garcia from Georgetown ISD and I was hooked.  Not because I think knowing how to code is going to change everyone's life.  I believe teachers and everyone involved in a student's academic career need to be a platform for many creative and innovative learning opportunities in order to prepare students for a competitive global economy.  The article, "Schools Aren't Teaching Kids to Code; Here's Who is Filling the Gap", written by Selena Larson, (October, 2013) explains this very point.

Each year, U.S. companies need to fill almost 150,000 jobs related to computer science and mathematics, but colleges and universities only graduate about 100,000 students with degrees in those fields.

So, my mission is to initiate code.org, other coding apps and coding web tools within the classrooms of our district.  In working with a couple of classes I asked students what they felt they were learning. One mentioned she is learning to think ahead.  Another said, she kept on trying even though she wanted to give up.  If we want our student to build grit, I believe learning coding basics is one more way we can get our students there.

This Thinglink provides resources for TCEA 2014 Google Academy.  Tap on the touch point on one of the blue blocks to find Google's coding website called, Blockly.