This is really relevant to my future classroom, if I have the technology to do this since I am aiming toward teaching at an urban school. This was honestly great, one of the most entertaining assignments that I have had and it made me feel so cool to do it. I never knew what coding really was, I had heard about it thrown out here and there but I just knew that it was something that I probably would never do. I think most people don’t think that they can code, and they might also think that it is some astronomically difficult task. With code.org, they made it seem not so bad, still a bit frustrating but definitely doable. I would use this in my class because students would see that they too can code and they can maybe be future app creators or computer programmers. This would boost their confidence, because it surely boosted mine after being able to say “yeah I have to code, that’s my homework”. In the future once I have my own classroom, I will hopefully be in an urban setting and in that setting kids may not a have a high self efficacy because of the hidden curriculum that’s around them that tells them they aren’t going to make it far. Something as simple (or complex) as code.org would give students that hope that they can make it out there and be something more than what is expected of them. This opens that door for them to see their own abilities and see that it really isn’t that hard to code. Coding would be an effective use of classroom time because it is not only dealing with technology, but it’s also dealing with numbers and math. In some of the activities you have to do “repeat 4 times” for a flower that may need nectar collected 4 times. This gives them an opportunity to work on their math skills too, even if it’s something small like that. I’m glad I had the opportunity to code for this assignment and I am very excited to introduce it to others as well.
