Coding Should Be Taught In Schools

In sixth grade, I made my first game in Scratch. In that game, Orgo the Blue Banana, the player controlled a blue banana who had to defend itself against an onslaught of yellow bananas while Mission Impossible music played in the background. My game was an instant hit among my friends, and I soon released the sequel, Orgo Unleashed, complete with a boss, cheats codes, and even more evil bananas. Not long afterward, I learned Javascript and Python through Codecademy.com. Very quickly, however, Codecademy grew boring: Because it primarily taught syntax, each lesson started to feel the same. Freshman year, I discovered CS50, Harvard’s introductory computer science course, on Edx.com, where I learned deeper concepts like algorithmic efficiency and pointer arithmetic. Here was the true beauty of computing: not just learning syntax, but really understanding the technical underpinnings, not just what worked, but why it worked. By teaching those deep concepts, CS50 gave me a taste of what computer science has to offer.

About.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Aug. 2011. . In the year 2008 there were 426,000 computer programmers employed. Computer programmers write the program the computer uses to function. The computer programmer follows the specifications given to them by the computer software engineer. Specialized knowledge and experience with a language or operating system could lead to a computer programmer becoming a computer software engineer. Programming skills and programming experience is highly valued in this field. Computer programmers must constantly update their skills to keep up with changing technology. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts, Employment of computer programmers, is expected to decline slowly through 2018.

I am writing to you today, to discuss matters of adding coding as a part of our educational system. This year I will be graduating from highschool and have been interested in coding for a while. I have currently learned some Lua coding for specific projects that I am working. I feel as though codding has been very valuable experience. Our high school in State College, has the fortunate ability to have a coding class for students. Currently in our school there is a AP Computer Science course which is rigorous in its nature. There is also going to be the addition of more coding classes by one of the teachers for the next school year. These classes will be more an introduction to coding.

Computer Science is critical for developing programming knowledge, digital literacy, and improving students’ problem solving skills. Teaching kids how to program exposes them to a field that they otherwise wouldn’t have even considered. The problem with teaching programming in K-12 schools is the lack of faculty. In fact, maybe one in ten American high schools have a Computer Science teacher. The number is even lower for schools serving grades 1-6 (Guzdial 1). The states that already require Computer Science as a high school graduation requirement can complete the class by learning how to use CAD or Photoshop. This is due to teacher not being qualified enough to teach real Computer Science. Raising the standards of preexisting Computer Science classes would be problematic in that sense (Guzdial 1). There is also no set, clear curriculum to teach Computer Science in high school. Because of this, it would be hard to teach it to special needs students (Guzdial 1).

Students will have a career in computers which at a point they will have thru out there school year. They will learn how to program administration, system administration.

According to Code.org, 90 percent of U.S. schools are not teaching any computer science. Eyebrows were raised in 2013 as the U.K. passed a plan to educate every child how to code. In 2014, Barack Obama made history as the first U.S. president to program a computer. Yet critics claim that often only the more affluent schools offer computer science courses, thus denying minorities potential to learn the skills required by the 1.4 million new jobs that will be created during the next ten years.

Technology is becoming a bigger part of this world every day, and programmers are needed for every bit of it. Anything that is at all electric involves programming. Someone has to program the street lights to run at certain times. Someone has to program your phone and all of the applications on it. Someone has to program the computer that you’re reading this off of. Programmers are essential to everyday life, and without them, there would be no working technology.

I have always had a passionate interest in technology, from the very first time I was introduced to a rapidly-growing phenomenon called coding. It both fascinated and perplexed me; numbers and letters, pixels on a shiny screen, amalgamating together to produce something awe-inspiring. Therefore, it was perhaps to be expected that I would sign up to be a member of my local Girls Who Code club in the beginning of my eighth grade year.

As for independent studies, I really enjoyed the CodeAcademy portion of my SSP because that is again something that I always wanted to try but didn’t because of the restrictions on how many classes I could take during my time here at BB&N. I took six hours worth of classes online during the week and then once a week I would meet with Mr. Randall to discuss what I learned. I’ve always been intrigued about how computers and phones works, items that I would clueless use every single day. During SSP, I learned more about what goes on behind the scenes of a webpage or app. I learned the basics of HTML & CSS, Java, and jQuery. I only learned the basics of each of these languages, but I also used them to design my own webpages, built a small scale

Although children spend about seven hours a day on tech devices, parents should not limit how much time children spend on tech devices. Children should not be limited because some children only comminicate through these devices, some children use teir devices for educational reason, and some children only know how to enternain themselves through their devices. If a child is limited on their devices, they will rush and mess up and there is no clue how nuts that child will go.

Coding is a lot more complicated than people may think, if you don't know any basic coding than it could be very hard to learn. That is why i want to learn it so badly because it will be a challenge. If i can do something that will be a challenge to learn than i will say that is a win. Also if i

understand the extent to which current programming is meeting WCU student needs and interests in order to improve future programming.

In my years spent in high school, my favorite class has been computer programming. I took the class as a sophomore without any previous coding experience. Starting out, I struggled with the basic concepts and fell behind on projects. I relied heavily on help from my teacher and my friends, and I even considered dropping the class. Faced with the decision at the semester, however, I decided to keep trying. As the second semester progressed, I gained greater understanding of the basics of coding. I became the person that others could receive help from rather than the one asking for help. By the final quarter of the school year, I was able to code with speed and accuracy. I was fortunate to win the Computer Programming Student of the Year award

Often times I lose track of time when I am writing code. There have been many occasions where I have set out to work on a coding project for a short period of time only to find myself down a seemingly endless rabbit hole of learning and experimentation many hours later. It takes a lot of time, patience, and perseverance to learn to code. However, there is something about completing a finished product after putting in many hours of hard, intense, and frequently frustrating work that motivates me to keep doing it time and time again. I love computer programming because it allows me to create something with a practical use. This sense of purpose and usefulness is, to me, what makes coding so rewarding. Coding gives me the opportunity to solve

According to Saldana (2016), coding in qualitative analysis frequently refers to a word or a passage of text that symbolically attributes essence- capturing, salient, summative, and / or evocative attribute for a passage of text or visual information (p. 4).