In Sydney Australia, teaching coding in elementary school is being fully embraced in the Darlington Public Schools, where nine year olds create code for computers and devices.
“Today the little kids from kindy and year one came to play our maths coding games. It was fun. We got a lot of feedback. Mia said she didn’t like the music, but she loved the dog,” said nine year old Sam. His game was designed to teach basic math skills to kindergarten and year one students.
The question has been posed that some children may be too young to learn coding. “If they can move blocks around on an iPad, they can learn to program,” said high school teacher Jonathon Mascorella. He consults with the International Research Centre for Youth Futures, a program by UTS which teaches coding to disadvantaged children from year 7 to year 9.
Very young children are taught basic coding using programs such as Scratch. According to Darlington’s coding teacher Rohan Hills, coding is the “fundamental 21st century skills that every single child will need when they hit the workforce. There will be jobs around that we don’t even know about.” Classes teach children to use computers, and to create programs and games.
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