Monday, February 2, 2015

Coding as a second language?

We've talked a lot in class about multiliteracies, and recently we've been discussing coding as a language teachers should be familiar with. We've discussed how familiar a teacher should be with coding -- just enough to build an interactive website as a classroom resource, or comfortably fluent and proficient? We talked about the site codeacademy.com as a way to get started learning a coding language. I started using the site to learn Python, which is an enjoyable experience because the exercises feel relevant and examples are cute and funny (Monty Python references abound). 

 I noticed they even have "goals" which look like tutorials on making apps and building websites, both for personal and interactive sites, which I'm going to check out soon.

I'm also going to have to figure out what "build your own galaxy" is about...could be cool. They have a few popular programming languages including python, html & css, javascript, php, and some I hadn't heard of including jQuery, and ruby (which the codeacademy site is built in).

I never really thought about math as a language, or coding as a language, but both are languages very relevant to science and teaching that I'm thankful for being comfortable with using daily. That's something to remember, for ourselves and for our students, is to keep up with learning and practicing language every day. Sites/apps like codeacademy and duolinguo make it easy for you cause they send obnoxious emails to remind you how great you were yesterday. I didn't really start to learn and understand coding until I had to use MatLab every day for my research. I feel like I can "think in MatLab", so I feel like I can say I'm fluent in MatLab, or at least the basics of coding. Now I can branch out from MatLab and learn to make websites and other interactive tools for teaching. I would encourage my own students to learn coding languages with a tool like codeacademy because it's fun, accessible, and easy to use. 

Looks like codeacademy has support specifically for teachers too....

What coding language are you learning? Which language seems most useful for you as a teacher?
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4 comments:

  1. UnknownFebruary 3, 2015 at 10:11 PM

    I responded to you over on my blog: http://anthonytechsla.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownFebruary 5, 2015 at 3:26 PM

    Codeacademy looks awesome. And you're absolutely right that learning any language requires daily practice and much perseverance, and is often hastened by a need (rather than just a desire) to know.

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  3. UnknownFebruary 5, 2015 at 6:27 PM

    I'm learning to use R right now. It's been a very, very slow process for me: I have virtually no background in statistics, so it's been the most difficult "language" I've ever had to learn. It's only the fact that I know I'm going to really need the blasted stuff that's made me keep at it for so long (I've been at this off and on since Fall of 2012). The good news is that I finally feel like I'm starting to make some headway.

    I'm definitely going to look into learning Python. Codeacademy.com sounds like an excellent (and enjoyable!) resource.

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  4. JustineFebruary 16, 2015 at 2:36 PM

    Personally I would love to learn how to code, but I feel like I would need to have a reason to do this. Right now I dont have anything in particular that I want to create. Thanks for sharing Codeacademy though. I will try it out!

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