I have always loved coding ever since I was little so this activity was pretty easy for me. So why did I choose to take this course rather than creating something in scratch then? The reason why I chose the Code.org activity rather than creating something in scratch is because I was curious what kind of lessons are being taught to children about coding. From doing this code.org course I would say that this is more so for elementary students rather than high school students, but that is okay. From doing this I really liked how simple they made it for students to get a hang of what it is like to think in code. and the way that it is presented is very benificial towards students developing a love of coding.
The most striking thing to me about this course is how much it felt like I was solving a puzzle rather than me actually doing work. I have talked about this in my previous post (and I will continue to talk about it) but this really reminded me of the game Baba is You. In this game you are meant to use absolute statements to solve various puzzles. This has the same spirit of traditional coding. Now, this is nowhere near the levels of code that some things such as machine learning has (that stuff is insane!), however it still has the same idea behind absolute statements.
Computer programming is both simple and complex at the same time. When it comes to looking at individual lines of code it seems really easy, but once you start connecting everything together is when it starts getting more complicated. Some things such as a couple lines of code can be pretty easy to read at first, but when you connect it to the millions upon millions of lines that is standard for many programs today, they become almost unreadable unless you know something about code.
Adam,
ReplyDeleteIt is awesome that you have coded since you were little. This is something that I hope I, as an educator will encourage by implementing platforms such as "Hour of code" into my classroom! I am a tad jealous that you thought this assignment was easy, as I found ti quite difficult, but fun as well! I like how you compared our class, to solving a puzzle. I think that's why many of us really enjoyed that class. Instead of getting information thrown at us, we were actually able to engage and do the things that we were being taught!
Overall, great post!
-Ashley