Coding influences your students’ self-esteem

What’s the relation between kids’ self-confidence and self-esteem and coding? How can programming a virtual robot can influence the self-esteem levels of your students? Is there a psychological layer that connects coding and student development?

Well, recent researches show that both the process of learning how to program, and the extraordinary results kids and students can get from this processes, have a direct influence in their self-confidence rates.

As we all know, working with a bunch of kids who believe in themselves makes our job as educators not only easier, but also way more enjoyable. In this article we want to show you how self-esteem is related to kids’ learning process of coding, and how our cyber robotics online learning environment can help your class members reach higher levels of self-confidence and self-esteem.

While learning how to program their very own virtual robot, your students will have to face numerous challenges and missions that will encourage them to think differently, and effectively. When walking down this path, your students will discover new potential solutions to problems they never thought they’ll be able to solve, and also, will open their minds to understanding how our world is actually built. Here are some of the things they’ll go through when learning how to program their very own virtual robot, or while learning how to code that will enable them to reach higher levels of happiness, satisfaction, and self-esteem:

A good learning environment to teach how to program, will offer your kids and students content in shapes of missions. These gamified missions and challenges will allow them to apply skills they learned in class into something practical and concrete, but it won’t end there.
After applying this knowledge, they’ll see results. Positive results! When your students see the result of their hard work in front of their eyes, and in a form of a gamified learning mission, they’ll start understanding that they can actually achieve any goal they set for themselves… and is simply priceless!

We grew up in a system where making mistakes wasn’t ok. Many of us felt embarrassed of speaking in front of the class or jumping ahead to give an answer to the teacher’s question because there it was slightly possible that our answer wasn’t correct. Let’s be honest! That couldn’t be more sad.
When learning how to code, your students will have to make mistakes. More than that! We actually hope they do, in order to learn from them. When our students make mistakes, besides learning what the right path should be, they could even discover a different, alternative path that will also solve the problem we are asking them to solve. Because there is more than one way to prove that 5+5=10, right?
Normalizing mistakes, and making them part of the learning process allows our class to feel better, to feel that our classroom is a safe space where they can interact, give opinions, and jump ahead to give an answer. Understanding that mistakes can drive our class to a deeper learning, will encourage them to think more critically and will strengthen their creativity.
All of these benefits will create a healthier class and will, for sure, increase the self-confidence of the members of it.

Teamwork, teamwork, and teamwork! Robotics projects are a great place to implement this. Why? Because every single member of the team will play an important role. All of them are fundamental to get whatever result the educator sets as a goal.

When our students see themselves, not only as part of a team, but as an important part of it, they are more likely to take responsibilities, to cooperate, and to put their hearts for their project to succeed… and when it does, the satisfaction couldn’t be bigger!

It doesn’t matter which role they played within the team, what it matters is how they’ll feel when the entire team achieves the requested goal. Guess what? Yes. Their self-esteem levels are going to go up!

When programming a virtual robot, when creating their own app, or when learning simply how to code, there will always be a common factor your students will see: Creativity will be always requested!

Applying creativity in the solutions they bring to the table, or in the way the write their Blockly or Java code, will enable your students to think outside the box, to let their imagination fly, and will encourage them to believe in themselves in order to try out everything they can think about.

This, will open their eyes to a reality in which their personal point of view isn’t only required, but also encouraged; a reality where they have to be themselves, and to always think of new ways to solve everyday issues.

Yes, everything can start out with teaching them how to code.

Why should we wait? Start today! By registering for CoderZ’s 14-day free trial, you could start seeing how your students begin to believe more in themselves, today. You’ll see how fantastic the feeling will be when they get their very own virtual robot and start -slowly, slowly- completing all the missions.

Sooner than later, your students will be programming a virtual version of the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, will be believing more in themselves, and of course, will be loving way more what you offer them to do in class. Don’t wait any longer, and may the code be with you!