Tech giants’ race to teach coding for kids

Some of themost importanttech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple are now focusing on teaching tomorrow’s workers and leaders of the world the computer programming skills that will be required from them.

Recent research studies have shown that computer programming is one of the most important skills needed in today’s work environment. Being able to code is going to become an increasingly valuable skill over the next few decades. Almost as basic as knowing addition and subtraction is today. Yes sir, that important!

Apple debuted a tutorial app called Swift Playground at its Worldwide Developers Conference. This iPad app teaches students basic programming skills by getting an animated character to collect gems.

This app is based on Apple’s programming language (for those who don’t know, it’s called Swift) that developers use when writing programs for Apple devices such as iPhones and Mac computers.

In this Blog, we have done some research and we wrote about coding iPad apps for kids in the past. If you couldn’t read it back then, you can do so right after finishing this article.

It’s good to mention that Apple isn’t alone in its race to teach coding skills to kids and teens. Google has been cooperating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a new generation of graphical programming blocks called Scratch Blocks.

A few months ago, Google released an open-source developer preview which showed how young learners will be exposed to a variety of new software toolkits.

It’s not just Apple and Google, since coding for kids initiatives started more than a decade ago, over 10 million students have created more than 15 million animations, stories and games using various software programs.

This serves as a reminder of why teaching kids to code must be part of STEM activities for high school and middle school.

Microsoft is also testing another coding app for kids called Minecraft Education Edition, which is an educational variation of the popular Minecraft video game.

Many schools are embracing these coding tools and resources from the technology giants because they realize how important it is to teach kids to code. In addition, lots of tech companies support and sponsor various computer coding websites for kids.

Any parent or teacher will agree that it’s important for children to become fluent with new technologies, especially important is computer science for kids.

Many of the online software coding resources that the tech giants are creating to teach young people how to code are focused on making the coding classes for kids fun and interactive.

Our online learning environment, CoderZ, helps kids toexpress themselves and create with technology.

Our online learning environment let kids express their ideas in unique, interesting ways. This doesn’t only keep children engaged throughout the many possible STEM activities and challenges, but it encourages them to improve their coding and problem-solving skills.

When you become fluent with a spoken language, you are able to tell a joke to a friend or write a letter in that language. The same principle applies to technology. Young people are called ‘digital natives’ because they spend a lot of their time using technology.

There’s no doubt that young people spend a lot of time texting, chatting and gaming, but those aren’t the skills that are needed to create something new with technology. Those aren’t the things that make you a fluent software programmer. That’s one of the main reasons why we created CoderZ.

While young people are very familiar with new technologies and are able to interact using these tools, too little of them are used to creating things with new technologies. It’s almost as if they can ‘read’ with new technology but aren’t necessarily able to ‘write’ with new technologies.

For your STEM class, CoderZ offers a cloud-based solution for middle schools and high schools with easy student enrollment & project submissions. Consider us as your computer coding and robotics programming for kids partner. Contact us for more information today and take your STEM class to a higher level.

Would you like to be part of a ever-growing STEM professionals community? Join now and be part of the interesting discussions!