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"It's hard to imagine a single career that doesn't have a need for someone who can code. Everything that "just works" has some type of code that makes it run. Coding (a.k.a. programming) is all around us. That's why all the cool kids are coding . . . or should be. Programming is not just the province of pale twenty-somethings in skinny jeans, hunched over three monitors, swigging Red Bull. Not any more! The newest pint-sized coders have just begun elementary school."

"It's hard to imagine a single career that doesn't have a need for someone who can code. Everything that "just works" has some type of code that makes it run. Coding (a.k.a. programming) is all around us. That's why all the cool kids are coding . . . or should be. Programming is not just the province of pale twenty-somethings in skinny jeans, hunched over three monitors, swigging Red Bull. Not any more! The newest pint-sized coders have just begun elementary school."

"Today there are many resources for people to learn code. The Barbies and GI Joes of yesteryear have become tablets and smart phones. Young kids, such as 12-year-old Thomas Suarez, who gave this excellent TED Talk, are learning advanced forms of coding that few adults even fully grasp. The following is a list of websites online that offer free tutorials and courses for children that want to learn how to code. And even if you are not a kid, you might learn a thing or two. We reviewed a collection of websites and the following three are the best that we found, incorporating various features that put them above the rest. We went through all the most popular coding websites on the Internet and found the three best free coding websites, based on the following criteria: ● Ease of use ● Aesthetics ● Fun ● Effectiveness ● Free Without further ado, the following are the best coding websites we found that was designed especially with kids in mind."

"When Sasha Ariel Alston pursued her love for coding, she noticed there were never many girls ― especially girls of color ― pursuing it, too. That's why she decided to write a children's book to encourage girls to learn about coding and STEM fields at an early age.  Alston is a 19-year-old Pace University student getting a major in information systems and a minor in marketing. She spent two years writing Sasha Savvy Loves to Code, a kids' book about a 10-year-old who becomes interested in coding, just like Alston. "The purpose of the book is just to get girls interested in coding and to provide basic coding terms," she said."

"Halloween is packed away, Christmas looms on the horizon, report cards are consuming way too much time…all of which means it is almost one of my favourite weeks of the year: Hour of Code week! This year Hour of Code officially runs from December 4th to 10th. Last year our teachers and administrators worked really hard to ensure that students in all grades and across all of our schools got a chance to try one or two coding activities during Hour of Code week. I hope we do even better this year and for the next several weeks my blog posts will be dedicated to helping teachers prepare for Hour of Code in their classroom. However, in any discussion about coding, I think it is important to start off by discussing Computational Thinking. Computational Thinking is the basis for all coding. More importantly, it provides a great base for problem solving in any arena of life, from getting dressed for the snow to building a gingerbread house to completing a school project."

"Coding brings young children rich opportunities for language development and the "notion of learning from mistakes," says Chip Donohue, the dean of distance learning and continuing education at the Erikson Institute in Chicago, a graduate school in child development. "We actually don't do enough of that with young kids." The sequencing and patterns involved in programming reinforce skills that have always been taught in the early years, but now also create "habits of mind that are essential for the 21st century," adds Donohue, also senior fellow at the Fred Rogers Center, which provides resources and information on media use with young children. When children code together, they are also learning from each other. "In the process of learning to code, people learn many other things. They are not just learning to code, they are coding to learn," Mitchel Resnick, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, wrote in an EdSurge article. "In addition to learning mathematical and computational ideas (such as variables and conditionals), they are also learning strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas." Resnick adds that these skills are useful to everyone "regardless of age, background, interests, or occupation.""

"One thing it doesn't mean, or it really shouldn't mean, is that we replace any existing teachers with engineers or computer science specialists. "Learning how to code is certainly not an easy task, but it pales in comparison to learning how to teach," says Adam Enbar, cofounder of the Flatiron School, a coding academy in New York. Indeed, it doesn't matter how well you know your way around a line of code if you can't impart that information clearly to a pupil, a lesson Gina Sipley, a former English and social studies teacher, experienced firsthand when she herself was learning to code through a General Assembly course. "The teacher we had was a brilliant programmer, that was clear, but had never taught before," she explains. "So as the course went on, people sought out the teachers in the room and said, 'This doesn't make sense. How would you present the information?' I don't have a deep content knowledge at all, but I know how people learn best and how to structure lessons so people are going to get the most out of it." So, what's the smartest, most effective way to go about teaching our 3.1 million existing public school teachers to code, so they're prepared to teach our students?"

"While it feels like we just wrote 7 Apps for Teaching Children Coding Skills, it's been a year, and as we know, that's a couple of lifetimes in the technology world! Over the past year, we've discovered even more fabulous sites for teaching coding. With programs like the Hour of Code and other sites, it looks like many children have been exposed to computer programming, but we feel that we still have a long way to go. Graduates with programming skills are in high demand, and it's clear those numbers will only increase. In addition, the skills acquired through programming, like logical thinking, problem solving, persistence, collaboration, and communication, can be applied to any grade level, any subject area, and in every part of life. Programming isn't just limited to computer science majors in college. Like we said a year ago, kids can code -- we have the sites and resources to make it happen. And it's never been more important to provide students with opportunities to be exposed to programming, especially girls and minorities. In the interest of space, we've limited our list to resources for coding with elementary students (ages 5-11), and best of all, free resources!"

"During my early days of teaching coding to sixth graders, my immediate reaction was to feel apologetic for a lesson that was not going smoothly for students. I would rush over and show them exactly what they did wrong. They would fix it, the code would run and there would be satisfied smiles as they moved to the next part of the project. As you can guess, this is not a sustainable or a desirable approach to teach coding. A large part of learning to code is "debugging," fixing mistakes in the code written so that it runs as desired. Debugging is difficult. It requires patience, persistence and an almost scientific approach-skills that are not easy to teach in one class. Debugging is particularly challenging for young students who are driven by the end product, such as a game. They often do not perceive the intermediate debugging stage as a learning opportunity; they just want to fix the bug and move on! "

"Imagine students' artwork hanging in your school's hallway and beside each masterpiece is a QR code. When parents, students, and other teachers scan the code using a mobile device, they hear the student telling about themselves and the relevance of their art… Or what about a QR code in the back of a library book that allows you to hear a student's review of the book? Or a QR code sent home to parents that allows them to listen to their 1st grader reading or telling a story? Sounds difficult, doesn't it? Well, don't worry - it really isn't hard at all! I'll give you two options for recording the audio files and will show you a couple of ways to "embed" them into QR codes."

"What it is: This week is Hour of Code week! From December 9- December 15, Code.org is hosting an event to introduce students everywhere to computer sciences. The event is super flexible, you can plan your hour anywhere it fits in your schedule this week. Code.org has MORE than enough resources, videos, activities to get you going, but these days there are all kinds of great resources to help you bring programming and the Hour of Code into your classroom. The best part is, there is no previous coding experience required, really!"

"QR Codes are all around us today. Open a magazine, a catalog, or glance at a bulletin board and you're likely to see a QR code. QR Codes make it easy to jump to a website or download a file on your mobile device. QR codes and QR code reader apps are one of the many ways that cell phones can be used in schools for academic purposes. To that end, Russel Tarr the QR Treasure Hunt Generator."

"Hour of Code is a week-long promotion of the teaching and learning of computer coding. "The Hour of Code is designed to demystify code and show that computer science is not rocket-science, anybody can learn the basics," said Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org. "In one week last year, 15 million students tried an Hour of Code. Now we're aiming for 100 million worldwide to prove that the demand for relevant 21st century computer science education crosses all borders and knows no boundaries.""

"In an effort to prepare the next generation for the future, school and public librarians, as well as teachers and educators at community-run and for-profit camps, have answered the call to teach kids code. But many now recognize it's not enough for students simply to know how to write code. The capacity to build a product or solve a problem requires an entirely different literacy. With this in mind, the focus of coding education is shifting from teaching the specific skill of coding to teaching computational thinking-or the ability to follow a step-by-step process to solve a problem. Technology education programs from CSforAll to Code.org to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), as well as employers such as Google, all embrace this new context and focus. The future workforce will require a solid grounding in the discipline of thinking computationally, says Chris Stephenson, Google's head of computer science education strategy. She compares this moment to the epistemological shift that happened before the Enlightenment, when scribes guarded reading as a skill only for the chosen few."

"n Mrs. Chellani's continual efforts to create an engaging learning experience for her students, she has found utilizing QR codes to facilitate collaboration to be highly beneficial. In order to review material discussed in an assigned video and in class in her Pre-Calculus and Calculus courses, she created QR codes with relevant questions on the material and its' applications. Students were placed in groups of four to five; and, using a QR reader app on their phone, they were able to view the question. Once the students worked on the problem together, they would confirm the result with Mrs. Chellani. When the solution was correct, they would be given the next QR code (i.e. question). The level of engagement increased dramatically with the use of QR codes and simply allowing students to utilize their cell phones in the learning process! "

"The iPad is a great tool for coding.  Particularly for developing the skills and concepts in the junior years around directional language, understanding sprites and developing the building blocks of coding before moving onto traditional desktop coding software. Here is a list of great apps on the iPad to assist coding and robotics in the classroom.  If you would like to learn a great deal more about coding and robotics in the classroom I an strongly recommend getting a copy of this excellent eBook."

"Thousands of schools are participating in Hour of Code, a global initiative to get more kids engaged in computer science. Tynker, a creative platform to help children develop programming skills, has launched 10 new coding activities to support the hour of code. Tynker's unique approach motivates students to learn because they can create their own characters, animate them, and rapidly build their own games and interactive stories, using visual block-based programming. The real excitement is best heard in the voices of students who previewed an Hour of Code with Tynker:"

"Computer programming, otherwise known as coding, is currently offered in a small fraction of US K-12 schools. There has been a push to change this recently, as evidenced by several White House initiatives, the heavily publicized Hour of Code program, and recent large scale adoptions of hands on STEM programs such as Project Lead the Way. Serious challenges remain. Many schools find themselves ill-equipped to set up coding for schools programs, citing reasons such as insufficient human capital, out-of-date equipment, and high speed internet issues. Setting up effective coding programs at schools can be challenging, and there as many issues to consider including curriculum selection, staffing, professional development, and funding. One fundamental issue dogs nearly every program implementation. Trained engineers with coding backgrounds are needed to provide the level of rigor needed to support high quality computer programming courses. It is hard enough to find skilled engineers to handle private sector demand, and even more challenging to find those with in teaching. In this guide, we provide teachers and administrators with guidance on how to set up effective K-12 computer programming courses, whether they be comprehensive STEM curriculum implementations, daytime classes or after school clubs."

"In recent years, there has been a push to introduce coding and computational thinking in early childhood education, and robotics is an excellent tool to achieve this. However, the integration of these fundamental skills into formal and official curriculums is still a challenge and educators needs pedagogical perspectives to properly integrate robotics, coding and computational thinking concepts into their classrooms. Thus, this study evaluates a "coding as a playground" experience in keeping with the Positive Technological Development (PTD) framework with the KIBO robotics kit, specially designed for young children. The research was conducted with preschool children aged 3-5 years old (N = 172) from three Spanish early childhood centers with different socio-economic characteristics and teachers of 16 classes. Results confirm that it is possible to start teaching this new literacy very early (at 3 years old). Furthermore, the results show that the strategies used promoted communication, collaboration and creativity in the classroom settings. The teachers also exhibited autonomy and confidence to integrate coding and computational thinking into their formal curricular activities, connecting concepts with art, music and social studies. Through the evidence found in this study, this research contributes with examples of effective strategies to introduce robotics, coding and computational thinking into early childhood classrooms."

"Code.org is a non-profit foundation dedicated to growing computer programming education. Founded by two brothers, Hadi Partovi and Ali Partovi, their vision is that every student in every school has the opportunity to learn how to code. Code.org want computer science and computer programming to be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra."

"Computer coding is essentially a language that computer uses. When we think about helping kids learn computer coding, we automatically think we need a computer first. But in fact, there are many ways to learn computer coding without a computer, as many thinking and coding approach can be learned in many different activities off-screen. Today we share some off-screen activities that teach kids computer coding."