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"I must confess: I am a coder. I like to create and build through computer programming. I find it engages a special part of my brain and calms me when I need a break of administrative or educational work. In fact, I used to code for Microsoft. I also teach coding and I love that coding teaches them to grow as analytical thinkers and problem solvers. In short, I am a big proponent for learning how to code. What has struck most of late is just how universal coding has become as a connector of people. When I first played around with the topic for this post, I considered titling it as, "Coding is a Universal Language," but a set of colleagues corrected me. Coding does not follow the rules of common languages; it exceeds them. Coding ties people together from all backgrounds and ages with the universal concepts of planning, creativity, design, and development. It is both constructive and destructive, fueling collaboration in some and isolation in others. What I challenge readers to think about is finding any part of modern society that is not touched in some way by coding? Think of any social or political event of the past 25 years that didn't have some connection to coding. Think of one nation of people on earth that haven't been influenced in some way by coding. I am sure you can find some, but those outliers are vastly overwhelmed by the examples of coding being tied to the central fabric of contemporary digital society."

"We know how to help kids develop into powerful learners. Now, we just need to make that happen in schools. "A parent of two teen-agers, Will Richardson has spent the last dozen years developing an international reputation as a leading thinker and writer about the intersection of social online learning networks and education. Will has authored four books (with two more on the way), including ""Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere"" (September, 2012) published by TED books and based on his 2013 TEDx talk in Melbourne, Australia. ""Why School?"" is now the #1 best-selling TED book ever. A former public school educator of 22 years, Will is also co-founder of Modern Learner Media and co-publisher of ModernLearners.com which is a site dedicated to helping educational leaders and policy makers develop new contexts for new conversations around education. "

"The students in Molly James's kindergarten classroom were tasked with creating a mathematical art gallery. They had each drawn a number and then searched for two types objects they could use to compose a visual number sentence - such as two rulers plus three scissors to equal five objects. After photographing and mounting their pictures on the wall in numerical order, the students sat on the floor with their sketchbooks and began to draw and talk. "I had expected them to learn something about number composition," James said, "but I didn't expect the remarkable observations they began to have about the photographs." For example, when one girl looked at a picture of two red scissors and three blue scissors (2+3=5), she noticed that the direction of the handles gave rise to a new number sentence: 4 scissors pointing left + 1 scissor pointing right = 5 scissors. James, who recently published a paper about creativity in the classroom, said moments like these remind her that "creativity is not fluff or an add-on, but is instead an essential part of what it means to be a mathematician."  In fact, she believes creativity is the key to helping her students become confident and skilled mathematical thinkers."

"As parents and teachers, we encourage our kids to become well rounded people who love learning.   In our world of cell phones, ipads, and computers, it's easy for kids to become passive consumers of media and technology.   We, however, want are kids to be active, curious, and creative.   Since I'm a musician and a software engineer, I hope that my kids learn to express themselves emotively and become creative thinkers.   We're trying to foster a family culture where we are active, encourage tinkering, and building physical things with our hands.    With these ideas in mind, I wanted to share a great video I found by Vinnie Vrotny and Sheryl Peterson entitled "STEAM: Creating A Maker Mindset."   In this conference talk from the K12 Online Conference in 2013, they share their experiences encouraging a "maker" mindset in the Quest Academy .   Their school has a very unique class teaching design thinking to kids.    It's giving me lots of ideas for building a maker environment for our family.    In this class, Sheryl encourages her students to invent a creative design problem and solve it.   With the tools and support of the teacher, the kids are encouraged to build their design.    In some cases, the kids ask Sheryl to assign a problem to them.    The kids aren't used to having creative freedom to design and make.    In these cases, Sheryl encourages the students to keep thinking."

"What if I told you there is a way for your children to become better thinkers, keep their eyeballs healthy and build social skills all at the same time? Brain games will do just that!"

"Why coding? And why now? Many of us would quickly respond that learning to code is a necessary skill in today's world with the vast amount of technology tools available. However, it is a little more difficult to define why or how it is applicable in our daily lives. As an educator, ask yourself: What are the underlying skills that coding teaches students? What are the learning outcomes we want for students as a result of bringing coding into the classroom? Computer science is more than just coding. Thinking like a computer scientist involves more skills than just being able to write code. Educators need students to bring their creativity and ability to think collaboratively to a problem in order to solve it. The computer will not solve problems without a human first working through how to approach the problem."

"In the past decade, researchers have shown that playing games can boost students' ability to think in systems. Any game is a system, after all, and when players take actions, the game itself, as an interactive system, can change. Moving a knight across a chessboard, for example, can change everything for the opposing player. What is systems thinking? According to the Partnership for 21st-Century Learning, systems thinking relates to critical thinking and problem solving, and systems thinkers can "analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in complex systems.""

Yes, students learn how to work together to approach open-ended problems I agree with this but... gain confidence to work with complex problems, and develop grit to continue to work on the problem until a viable solution is found not agree an the same time. Now the younger students have many mini tattoos in their bodies and have more problems to fing jobs in the future.

"As we look at future jobs and technological advancements, having creativity is essential in the workplace. Robots and AI will be able to handle many tasks, even replacing some types of jobs, but we will still need creative thinkers and designers to move ahead globally. As educators, how do we ensure that students learn this skill in our curriculums? Can creativity be taught? Why are some people more creative than others? If you tell students to be creative, do they even know what it means or where to begin?"

"In India, 41km of highway road was constructed every day for the year of 2016. In the Indian government budget, it estimated the cost just for 2016 to be 19 billion USD. It would be financing any shortfall through tax-free government bonds. Computational thinking would have played an instrumental role in deciding on where the road would go through with taking into account the key hubs and may have saved the government millions, if not billions of dollars. Jeanette Wing (2012) defines computational thinking as the thought process involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution in a way that a computer-human or machine can effectively carry out. It is the process of abstraction by; choosing the right abstractions, operating in terms of multiple layers of abstraction simulations and defining the relationships between layers guided by efficiency, correctness, and flexibility. Computational thinking can best be related to as writing software or instructionals. Every action or non-action is accounted for in the way computational artifacts are constructed. Computational thinking is great for working out a solution but there is an argument that computational thinking does not put enough emphasis on the problem itself. Design thinking, on the other hand, attempts to understand the intent or problem before looking at any solution - computational or otherwise. Design thinking attempts to identify why the problem exists in the first place before solving it. IDEO defines design thinking as the application of empathy and experimentation to arrive at innovation solutions through making decisions based on stakeholder input and evidence based research. Using the Indian roading example, a design thinker would ask, what is the intent of building the roads in the first place?"

"At Excel Public Charter School, we place a strong focus on integrating computational thinking within our curriculum across all disciplines. To us, computational thinking means solving hard problems of all kinds using ideas from computer science. These include algorithmic thinking, decomposition, pattern recognition and abstraction, as well as confidence in the face of ambiguity and tenacity to persist through challenges requiring iteration and experimentation. Our computational thinking curriculum is freely provided here for you to incorporate within your own classrooms. You'll find lessons divided into disciplines along the top of this and every other page. With these lessons and projects, we hope you will encourage your students to grow and flourish as computational thinkers, ready to face the real-world challenges of their generation!"

"There are lots of resources available to help students grow as computational thinkers- and many are free! Some of these platforms begin at basic levels and can be utilized by beginners as young as preschool age, while still others provide interactive experiences that utilize diverse computational thinking strategies."

""People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." This is the mantra of leadership expert Simon Sinek in one of the most popular TED Talks of all time (Watch: Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action). In his talk from TEDxPugetSound, Sinek looks at Apple, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Wright brothers - and examines why they were so successful at getting people to follow them. Who were the thinkers that inspired Sinek on his own path to leadership? Below, find five books (and two documentaries) that made a difference in his life."

What changes when we refer to ourselves or our students as members of the community of thinkers and learners that they are apprenticed to? What changes when we are mindful in our use of a language of identity?