How to Get Kids into Coding

Happy National Coding Week!

This week, schools, libraries, businesses, and communities are teaming up to encourage people across the nation to get into coding! National Coding Week has a clear mission - to inspire individuals of all ages to engage with coding. [1] They want to spread the word that coding is a valuable skill that can benefit everyone (not just tech professionals!)

Within our digital age, coding skills will only become more valuable. Coding is now vital to many facets of modern life from app development to website design. [1] With this in mind, there has never been a better time to encourage kids to get into coding.

We’ve provided three programmes below with varying levels of complexity to get kids into coding, from eager beginners to advanced tech-wizards! Here’s our guide to sparking children’s coding curiosity.

Beginners: Scratch

Scratch is a wonderful programming language builder for beginners due to its simple visual interface. It uses block-based coding, meaning that instead of typing out code, you can drag and drop different coding elements together to create games, digital stories and animations. The programming language is specifically designed for young people between the ages of 8 to 16, but is open to all. Scratch has also created a simplified version, Scratch Jr, aimed at ages 5-7. [2]

Scratch provides step by step tutorials for complete beginners, and when your child has the hang of how it works, there is a lot of room for creativity and imagination! For example, if they have a favourite book, they can create a digital story or turn it into an animation. Scratch teaches children the relevance and cross-disciplinary nature of coding, encouraging problem-solving skills and equipping them with computational thinking. [2]

Within our Retro Games Console Kit, we have designed two extension challenges around Scratch. One of these provides kids with a step by step guide of how to use programming building blocks to build a video game! The other task has a design focus, encouraging children to think creatively. (Click here for more information on our fantastic, hands-on STEM kits.)

Brilliantly, Scratch is free and available in over 70 languages, making it accessible to everyone. [2] So go on, scratch that coding itch and try it out!

Intermediate: Jupyter Notebook

Jupyter Notebook is an interactive web application that allows users to create and run code. [3] It’s a great platform to learn on, given its flexible and user-friendly environment. It provides a handy platform for writing and practicing code in a range of languages including Python, Java and Scala. [4]

The notebook itself combines computer code, plain language descriptions and data visualisations with 3D models and graphs. [5] This set-up is really convenient if you are new to coding, as you can write small bits of code at a time and include notes and explanations. This is a lovely way to break things down when you are first getting used to writing code on your own!

Jupyter Notebook is collaborative, allowing multiple users to work together on a coding project, making it a useful learning tool in a classroom setting. The notebook is also interactive, meaning users can write code, observe the output and make changes accordingly. [3]

Finally, Jupyter conveniently has an online platform, JupyterLab that lets you write and run your own Jupyter Notebooks without installing anything. [6] This allows users to start coding quickly without any hassle (unlike a lot of other methods that require a lot of set up). You can go to the site, make a blank notebook and start writing and running Python in under a minute.

Jupyter notebook is a great resource if you are looking to start writing code solo!

Advanced: Arduino

Arduino is an electronics platform that enables its users to get to grips with both hardware and software.

One of their key products is the Arduino board, which is a small computer on a single integrated circuit. The Arduino board is programmable and able to read inputs i.e. light on a sensor, and this is controlled by the user telling the board what to do via coding! This is through the Arduino Software. [7]

Arduino therefore combines coding with hardware, providing an easy way to create programmable physical projects. It offers an engaging and rewarding challenge for coding enthusiasts by bringing together coding skills and hands-on interaction with hardware components! [8]

Arduino uses C/C++ language, which is widely used in the programming industry, and so creating physical projects using an Arduino board is a fun way of getting to grips with a very useful and transferrable skill. Furthermore, Arduino has a thriving online community, the Project Hub, where users from hobbyists to engineers can share tutorials and guidance with Arduino boards.  [7]

Coding is a fantastic skill for kids to learn, and at Team Repair we are passionate about getting students to engage with STEM. Check out our repair kits that incorporate coding into repairs and other curriculum aligned topics here.

For more information on National Coding Week as well as inspiration, resources and career advice, head to their website!

https://codingweek.org/

[1] https://codingweek.org/

[2] https://scratch.mit.edu/about

[3] https://domino.ai/data-science-dictionary/jupyter-notebook

[4] https://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/v7.1.2/index.html

[5] https://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

[6] https://jupyter.org/try

[7] https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-an-arduino/all

[8] https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction

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