Week 1: Coding Together: Learning Together

- Sowing Seeds Librarian

Coding is everywhere right now! Lesson plans are on Pinterest, kids are talking about it, coding clubs are springing up all over the nation, and libraries are now offering coding programs to showcase how to create computer code for our youth, families, and adults. This spring, I was privileged to participate in the four- week online “Coding Together, Learning Together” course provided through DPI and taught by Casey Ineichen. This course was designed as a quick introduction to the wealth of coding opportunities and options for public libraries when planning programs. These were the course goals:

Learn the basics of coding and how to plan a coding event for your library so that: 

●You can share the basics of coding with your library patrons.
●You can select appropriate coding tools and software for your library and community.
●You can plan coding events for your library and community.

 

I found that this course was exactly what I needed to put my abstract plans about coding into a plan that was specific and timely. I understand that this course will be offered again, so if you are interested, stay tuned to Wisconsin’s DPI.
I will be blogging about my experience in this course. If you would like to learn more about code, like I did, try to work your way through some of the activities and websites that I will be posting.

Begin with the end in mind:

Our first discussion asked us to articulate the answer to these two questions:
Why do you want to start a Coding Club or program in your library? Why is coding important to you?
Right now, if you are still reading this blog post, you must have an answer to that in your head. Take a moment to write it down. If we can visualize our goals, we can achieve them.

Resources:

Our first week was simply about becoming introduced to the world of coding, and what is being done already in public libraries.

Here is a very helpful article about starting a coding club that was one of our assigned readings: How I Started an After-School Code Club. 

This course was hands on! Our first week we were asked to choose a resource and explore it. All of these sites are excellent coding resources:

 

Coding Together, Learning Together Week 1 Notes: 

Learning to code allows individuals to interact in a highly digital society.

What does coding teach?

  • Computation thinking
  • Decision making
  • Troubleshooting
  • Cause and effect
    ——> Students will apply all these skills to other areas even  if they do not go on to computer science jobs