Technology is changing the way we live, we are increasingly immersed in a tablet or a smartphone. Even in our way of relating to other people is more cybernetic.
The use of technology in the classroom does not seem strange to us today, when a compulsory education student enters a computer classroom and is taught to use programs but not to be a developer.
From childhood, will begin to see technology as a tool for consumption, but not as a tool for creation. Our students know how to search for information on the Internet and handle all kinds of applications, but the technology behind them becomes invisible and they miss the opportunities to teach programming in the classroom.
But what is programming?
"To program is to define instructions for a computer to execute them (since the machine alone can not do it) whose objective is usually to solve a problem".
The teaching of the programming in the classrooms, makes us reflect and organize our ideas to be able to translate them with certain codes and thus create new programs, games or stories. All this process aimed at children at an early age makes them develop certain capacities that translate into benefits for them.
Learning to program and develop computer thinking fosters creativity, entrepreneurship and free culture, increases motivation, increases confidence and self-esteem, works on problem-solving strategies, encourages teamwork and collaborates with other colleagues. they know different ways of communicating ideas...
All these improvements can be seen in the short term, but we can not forget that also in the future the student is ready for a labor market in which our students will perform jobs that have not even been invented and the teaching of computer science is a measure to face these new challenges.
What programs can be used to teach children to program?
As we know the benefits of programming at school, I will leave some programs that can be used to teach your children or students in their first steps to program.
- In childhood (between 5 and 7 years): Scratch Jr This is a visual programming language to introduce coding skills in children. When creating projects in Scratch Jr, children learn to think creatively and reason while they still can not read well.
- Primary (between 7 and 9 years old): at this stage children are learning to read and write. You can use a little more complex programs, code.org is one of the best sites where you can learn to program in blocks thanks to a large number of tutorials focused on different ages.
- Second cycle of Primary (10 and 12 years): already from these ages there is a wide variety of programs to learn to develop and one of these is Code Monkey, is the ideal to learn to program from blocks to lines of text.
Without a doubt, Scratch I like very much not only for the children but also for the adults that are beginning in this world of programming.
These programs intend to start programming in a friendly and fun environment, with basic aspects of high level languages: variables, control structures, sentences, functions, conditions, operators ...
In addition, as we have already mentioned, they seek to facilitate the development of diverse skills by developing small programs aimed at solving problems or creating simple games.