INAS, INDIANAPOLIS — Students entered Ms. Sorenson’s class at Ernie Pyle School 90 and set down their iPads to learn about robotics. Jenina Sorenson, a computer science teacher in grades K-2 at Ernie Pyle School 90, is in her first year. The class is being offered for the first time at the institution. This new course teaches coding to pupils in order to prepare them for future employment options, particularly in today’s digital economy.
“Introducing technology at such a young age gives kids that attitude and helps them to think beyond the confines of what we are currently doing with computers,” Sorenson explained. “When I first started teaching, I believe we just had leap frogs and leap pads, and now we’ve progressed to the point where every kid has an iPad and every student has a computer, and it’s just so much more technologically sophisticated.”
Spheros coding robots, Wonder Workshop robots, and Ozobots color coding robots for kids are available at the school.
Each bot assists in teaching the fundamentals of programming principles and making robots operate by giving youngsters with manual instructions. According to Sorenson, coding is becoming an important aspect of most businesses as part of society’s present digital transition.
“It’s just amazing to watch kids having fun while learning and then discover they’ve produced a product to move an item and that there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to coding.” “Your creation is your creation, regardless of how you code it,” Sorenson stated.
Because most services and goods are becoming digitized, the number of occupations requiring coding skills will expand dramatically, according to Sorenson.
Students in kindergarten started the school year studying that computers can only accomplish what you tell them. Students spend time acting like computers and obeying instructions. Students in the first and second grades spend their time learning how to direct a robot dog through a maze. The first and second graders, like kindergarteners, are collaborating. Kids in the first grade are writing and animating a tale, while students in the second grade are working their way up to producing an online game.
According to Sorenson, programming at Ernie Pyle benefits pupils on several levels:
Introducing teamwork: Sorenson’s approach employs paired programming, in which two students collaborate to create a program. Both the navigator and the driver are students. Working in this manner teaches kids problem-solving and teamwork, as well as how to express and communicate them and their ideas.
Assisting in the development of resilience: By learning to code, children gain the capacity to recover from failure. Programming does not have to be a binary process. It is a learning process, and pupils can attempt and try again once they succeed and get the desired outcome.
Programming is more than just writing lines of code. Programming is more than just writing lines of code. It is also about assisting pupils in thinking rationally. They must see the bigger picture and divide it up into smaller bits in order to solve it effectively.
Programming encourages pupils to explore and provides them with the trust to be creative. With programming, someone may develop anything fully from scratch. When they produce, it provides them internal praise for a job well done.
Sorenson believes that kids who understand the fundamentals of coding will get abilities that will benefit them for the rest of their life. The advantages include improved arithmetic, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities, all of which must be trained.
“Today, as our society grows more and more dependant on digitalization, we cannot enable youngsters to wait until college to learn coding.” According to Sorenson, “we must invest today in these talents since they are digital natives willing to learn it.”