Computational Thinker

ISTE Standard for Students 5: Computational Thinker

Students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions.

5a. Students formulate problem definitions suited for technology-assisted methods such as data analysis, abstract models and algorithmic thinking in exploring and finding solutions.
5b. Students collect data or identify relevant data sets, use digital tools to analyze them, and represent data in various ways to facilitate problem-solving and decision-making.
5c. Students break problems into component parts, extract key information, and develop descriptive models to understand complex systems or facilitate problem-solving.
5d. Students understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.

Codecademy

Codecademy is an online service for learning different coding languages such a Python, Rub, C++, Java, etc. You choose the language you want to learn and then work through a set of tutorials that teach you to code. It is short of an “I do” “you try” model. It can be a little frustrating if you don’t understand what the problem with your code is when trying to run it as a model.

Pros:

• Free (kind of)
• Step-by-step tutorials
• Lots of different languages can learn to code in
• Gives students a chance to practice writing code alongside directions (interactive nature of the website is a plus)
• Models “I you, you do” model (sort of)

Cons:

• They really would like you to pay for their services (I had a hard time figuring out how to not pay)
• I think the directions could be a little more specific for people who really don’t know anything about code. I would like more of an overview to start.

Reflection

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to potentially get a CTE endorsement alongside the art endorsement (because there aren’t as many art jobs available generally). I think using codecademy would be awesome to use with a CTE endorsement to teach students basic skills about how to build their own websites or what languages they might need to know if they want to be a web developer and not just use website templates that are already provided.