{"id":12,"date":"2012-10-30T00:45:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T00:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/?p=12"},"modified":"2012-10-30T00:54:57","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T00:54:57","slug":"21st-century-skills-and-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/2012\/10\/30\/21st-century-skills-and-coding\/","title":{"rendered":"21st Century Skills and Coding"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came home to find the new copy of RED, the Seneca College Alumni magazine in my mailbox. I am proud of my association with Seneca, and not because it led directly to my job at Royal St. George\u2019s, but also because I believe there is a place for colleges in the post-secondary menu of choices for our students.<\/p>\n

The new issue of RED features a cover story on Seneca\u2019s relationship to the open source movement, specifically through a new NSERC Industrial Research Chair and ongoing relationships with Mozilla and Red Hat. The Centre for the Development of Open Technology at Seneca@York allows students to research and create open source software.<\/p>\n

The article got me thinking again about the role programming plays in our curriculum. As 21st century educators,\u00a0 we use\u00a0 technology in meaningful ways and we encourage our students to exceed their potential through new, tech-infused methods of research and expression, but do we explore what is behind all this technology in any meaningful way? I sometimes think tech integrators and computer science teachers function as two solitudes.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user Marc_Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At RSGC, our senior master Chris D\u2019Arcy,\u00a0 has established a strong applied technology program that focuses on hardware and software. You can check out his programs here<\/a>. Chris told me today that several RSGC old boys, now in their late 20s, have come by looking for students talented in coding to assist them in launching various small businesses. Even though computer science enrollments are increasing<\/a> again, it is still tough to find people with this skill.<\/p>\n

As a co-curricular activity I have run a programming club for middle school students using Scratch<\/a>, the visually-based programming language from MIT. I have also done a short unit on Scratch in the course I teach, TGJ2O, Communications Technology, to drive home the point that users of \u201cproduction software\u201d like Photoshop need to understand what is going on beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

I would like to know if the differences between programming and 21st century skills instruction are as wide as it seems. If you have a different story to tell, please do in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came home to find the new copy of RED, the Seneca College Alumni magazine in my mailbox. I am proud of my association with Seneca, and not because it led directly to my job at Royal St. George\u2019s, but also because I believe there is a place for colleges in the post-secondary menu of … Continue reading “21st Century Skills and Coding”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curriculum","tag-programming-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/thutton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}