Ashric Don – eLearning project facilitator at Metro East Education Department
Starting a coding club at my school
Ashric shared his processes as a teacher in setting up a coding club. He had the idea to start a coding club without having the experience and resources. The first club was set up at Klapmuts Primary school which is a No Fee school with 1500 learners where a majority of the parents are unemployed and more than 80% are dependent on social grants. The school also has a shortage of resources but that should not be an excuse for not bringing coding to the schools.
What is important is that there is a passion and an understanding on the importance of why to start coding at the school. The reason shouldn’t be because the DBE or officials say so but because it aligns with your visions for the school and the learners. The coding club at Klapmuts was started at a time when eLearning was also introduced at the school and the idea received good support from the visionary principle.
Starting the club made Ashric realizing what coding can do for the community, the hope it generated and the growing self confidence among learners. There is also a lot of skills development happening in the clubs such as critical thinking skills and problem solving skills.
The vision for the club was: To break the cycle of poverty by giving learners the tools to compete at a global level
With the mission: Developing 21st century skills, preparing learners for the 4IR, develop problem solving skills and collaborate with other schools.
With the vision and mission in mind they started to plan the activities for the club. After doing a bit of research Ashric had the idea of making use of Micro:Bit robotics for the club and managed to get support and sponsorship for some equipment from a minister of Education in the Western Cape. While there is plenty of free resources available that was considered for the club Ashric was happy to move ahead with Micro:Bit robotics as the learners could now work with sensors and robotic cars.
With the 40 donated Micro:Bits the coding club could take off. Ashric not being an expert on coding had to do a lot of reading up not only to learn coding but also to figure out what educational tools to make use of in the club. He focused on the concepts he wanted to teach the learners such as concepts of computational thinking, identify algorithms and abstraction. Slowly he put bits and pieces together so that he could introduce it to the learners and at the same time learn together with the learners. There was also a big emphasis on the fun aspect as the idea was that the learners must have fun when they come to the coding club. The learners must be free and creative within the club. He made use of free curriculums and lesson plans that he could come across online. To program the Micro:bit they made use of the free block coding tool Makecode.
In the club they made use of a project based approach as they wanted the learners to become problem solvers. When starting a club it is important to start with the vision and then look at what is the available infrastructure. What can we do with the infrastructure at hand? If there for instance is a lack of computers and Internet there is always unplugged solutions. You also have to decide what tools you will be using, are they free or do you need to secure funding or sponsorship?
In facilitating the learning at the club Ashric took more of a role as a facilitator rather than trying to teach the students. With his guidance and support the learners where able learn at their own pace as he tried to avoid introducing a wide number of concepts that had to be rushed through but rather allowing for the students to explore at their own pace.
In starting a coding club it is important to consider all the stakeholders such as the principal, teachers, learners, parents, district, SMT, sponsors and 3rd party service providers. He however emphasizes that crucial for success of a coding club at a school is the buy in by the principal. You also need to evaluate the E-Infrastructure, what is the facilities in regards to computer labs, tablets, Internet, science Labs, science/technology kits and classrooms so that your plan can match the infrastructure available. Personally he found Code.org as a good starting point if there is uncertainty of where to start and also suggested to have a look at Scratch which is a widely used block coding platform. There are always online tutorials that can be used to assist you. If the infrastructure will limit you there are always unplugged options whereas the students can learn computational thinking without any need for computers or Internet. In the planning you also need to consider things such as which grade to target? How many learners to involve? How many hours per week? Also he reminded on the importance of having the learners to fill out consent forms.
For the coding club they developed a three year plan which they shared to anyone that showed an interest. In the plan there was also a vision to obtain additional tools apart from the initially supplied Micro:Bit chips. Tools such as Micro:Bit compatible robotic cars, science kits and drones. In their communication of the plan there was a plea to also support the coding club and due to their commitment and communication efforts they managed to find sponsors willing to assist with the additional tools including even a 3D printer.
For the coding club they found that 20-25 learners was a good number of learners as when they tried to go beyond that the classroom got a bit difficult to manage. As the coding club was established they also reached out to other schools to collaborate and share their lessons learnt. In total they engaged with 30 other schools and thereby could reach and benefit a wider community far beyond the school itself.
You can have all the resources and all the training but if you don’t take massive action nothing will happen. He ended with the message that massive action will be the key to your success at the school!
Jussi Koivisto – Head of Pedagogy, Code School Finland
How to get started with engaging, project-based learning on coding and robotics at schools.
Jussi Koivisto represents Code School Finland (CSF) and joined in on the webinar from Finland. Code School Finland creates teaching and learning materials, trains teachers and arranges workshops and coding camps and have been doing so since 2014. Jussi has been part of CSF since then and started off with running coding clubs for children and is now the Head of Pedagogy at CSF. Jussi oversea all the material and training taking part all over the world. He is also highly involved in creating teaching and learning material for CSF. Like Ashric he also didn’t know how to code himself when he started off but having now been doing it for 8 years he is nowadays ‘corrupted’ by the code.
Not knowing how to code himself when he started has helped in developing good learning and teaching material for students and teachers that might also not be so conversant with coding in the beginning.
Coding is however only part of the digital landscape addressed by Code School Finland as seen in picture below.
All above topics are addressed by CSF and taught through project based learning. But apart from the content covered it also allows students to learn to communicate, collaborate, create, learn from each other, students also learn to learn so that they can be better learners and learn faster than they did before. The CSF pedagogy is based on Design-Based project learning which is a student-centered approach that promotes innovation and creativity. It allows for peer learning and encourages sharing of information amongst the students.
The purpose is for the students to design something with a purpose and also to deliver it to someone once completed in order to make the learning more meaningful. For instance if the students code a game they may code it with a purpose to be used amongst younger students. Students are given the responsibility to be creative and do things from their own ideas and imagination. Traditional project based learning is very teacher oriented and at the end of the project all students end up with having something that all looks the same while the CSF pedagogy encourages all the students to come up with their own solution based on the building blocks or tools they been handled by the teacher. The teacher should be a facilitator of learning rather than a traditional teacher.
The teacher does not have to be a topic expert and therefore the learning material becomes important as it helps providing the expert knowledge needed within the classroom. The teacher training by CSF is more about making the teacher feel comfortable about teaching the topic and to help them on where to start with the teaching.
The project based learning also allows for integrating various subjects into the projects so as to make them multidisciplinary. Coding projects could be relevant for any other subject but typically physics, math and chemistry are easy to integrate into the coding projects. Micro:Bit and Scratch are recommended tools that are good for starting coding and for doing multidisciplinary projects.
Jussi also introduced Teachease which is a new service launched by CSF for schools to expand their teaching of digital skills, coding, robotics and Artificial Intelligence. The Teachease service allows for having a tailored solution for any school based on their needs. The service includes teacher training with continuous support, Teaching and Learning materials as well as teacher certification. The service works as an annual subscription where new modules are introduced on a yearly basis.
In conclusion Jussi encouraged teaching the student to think and create. Work on meaningful projects. Let the students take more responsibility over their learning. In case you need help to get started consider the Teachease service provided by CSF.
If you are interested in introducing CSF modules at your school following the CSF pedagogy as explained by Jussi. Please visit the Teachease website https://www.codeschool.fi/teachease/ and fill out the Gap analysis to get a tailored solution for your school https://codeschool.fi/gap-analysis
