Summer Code

We’re all on board with summer reading, but what about summer coding? As modes of communication expand in this digital age, traditional notions of what it means to be literate are evolving too. Computational literacy — learning to read and write the language of computers — is gaining traction as a new educational benchmark. Soon, not too many Junes from now, your third grader will come home with a summer coding list tucked into her folder alongside that trusty summer reading list.  

One of the most articulate advocates for the power of computing as a creative, mind-expanding medium is Assistant Professor Karen Brennan. She founded ScratchEd, an online community for educators who are using the friendly programming language Scratch to bring computer science to their classrooms. Last year, she released the Guide to Creative Computing, an accessible resource for teachers, librarians, museum educators, parents, and students to plunge in and start coding.

Brennan sat down for a conversation with the Harvard EdCast to talk about the expressive possibilities of computing — and how to keep kids engaged over the summer. Tips and resources below.

Among Brennan’s recommendations for happy computing:

• Keep it fun. “There are so many tools out there that are profoundly grounded in kids’ interests and passions,” she says. Coding can be a tricky business, even when you’re doing it for fun, Brennan adds. “But that’s how you get through the challenges — through that intrinsic motivation and passion for what you’re doing.”
• Keep it creative and open-ended. She likes Scratch partly because of the “wide walls” nature of its design, where users can make many different kinds of things — games, stories, animations, and more. Hopscotch is another exciting bet, she says, as is Google’s CS First, which she says has done a good job coming up with programming activities focused on fashion, sports, arts — subjects that defy the stereotypes of what computer science is.
• Find communities online. Look for tools that have communities built around them — like both Scratch and Hopscotch — so coders can connect to one another, share their work, and get feedback.
• Keep it social. “It’s easy to think of coding as something you do on your own, just you and the machine. But coding is a really social practice,” Brennan says. Parents can host gatherings or clubs at home or get kids involved with library offerings, which are ramping up their tech opportunities. For kids, “going to places where there are groups of people engaging in play and making and creating is exciting,” she says.

Additional Resources

• Download the Guide to Creative Computing in various languages.
• Download the Creative Computing Learner Workbook [PDF], a learner-focused version of the guide that includes student activity pages and reflection question templates.
• Resources for educators seeking to join the ScratchEd community — or learn more about using technology to generate creative engagement. 

Photo courtesy MIT Media Lab