Digital curriculum: Go beyond how to use computers

In many countries around the world, many schools are adopting digital curriculum, which teaches children computer science, information technology and digital literacy at an early age.

That is, teaching them how to code and how to create their own programmes; not just how to work a computer, but how a computer works and how to make it work for you.

While launching the digital curriculum this week, the Cabinet Secretary for Education Dr Fred Matiang’i underscored the need to equip children with computing skills so that they are well in tune with the 21st century world.

Today, children are part of a digital generation that has grown up in a world surrounded by technology and the Internet, and they are using mobile phones, tablets, e-readers and computers on a daily basis.

One of the computing skills being taught in many countries is coding. Getting more kids to code has been a cause célèbre for the technology industry for some time.

Teaching programming skills to children is seen as a long-term solution to the “skills gap” between the number of technology jobs and the people qualified to fill them.

In Australia, coding will soon replace history and geography under Australia’s revamped national curriculum. Australian students will begin coding at age 10 and computer programming at age 12.

Last year, the UK ambitiously changed the national curriculum, which includes coding classes for children as young as five years.

In Germany, the country’s Social Democratic Party recently called for mandatory computer science courses at all grade levels.

In the US, although computer science has not been fully implemented in the national curriculum, 27 states currently allow students to count computer science courses toward high school graduation.

Learning programming skills, educationists argue, will benefit children in other ways whatever their ultimate career — almost akin to the reasoning for giving children the chance to learn a musical instrument or foreign language at early age. Programming teaches children to be creative.

The right time to start is in the early ages, not only because students learn fast at a young age, but because we need to infuse computer skills before stereotypes suggest coding is too difficult. Besides, building apps or games is far more engaging than arithmetic, yet these activities all teach the same concepts.

The first thing to know about coding is that the computer is always right. If the program isn’t working or doing what you want, you made a mistake.

This is an important emotional lesson for any developing child to learn. It carries over to every other subject you are studying, that there is no such thing as phoning it in or faking it.

As Christmas time comes, many kids are praying that either Santa or their parents would get them a tech gift. The challenge for parents, therefore, is in finding tech gifts that help their children develop new skills while still being fun.

Tablets or smartphones allow children to access a wide range of educational apps and services that can help boost their maths and logic skills, packaged in the appealing form of a game.

A good technology-based gift could be a subscription to Mathletics, an online maths learning platform based around games and challenges, or Minecraft, a creative block-building game that pushes the bounds of logical and critical thinking.

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