This month I’ve done a couple of coding workshops with LEARN Quebec, an organization serving the English language schools of Quebec. While I regularly do workshops with school boards, this last week has been a real whirlwind of education development work that made me want to take the opportunity to talk more about it.
Education is a big part of what we do at Massive Corporation. I’ve been lucky enough to follow my dreams and become a professional video game developer. Growing up I knew that was what I wanted to be, but no one could teach me the skills I needed. I had to teach myself, and it took a long time and a lot of frustration to get here. Now that I have, I want to make sure its easier for the next generation. Making sure coding education is available and accessible to kids means a lot to me, knowing it could unlock their dreams and potential, whether in game development or some other use.
The Coding in Education Challenge
I’ve been teaching coding and game development now for about ten years. Through in-classroom workshops, guest lectures, internships, and mentorships for grade 1 through master’s level programs I’ve helped people discover not just the skill, but the amazing applications of it. Seeing the amazing difference it can make in both kid’s lives and classrooms has been an amazing and inspiring journey. It pushed me to develop more tools to support this transformation in education. Earlier this year I published The Teacher’s Guide to Scratch book series through Routledge. I followed that up by launching The Teacher’s Guide to Scratch online course – a 40 hour comprehensive video training course for teacher’s to master coding for education. As much as I enjoy teaching students, I know training the trainer is the best way to multiply my effect.
When teaching teachers to code the biggest issue isn’t the technical difficulty, it’s the time & effort and for a big reason. Coding is a brand new subject for teachers, there’s no history and depth of practice, there’s no familiarity to it, so it’s certainly difficult to learn. However, it’s the fact that they have to learn it and incorporate it without anything else being taken off their plates that’s the biggest issue. There aren’t any new days of the week, there aren’t any more hours in a day, and we aren’t having them stop teaching history or math or phys. ed. to give them the time and energy to take this on. The situation is pretty much damns them to fail.
Our Approach
My approach is to try make coding a tool for teaching, not a subject itself. In the real world we don’t code for coding’s sake, we code for a purpose. We can take that same approach in classroom – use code to achieve something. With good cross curricular approaches we can be checking off the curricular needs of the class, while teaching code, saving precious time. That was the focus for my workshops with LEARN Quebec, but it’s a common focus for my educational work. I give some great examples of Scratch projects that bridge curricular connections in my free Scratch Crash Course to make sure teachers can see the potential for education quickly.
While most of my experience has been in Canadian schools and universities, I’d like to start doing more outside Canada. Scratch provides educators a wonderful world-wide, multilingual and accessible platform to explore coding. I’ve started applying to present at big conventions in the US and barring any hiccups, I’ll hopefully start sharing my expertise more with the US (and other countries). Over the years I’ve both developed a lot of material for both teacher training and for in-classroom workshops, I just need the opportunities to get it out their into the world.
We’re Here to Help!
Massive Corporation offers in-classroom coding workshops, teacher training sessions, custom coding education development, educational products and even long-term coding education partnerships. We’ve made coding education curriculum that covers every subject and every grade. We’re here to make a difference and help solve the struggles that teachers and school divisions are facing incorporating coding into classrooms. We want to help. Who do you think we should work with? Help us connect by writing us, or them, or both – and get us working together to make life simpler for teachers, and life better for students.
If you’re a teacher, and you’re looking for professional development, talk to your school division about working with us. We can offer a wide-range of workshops. We have our The Teacher’s Guide to Scratch book series as a training guide and desk reference. Our The Teacher’s Guide to Scratch online course offers outstanding professional development you can follow at your own pace. Best of all you can partner with us to deliver in-classroom workshops regularly through the year to cover every subject over a range of grades to supercharge coding in your school district.
So help put us to work and connect us with however you think can use the support and expertise. Massive Corporation is here to help!