“Codecademy has a bold mission—to rethink education from the bottom up—and it’s working on that on the web and out in the world through a handful of nonprofit initiatives. On the web, Codecademy offers courses to make learning to code and designing websites fun and easy. You can choose to learn specific languages, such as JavaScript, or even learn the (IBM) Watson API. Even better, all the classes are free, though a new paid plan offers additional learning tools and live support. This makes Codecademy our Editors’ Choice for free online coding classes.
Note: Codecademy is focused on teaching beginners. There are some advanced courses covering Ruby, PHP, and AngularJS, but you won’t find C or Java classes here. In the coming months, Codecademy will be rolling out new courses and refreshing its interface. Some older courses will be discontinued; if you’re in the middle of one, your progress will be lost, but your achievements will be saved, so you’ll still be able to track which courses (new and old) you’ve completed. Continue reading Codecademy→
“Over the past few years I have been working with libraries on code clubs, and I’ve been impressed with the community response in small towns – kids see coding as a way to connect/influence a much bigger world, and it’s empowering.
Computing jobs represent the largest source of new jobs and are among the highest paying, yet hundreds of thousands of openings go unfilled. And such employment needs are projected to continue growing in the coming years. Libraries are part of the solution in preparing more of America’s youth for these jobs
Libraries are ideal venues to provide career opportunities for youth in the digital age, explains a newly-released brief from the American Library Association (ALA). In “Careers for America’s Youth in the Digital Age: <libraries / ready to code>,” libraries are found to increasingly offer programs in coding and computational thinking—the broader intellectual skills behind coding—and are poised to do much more.
The brief is being released at the #HouseOfCode demo, panel and reception event on Capitol Hill on April 3-4. Nearly 100 students from over 50 Congressional districts will participate to demo their winning apps from the 2016 Congressional App Challenge. ALA is a sponsor of this event and we will have an exhibitor table and strong representation including our coding policy extraordinaire Marijke Visser as well as Shawnda Hines and Emily Wagner of the ALA Washington Office. Continue reading Decision Makers: Libraries are Ready to Code→
“by Elizabeth Bonsignore, Katie Kaczmarek, Kari Kraus and Anthony Pellicone from the University of Maryland; and Derek Hansen from Brigham Young University
A card from the catalog, with the ISBN, page, line, and word location from a published book that will lead players to the “right word” for this particular Tessera puzzle.
The following scenario offers a glimpse into gameplay for ARG The Tessera:
Ms. Edmunds is a middle school librarian running a #ReadyToCode after-school club that has been playing The Tessera, an interactive online mystery that introduces teens to foundational computational thinking concepts and key individuals from the history of computing. Her 8th graders have just entered a room within the game world that contains materials curated by members of a secret organization called the Tessera.
Here, they discover an old library catalog whose cards contain “book ciphers” that, once decoded, will reveal a letter from Ada Lovelace, a Tessera leader who is known today as the author of the world’s first computer program. The teens must work together to find the books listed in the catalog cards, then follow the encoded clues to locate the words within those books that comprise the contents of Ada’s letter.
Ms. Edmunds helps her club members to find several of the books in their media center or online via resources like Project Gutenberg. They page through the books together, compiling a growing list of words that disclose the letter’s contents. Once complete, Ada’s letter rewards players with key details about the Tessera’s secret mission against the evil “S.” During after-school sessions, Ms. Edmunds shows her teens how they can share their questions, frustrations, and successes with others in-game, through the Tessera players’ forum. She also encourages them to contribute their own findings and musings on the public-facing Tessera community wiki.
Like the teens in her club, Ms. Edmunds has a player profile, which she uses to respond to players’ questions and share her own thoughts. Over the course of 8-12 weekly after-school sessions, Ms. Edmunds facilitates online and face-to-face meetups with teens in her media center as they tackle the multi-level computational thinking challenges in this interactive, multiplayer mystery.”
The American Library Association (ALA) and Google, Inc. are launching the “Libraries Ready to Code” project to investigate the current nature of coding activities in public and school libraries for youth and broaden the reach and scope of this work.
“Libraries today are less about what we have on our shelves and more about what we do for and with people in our schools, campuses and communities,” said ALA President Sari Feldman. “Learning for children and youth today is more flexible, more self-directed, and with greater opportunities to not just use content, but to create and collaborate digitally. Library professionals are committed to facilitating both individual opportunity for all and advancing community progress. This new project with Google sits squarely in our modern public mission.”
