About K12Coding.org

“Do any of these companies or organizations pay K12Coding.org to be listed or discussed on these pages?” No. I’m just a guy in Denver trying to get a grassroots movement going.

The Mission of K12Coding

The Goal of K12Coding

How K12Coding Started

The Mission of K12Coding:

To serve as an information clearinghouse for parents, teachers and policy makers on the wide range of issues within computer programming and technology in schools.  

  • Provide comprehensive and timely information on apps, software and online resources to teach computer programming to children.  

  • Provide  lesson plans, tutorials and a forum for teachers to share ideas and experiences.

  • Provide information on state and district level policies from across the country.  

  • Provide links to other organizations, people, new articles, research and any other interesting information on computer programming and technology in schools.   

 

The Goal of K12Coding

 

  • To help increase the number of schools in our country that offer computer programming. Let’s flip 90/10 upside down by 2025. Currently 90 percent of schools do not offer computer programming.  

  • To have 1,000 teachers and 1,000 parents join our forum to share ideas and experiences by July 2019.  

 

How K12Coding Started

Hello, my name is Steve Smith and I my initial goal was to create a website where other parents could quickly find educational apps worth buying.  There are over 80,000 education apps available in Itunes, and I wanted to identify the best of the best. One of biggest things being a parent has taught me is that parents are %&$*#@ busy and don’t have a lot of freetime:)  Therefore, I wanted others to benefit from my extensive research, and with the creation of the app review page, I met my first goal.

Then I heard about England’s initiative to teach all students – beginning at age 5 – computer programming and decided to open a tutoring center with an emphasis on computer programming/coding. While developing the center, I researched the ever-increasing options available to teach kids programming.  

Having worked in Education Policy for Governors and State Legislatures, I was also interested in learning how implementation of England’s new initiative was going. I was fortunate enough to connect with Michael Jones – who splits his time between teaching students and providing professional development to teachers in England – and Jones was very generous in providing detailed information on implementation issues via email. Then Jones received a Winston Churchill Memerial Trust grant award to visit Denver and other parts of the USA, and in May 2015 we visited local schools and school district administrators.  

These visits resulted in the creation of the Northwest Denver Education Technology workgroup, which consists of local elementary, middle school, and high school technology teachers.  The goal of the group is to share information and ideas and to ensure a coordinated and systematic system for our children as they move from elementary schools, to Jr. Highs, to High Schools. In addition, we will be working with Michael Jones to obtain best practices from England. England’s new system is cutting edge and a first of its kind, and there is no need for us here in the USA to reinvent the wheel as we create and modify our curriculums. There is so much for us to learn from what is happening in England – what is working and perhaps more importantly what challenges they are running up against in implementation.

After establishing my neighborhood group, and hearing how useful teachers found the list of resources, I felt similar to the way I did after finally indexing the best apps. Namely, parenting takes a lot of $#^%#  time:) But in all seriousness, let’s get a grassroots movement going.

Please feel free to share any information you have, and I will be happy to post it in the appropriate category. Also, join our forum and start a local workgroup (i.e. Atlanta Ed Tech), or start a subject working group (i.e. python, java).  

Finally, for those of you old enough to remember the web when it was just bulletin boards, do you remember how great it felt when you found one that had all the information and people you needed? That is what I am trying to create here. Hopefully, it will spawn numerous, “Oh, dude I found this site”:)

Thanks,

Steve

steve@k12coding.org