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How Coding Helps Develop 21st-Century Skills

Coding workshop

Why Coding Excited Me and helped develop my skills

As a kid, computers always excited me. I remember my dad giving me my first computer which in those days had black and white screens. It had MS-DOS OS and was packed with a word processor, sheets and a few other tools I don’t remember now. I still recall the thrill it gave me working on those PCs.

Then came MS-Windows which had graphics and Paint and Pacman and other games. We spent long hours in the lab and at that moment I had decided to have a career in computer programming.

Then in high school I learnt C, C++ and object oriented programming which further solidified my decision.

After graduating in computer science, I had a chance to work with the largest technology firms and banking institutions globally and I still have my passion in computer science growing.

Through time, I realized that coding has helped me develop my childhood’s 21st-century skills. Not only as a vocation, the computer science has helped me grow in many ways:

  • It has made me learn the importance of working systematically to produce longer term results.
  • It has taught me that creativity requires multiple iterations of work executed after incorporating continuous feedback.
  • The power to create so many things is amazing so it’s a great expression tool.

Given these benefits, I started teaching these skills to my kids early on and now want to extend the same to other kids and young adults.

The Digital “Overdose”: No Coding for Developing 21st-Century Skills

We see kids these days handling laptops, mobiles and other devices with pretty ease. They are fast learners and in many cases learn technologies pretty quickly than their parents.

But at the same time, thanks to the proliferation of devices at home, the screen time has increased exponentially. Compounded with elongated stays at home due to the ongoing pandemic, things have taken for the worse.

I find that although the kids are involved in playing computer games, browsing and chatting, they don’t learn many skills and are often counterproductive for their bodies and minds. It also causes addiction weaning them away from studies and much needed physical games.

The important learning topics for every 21st century student includes coding (Source: code.org)

The Solution: Develop Your Kids’ Skills

Fortunately, there is a solution. 

There are fantastic apps and websites which under expert guidance allow students to learn the coding concepts at a very young age. 

In my experience the fulfillment students receive after making a game, a website, solving a puzzle is immense. I have seen excellent concentration spans and analytical / logical skills of students increase many fold. The students are able to understand the mathematical concepts much easier. Animations enable students to  create games and stories  and are a great way to express themselves.

So, a great and productive use of time!

(Source: Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post)
How Elon Musk Got into Programming (Source: Hyperiondev)

Want to Learn More in developing your kids’ 21st century skills?

Visit WHOCODES!

Having been working in education for more than 6 years, WHOCODES is created as a service in technology education. Throughout the Covid19 pandemic, we saw the need of creating highly engaging and specialized learning courses. Coding is a high-interest point for a wide range of students. Therefore, we decided to offer high-quality coding courses tailored to each student’s individual needs and interests.

We offer both Basic and Advanced courses in coding.

Basic Course
Advanced course

JOIN US FOR AN ONLINE WORKSHOP and develop your coding skills!

Bring your questions. You will receive good, practical tips!

Together with DelftMaMa, we are super excited to host these 4 coding classes between July 14th and 21st, 2021. Children aged 8 to 14 years old can join from 4 to 5 pm CET and the ones aged more than 14, together with the adults, are invited to the second round from 5:30 to 6:30 pm CET. All classes are online via Zoom. We provide all information necessary to join your first coding class!

Click the links below for the registration forms:
Children under 18 years old
Adults 18+
We hope to see you there!

Start your coding journey

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