Coming at this from an education perspective rather than a computer science perspective - I think the question is, what is it that we want children to know at various ages? Coding languages come and go - some more traditional than others, some more drag and drop oriented. Is it the language we want them to develop? Or is it the habits of mind that we want to instill in the them? Computational Literacy has, in the past, been confused with coding. If we want students to have computational literacy, coding does not need to be a central focus. Focusing on coding rather than computational literacies and problem solving may also be one of the issues creating an off ramp for students on the STEM pipeline for CS oriented careers.  Rather than teaching coding and expecting habits of mind to arise out of learning to code, perhaps we should focus on habits of mind, thinking and problem-solving then allow the need to code to naturally arise from the students seeking to solve issues they have thought deeply about where coding is the solution, not the entry.

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

Reading, writing, arithmetic, and coding: That’s the new curriculum in England’s public schools. England became the first country in the European Union to mandate computer science classes for all children between the ages of 5 and 16, starting with this school year. Depending on their age, students are getting lessons on algorithms, debugging programs, and coding in languages such as Java.

Meanwhile, some schools in Estonia are teaching programming to pupils as young as 6. Programming is scheduled to become part of the curriculum in Finland starting in 2016. Italy, Singapore, and other countries are working on changing their curricula.

There are several reasons behind such efforts. As the world becomes more dependent on computers, some countries want their youngsters to better understand software. Others say digital literacy and informatics (the British term for information science) are essential components of a modern education, and failing to teach such skills will harm their country’s economy. Many also say that teaching students to code is the first step in getting them interested in pursuing careers in the information, computing, and technology (ICT) fields.

Another factor is pressure from high-tech companies, which are demanding countries change what they teach to address the growing shortage of people with ICT skills.

In an open letter to the EU’s education ministers, published in Forbes  in October, representatives of Facebook, Microsoft, Rovio, and other firms asked for more action to fill what they estimate will be 900,000 vacant jobs in Europe’s ICT sector by 2020.

“As stewards of Europe’s future generations, you will be all too aware that as early as the age of 7, children reach a critical juncture, when they are learning the core life skills of reading, writing, and basic math,” the letter’s authors wrote. “However, to flourish in tomorrow’s digital economy and society, they should also be learning to code. And many, sadly, are not. All too often, ICT and computer science skills are seen as niche, with little relevance to other fundamental academic pursuits.”

The United States does not require such mandatory courses either, leaving education decisions to its individual states.

Some IEEE members are working to make coding courses mandatory in their countries.

Please, see the first pdf file, entitled "Computer Science: A Curriculum for Schools", it looks very interesting, and see the other attached articles too:

http://www.computerscienceonline.org/cs-programs-before-college/

https://computinged.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/new-uk-curriculum-five-year-olds-to-learn-programming-and-algorithms/

Dear Mr. Hazim,

thank you for you excelent answer. My country just started working on creating new Curricula for all subjects, and I am a part of that process for CS Curriculum. CS in Croatia is an elective subject and programming is about 10-15% of it curricula.

Thank you for opinion and documents, it will surly be helpful.

Best regards

Nikolina

Digital literacy, computing and ICT are synonyms with modernity but these are need of the hour. In UK, I know it is incorporated in various forms at Primary and Secondary levels. The coding and algorithms can be introduced by using easy to learn languages such as Python etc.  The sooner these are incorporated in the curriculum, the better would be adaptability. These should be introduced in a structured way.

Hi Nikolina,

It might be worth having a look at the new Australian Curriculum: Technologies which has a stream dealing with programming. Link is provided below. Cheers, Kevin.

http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/technologies/digital-technologies/curriculum/f-10?layout=1

dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

This picture is just for fun, please see:

I do agree with you colleagues that programming should constitute more of the CS curriculum. In today's digital society, students are required more and more to search and analyse information in finding answers to problems that includes research papers and projects. Programming helps to develop their analytical and logical thinking skills that can be transferred across all their subject areas and into Higher Education, allowing them to "hit the ground running."

Debra

For quite young children, teaching programming per se should only be a small part of the curriculum. They should start with Logo and StarLogo (or equivalent,) and teachers should try to structure curricular problems such that it would be logical to program these simple tools, designed for children) to use them. That way programming becomes integrated into the curriculum without taking time from other subject areas. Logo and StarLogo (and others) can provide a solid foundation  of programming concepts that can carry on to other languages later on. I've provided some links below.

https://logo.codeplex.com

http://web.mit.edu/mitstep/starlogo-tng/download/index.html

http://snap.berkeley.edu

Coming at this from an education perspective rather than a computer science perspective - I think the question is, what is it that we want children to know at various ages? Coding languages come and go - some more traditional than others, some more drag and drop oriented. Is it the language we want them to develop? Or is it the habits of mind that we want to instill in the them? Computational Literacy has, in the past, been confused with coding. If we want students to have computational literacy, coding does not need to be a central focus. Focusing on coding rather than computational literacies and problem solving may also be one of the issues creating an off ramp for students on the STEM pipeline for CS oriented careers.  Rather than teaching coding and expecting habits of mind to arise out of learning to code, perhaps we should focus on habits of mind, thinking and problem-solving then allow the need to code to naturally arise from the students seeking to solve issues they have thought deeply about where coding is the solution, not the entry.

I'm teaching Computer science for over 20 years now, and first it was just coding, after that came GUI environments and kids wanted to learn all other stuff and coding seemed so difficult compering to other ICT skills. Now, we are aware that we need more IT professional and on the other hand, even knowing that they will definitly find job in IT sector students often avoid it, as they find it too difficult. I have experience in teaching programming novices, from  10-14 years and I agree that it takes quite an effort and creativity from the teacher. I think that learning to code through come grafical environment for example Alice, or even better Scratch for younger students, could help them to develop apstract way of thinking and that could help them in their future life whatever their future ocupation will be. Learning to code deals with skills like problem solving, learning while doing, creating their own models of real world ....and that is desired in any discipline. unfortunately, some teachers, when teaching coding, put too much relevance on programming language insted on the process of solving a problem. Is it really necessary that everyone learn to code the same way ... "Hello world", programs, then adding numbers ... and so? I agree with Kimberly and some others, we should focus more on what could come out from coding but the coding itself. I also do beleive that it could be done to provoke students to be angaged, creative and  not runnig away from everything that involves thinking.

At the same level as mathematics and physics.

Dear Nikolina

I have published some articles for programming in secondary education. Some of them are presented below:

1. Pellas, N., Peroutseas, E. & Kazanidis, I. (2013). Virtual communities of inquiry (VCoI) for learning basic algorithmic structures with Open Simulator & Scratch4(OS): A case study from the Secondary Education in Greece. In K. Diamantaras, G. Evangelidis, Y. Manolopoulos, C. Georgiadis, P. Kefalas, D. Stamatis (Eds.), Balkan Conference in Informatics, BCI '13 (pp. 187-194). Thessaloniki, Greece: ACM Press.

2. Pellas, N., Konstantinou, N., Georgiou, G., Malliarakis, Ch. & Kazanidis, I. (2014). Utilizing a serious game via Open Sim standalone server and Scratch4OS for introductory programming courses in Secondary education: Their effect on student engagement. 2014 IEEE 14th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2014) (pp. 699-700). IEEE: Athens, Greece.   

3. Pellas, N. (2014). The development of a virtual learning platform for teaching concurrent programming languages in the Secondary Education: The use of Open Sim and Scratch4OS. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 10(1), 129-143.

4. Pellas, N. (2014). Exploring interrelationships among high school students’ engagement factors in introductory programming courses via a 3D multi-user serious game created in Open Sim. Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS). Special Issue: Immersive Education: What does the future hold?, 20(12), 1608-1628.

The CS curriculum, for elementary and high schools should contain educational elements that enhance 2 goals: (a) computer literacy, and (b) computational thinking. Thus the elementary school curriculum should focus on goal (a) and include all elements that lead to mastery of the necessary applications that allow students to freely use their PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones for all types of learning experiences. The high school CS curriculum should concentrate on goal (b) and include learning materials such as mathematics and physics that are necessary for the development of computational thinking. These subjects should be taught through the presentation of higher order cognitive skills as well as through PBL (problem based learning). A discussion paper presented at the IFIP TC3 2015 Conference (Vilnius) and a policy paper presented at the EDUSummit 2015 Conference (Bangkok) deal with the needs of a robust, up-to-date CS school curriculum and make concrete suggestions as to what elements essentially need to be incorporated into CS in today's schools.

First the students should learn how to solve problem sums in arithmetic. By problem sums I mean the  problems that are described in natural language and the students need to plan the necessary computation for the same. .This is very important to start with. They should also learn how to partition a large problem into different smaller modules. The programming language should be as simple as possible so that they can translate their computational plan directly into the program. The programming language  should also be  such that the computational plan becomes explicitly visible in the  developed.program.   

Personally, I believe that it is more important for students to understand the computational process and be able to apply this process to a given situation using computational language before coding in C#, Java, PHP etc... (do you mean using supportive coding such as Scratch)

It has been my experience that one of the main reasons that students find it so difficult to engage with coding is that they do not understand the meaning and computational logic behind coding. When we learn a different language (e.g. German) we typically start by expressing words before moving into spelling and writing sentences. I see learning computer programming as the same.  learning to verbally express the computational logic using pseudocode before converting this into actual computer code. In many ways this support what other have already said.

I wonder if the idea of learning to code versus coding to learn has some significance to this discussion.  The larger organizing framework around how people learn is important.  Is learning primarily about acquisition or is it more a function of situated participation?  Mitch Resnick makes a good case that the meaningful forms of learning are functions of participation, especially in what Gee calls affinity spaces like the scratch community.  Coding to learn (rather than simply learning to code) implies the development of communities where authentic collaborative participation can emerge.  I'm probably not doing the ideas justice here but you can get a better idea by watching this video.

http://webcolleges.uva.nl/Mediasite/Catalog/Full/a959f2c7295b48e3ae69bfc9a04aec8821

http://webcolleges.uva.nl/Mediasite/Catalog/Full/a959f2c7295b48e3ae69bfc9a04aec8821

Thanks Peter, I share you opinion, excellent remark: "coding to learn versus learn to code"!!

Hi to all again! "Coding to learn versus learn to code" is one dimension of the problem that you mention dear all. The other side is how they try to learn, the metaphors and learning materials how students get knowledge in specific instructional formats. That's my research status. "How students can learn to think computationally following constructionist-oriented instructional format?". I believe that is another pillar very important.

Best regards

NP

It is necessary to learn one or another programming language to implement algorithms. Today, students necessarily implement algorithms in one language or another in BASIC, Fortran, Scheme, C++, Java or Python