You’re reading Register Spill, my weekly newsletter in which I share thoughts I can’t keep in my head. A couple weeks ago, on social media, a dad was talking about the best materials to teach his kid how to program. It’s a very interesting thread and I recommend reading it. What stood out to me: most of the learning materials just don’t look
100% agreed! We tried to fix this in my coding school. We asked "how can we solve REAL problems while learning", by always stating the problem/pain first, and leading the student toward creating a solution. And also "how can we make this look insanely cool", like when we taught them how to recreate Mondrian's paintings with CSS, or create a wedding website that they could share with friends. We started with front end topics because we could make it look cool a lot easier than back end.
So yeah, I agree that this aspect is very important when teaching, and I mean not just coding, but anything.
Is looking cool underrated in education?
100% agreed! We tried to fix this in my coding school. We asked "how can we solve REAL problems while learning", by always stating the problem/pain first, and leading the student toward creating a solution. And also "how can we make this look insanely cool", like when we taught them how to recreate Mondrian's paintings with CSS, or create a wedding website that they could share with friends. We started with front end topics because we could make it look cool a lot easier than back end.
So yeah, I agree that this aspect is very important when teaching, and I mean not just coding, but anything.