Why Coding is Important in 21st Century
Why Coding is Important in 21st Century
Coding is just a set of instructions given to a computer to do what we want it to do. which involves typing in step-by-step commands for the computer to follow
It is used to create games, websites, apps, etc. In today’s digital world, every single digital application or website we use runs on coding functionalities. Coding for has become very necessary in the 21st Century.
Coding enhances creativity, teaches people to cooperate, to work together across physical and geographical boundaries and to communicate in a universal language. Coding is the literacy of today and it helps practice 21st century skills such as problem solving, team work and analytical thinking
As the saying goes, the future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
Why is coding important?
Code powers our digital world. Every website, smart phone app, computer programme, calculator and even microwave relies on code in order to operate. This makes coders the architects and builders of the digital age.
Over the next 10 years it is estimated that there will be 1.4 million jobs in computer sciences and only around 400,000 graduates qualified to do them
“Age doesn’t matter if you have the attitude and drive to succeed.”
— Sachin Bansal
As adults, when we hear the word ‘coding’, our mind automatically imagines endless lines of code running on a huge screen, and people lamenting that coding is tough. It is not always like that. Coding for kids is an amusement and fun-loving. We can prove all these myths like ‘I have to go to University to learn Coding’ and ‘We must be genius with an IQ of 160’ wrong for all the right reasons.
21stcentury skills into three categories: learning skills, literacy skills and life skills.
Learning skills are comprised of critical thinking (finding solutions), creativity (thinking outside the box), collaboration (teamwork), and communication.
Literacy skills involve information literacy (understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data), media literacy (understanding how and where information is published) and technology literacy.
Life skills include flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity and social skills — all of them skills that are needed in personal as well as professional life.
why Coding is the skill of the 21st century
One reason we need students to master as many of these skills as possible is the fact that the future is an unknown entity.
In the future, life and work will be more complex in ways that we can’t foresee now. The more we focus on young people’s ability to tackle complex problems, the better they will fare in the future and the better chance the world will have of surviving and flourishing.
India is in the midst of one of the greatest technological transformations of the 21st century. In 2017–18, “Jio has acquired over 100 million users — many connecting to the mobile internet for the first time in their lives. To give some context, this effectively makes Jio that fastest adopted technology in human history” (Nieman Labs).
Our daily lives, even during this pandemic, are seeing an incredible transformation from just a few years ago. We are able to go on Whatsapp audio calls, or Zoom video calls to keep in touch with family and friends, things which wouldn’t have been possible or even affordable a few years ago.
Keeping these unprecedented times in mind, here’s 5 reasons why Coding is the most important skill of the 21st century:
1. Software is Eating the World
“Software is Eating the World” was a quote by famous investor Marc Andreeson (invested in Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Groupon, Skype, etc.). He said this in 2011, at the cusp of the internet revolution across the world, where he argued that as more people came online and the cost of running a start-up kept going down there would be an explosion of startups disrupting every industry we know.
Today, in India, if you want to pay your mobile bill you can do it through Paytm. If you want to book a hotel, you can do it through MakeMyTrip or Oyo. If you want to get a taxi to work, you can book an Ola or Uber. Even the Kirana stores we know and love, are coming online through JioMart. Software is in every industry, changing business models at a pace that has never been witnessed in human history.
2. Job Security
With the pace of changing business models, being able to speak the language of technology is becoming increasingly important. We are seeing a massive churn at the executive levels of most traditional companies, as people less-versed in this Internet age we live in, are being replaced by more technologically fluent professionals.
This can be seen even now, with people who work in the technology space being able to continue working despite being at home.
3. High Earning Potential
According to Pay-scale, the average income of a programmer in India is over ₹4 lakh!
Furthermore, according to the US College Board, “Computer programming jobs are growing at 2x the national average.” There is an over 500 billion dollar opportunity with coding, and with two-third of coding jobs coming from outside the tech sector (Code.org), being able to code in the 21st century, opens a person to opportunities that would otherwise have been impossible to obtain.
4. Unique Problem-Solving Skills
“Learning to code has the inadvertent effect of teaching you how to think,” says Adrian Degus, CEO of Nuvro.
Coding allows children to develop their logical thinking skills. From young age children, exposed to coding, are trained to think about problems at an abstract/conceptual level and take a modular approach to problem-solving (breaking it down into smaller pieces and tackling them https://nuvro.com/individually, first).
This is a powerful skill to have, as they are equipped with the right mental frameworks to deal with the increasingly challenging problems posed to them in today’s world.
5. The Future of Teamwork
“No man is an island” — John Donne, 17th century English poet.
The idea of being connected is inherent to the way modern development teams function. The virtual world of coding means that children learn how to communicate and collaborate with team-mates from across the world from an early age.
The impact of learning how to socialize from an early age is well-studied, but this is also preparation for the new world we live in. With trends like Work From Home and virtual teams, people have to learn to work with people all over the world. Contrary to the popular belief of coding being a solo effort, it is actually incredibly collaborative. This means that as children develop their skills and work on problems together, they will be naturally acquiring essential skills they will need to work in the 21st century.
With the rise of technological advancements like AI and robots, over 2 million jobs are set to be created by 2020. These jobs of the future will come with new demands, and coding — along with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education — will be as important as reskilling in order to stay relevant
THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING 21ST CENTURY SKILLS IN THE CLASSROOM
Parents, educators, employers and policymakers worldwide realize that school leavers must enter the labor market with 21st century skills if they are to succeed in a technological environment that keeps on changing at neck-break speed.
Many experts agree that collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication are the most critical skills needed to meet the workplace challenges of the 21st century. Future-proof your students and develop those 4 skills. Here are some tips on how to do them in the classroom
“Instead of buying your children all the things you never had, you should teach them all the things you were never taught.”
— Bruce Lee
Why Coding For Kids Is Important?
Being in the 21st century and amidst an unexpected lockdown, parents are finding it difficult to engage their kids in fun activities. If you are a parent who falls under this category, I am sure you can relate to the struggle of keeping your kids actively involved daily. Not to worry! You have reached the perfect place because we have the ideal solutions for you. Yes, it’s CODING! Wait, what? I know you must be thinking Coding for kids sounds strange but teaching Coding to them is even more bizarre.
A simple game you play has a set of commands running in the background, providing you a seamless experience. Besides, Coding is today’s creative language and every child deserves a chance to become a creator. It also offers your kids an advantage when it comes to college admissions, employment, etc.
“I thought I could make my own games. I wanted to see how games work, that’s what led me to learn how to program computers.”
— Elon Musk
Learning to code is like learning a language, the earlier the better. It helps to acquire logical thinking and problem-solving ability from a young age, which will undoubtedly help in improving their academic performance additionally.
5 myths around coding and kids you really need to know about
Coding is now a must-have skill and it is now being taught in various schools across India and the world. Here are 5 myths around coding and kids you really need to know about.
Educators, parents, teachers are consistently working on empowering kids with 21st-century skills, most important of them is ‘coding’. The most often asked question is why young students should learn to code. It is because recent research has put coding at the forefront of future skills for children.
Coding could present to kids a collection of opportunities for them to get involved in creative and logical thinking, planning, and developing a problem-solving mindset.
A meta-study conducted in the US in 1991 that looked at “the effects of computer programming on cognitive outcomes” found that students with computer programming experience scored 16 percentile points higher on cognitive ability tests than students without the knowledge.
Back then, computers were large beige boxes that were found only in a handful of houses in the western countries. Today, every middle-class house has at least one smartphone or computer.
In fact, realising the importance of learning coding during school years, India’s government under its New Education Policy has stated that schools should include coding in the school curriculum.
However, a variety of myths still exist around teaching coding to children. Below, we take up some of the most popular myths and perceptions and debunk them with evidence.
Myth 1: Learning coding is synonymous with becoming a coder
What needs to be understood is that by introducing our children to coding, we are not forcing them for a career in IT or coding.
Learning coding is an essential skill today as it has become the language of creation and progress in a variety of diverse fields, from medical sciences to engineering, arts and even commerce.
Experts believe that coding will soon become a life skill, as the world around our kids will soon be defined by technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality and robotics. Therefore, teaching coding to kids is a way of preparing and equipping them for success in a digitalised future.
Myth 2: School going children are too young to learn coding
Many parents think irrationally that their child is too young to learn coding and might be better equipped to understand programming languages once they are older.
According to the report, children under ten can absorb information and excel in a new language more quickly. After the age of 18, they might not reach the same level of proficiency in that language.
There is no hard and fast rule for learning a coding language; different coding languages are designed, especially for other purposes and people of different ages. There are visual learning languages like Scratch, which are relatively easy to learn.
Through Scratch, children can learn to code by using various images, signs and diagrams and later on, they can start learning more advanced languages like HTML, python etc.
Not every child has to learn the same language, depending upon the child’s aptitude, and parents and teachers can tailor their learning.
Myth 3: Coding will take away my child’s actual studies and increase their screen time
“How will coding help our kid in studies?” “Will learning coding not increase their screen time?” are questions often asked by parents.
Children who learn to code also tend to do better at language and maths. In Steve Jobs’ words, “Coding teaches you how to think.”
Also, the time required for a child to learn to code can be easily monitored and controlled. Often, spending just 4–5 hours in a week, or an hour each day is enough for them to try out and learn coding, which parents can easily manage from the time the child spends watching videos or playing games online.
More critically, time spent on learning coding ought to be realistically considered as time spent on learning.
Myth 4: Coding is only for students who are good at maths and science
Coding isn’t a part of India’s school curriculum yet; hence there’s a great misunderstanding among adults about coding basics.
They think erroneously that because coding is a computing-related skill, one needs to be a maths wizard or a science champion to code. On the contrary, basic math skills and a problem-solving attitude and ability is all one needs to be a good coder.
Coding is much like learning a new language, which children learn by understanding basic syntax and grammar rules and then slowly enhancing their vocabulary to become better at it.
Myth 5: Coding languages are changing very frequently
JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SQL, Python, Java are the top five programming or scripting languages as per Stackoverflow’s largest developer survey, which is proof that top coding languages don’t change over time.
Children can start learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript as early as Grade 6 to build websites. They also start learning Python and Java as early as Grade 8 to understand how programming languages work and write complex code.
All these languages are at least 20 years old and continue to be the engines powering the modern Internet as we use today. These facts bust the common perception that coding languages change frequently and that it would be of no help to kids as a future skill.
The latest National Education Policy (NEP) in fact has recommended many fundamental changes in India’s educational structure, and among them is the proposal for introducing coding to young children.
The revised NEP guidelines promise to free our children from archaic learning experiences with a renewed focus on nurturing them into creative, intelligent and future-ready individuals. Learning to code at school level will no doubt play an important role in realising this vision.
Develops creative skills
Higher cognitive skills also encourage young minds to think out-of-the-box. Just like Musk used his coding skills to build Space X programme, Student can use their own skills in future to find more solutions to our problems. Who knows, they could find a way to travel through space at a faster rate saving us travel time to the moon and back. Coding gives them an opportunity to experiment and tinker with their ideas and convert them into actual programs that can be applied in real life. This can be a game, an arithmetic tool, or even a robot or a drone. When Students learn to code, they get a chance to create something they love in a new and exciting way.
We live in a world full of challenges, where humankind cannot wait for decades of research and development for viable and scalable solutions. By building a generation of coders, we will give our world confident and agile leaders who think differently, act fast, and evolve their capabilities in every situation. No wonder, the New Education Policy, launched recently by the Union Government of India, instructs educational institutions to teach coding starting middle school.
Coding Improves Academic Performance
1. Math: Coding teaches kids to visualize abstract concepts, lets them apply math to real-world situations, and makes math fun and creative!
2. Writing: Kids who code understand the value of concision and planning, which results in better writing skills.
3. Creativity: Kids learn through experimentation and strengthen their brains when they code, allowing them to embrace their creativity.
4. Confidence:
Parents enthusiastically report that they’ve noticed their kids’ confidence building as they learn problem-solving through coding!
Coding Builds Soft Skills
5. Focus and Organization: As they write more complicated code, kids naturally develop better focus and organization.
6. Resilience: With coding comes debugging — and there’s no better way to build perseverance and resilience than working through challenges!
7. Communication: Coding teaches logical communication, strengthening both verbal and written skills. Think about it: learning code means learning a new language!
Coding Paves a Path to the Future
8. Empowerment: Coding gives kids the power to make a difference — we’ve seen kids use the platforms to spread messages of tolerance and kindness!
9. Life Skills: Coding is a basic literacy in the digital age, and it’s important for kids to understand — and be able to innovate with — the technology around them.
10. Career Preparation: There’s a high demand for workers with coding skills in the tech industry; mastering code at a young age allows kids to excel in any field they choose!
What Exactly Is The Real Value In Coding?
From building a website to developing an app, there are so many real-world coding applications that can solve everyday problems. It also helps power our digital world, like social media, online banking, self-driving cars and robotics.
In the words of the indelible Steve Jobs, “Everyone should know how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think”.
Final Words
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