The Sooner, The Better: The Case for K-2 Coding

*This post will appear in the Spring 2020 issue of STEM Today published by Innovation and Tech Today Magazine*

Some of the more exciting new developments in educational robotics are happening in K-2 education. This is an area of educational robotics that has been neglected for so long with few good reasons why. As educators, we know that when you let students have the freedom to learn, and grow, and develop on their own, they can do amazing things. The only people stopping kids from being great are adults after all. Our students have no fear, so why have we been afraid to give them great coding experiences like their older classmates? So let’s talk about why this matters, and some of the awesome tools out there to get started.

In a typical classroom scenario, coding education starts around the fifth or sixth grade. Unfortunately, that leaves not a lot of time to study the basics and get the fundamentals down before digging into much harder content in high school. What if we could push the timeline back to the point where students are starting to learn the fundamental concepts of coding at a much earlier age? This would allow us to teach what we've normally taught in fifth or sixth grade in third or fourth grade, and much more complex concepts as early as sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. Doing this would open up a whole host of opportunities in high school that have never really been done before using commercially available coding engines to design games, and creating complex programming to solve real problems. 

That though is just the case to be made for K-2 to coding as it relates to our students when they get older. There remains plenty of reasons why you would want to teach coding to primary students that apply to them at their own age. Coding and robotics remains one of the strongest pathways to teach those critical 21st-century skills that we are focused on passing along to our students. Skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration, are all challenged when you teach primary students how to code. By fostering these 21st-century skills at an even earlier age we are setting our students up for success in the future.

There are quite a few platforms emerging in the space. Education robotics giant Makeblock (mTiny)  and startup Matatalab (Matatalab) have both developed amazing K-2 coding platforms. There are dozens of others breaking through in this space as well. Out of all the emerging platforms, Matatalab has me the most excited. It is unleashing an amazing wave of educator creativity as teachers are finding new and exciting ways to use the platform with their own materials to create awesome custom lessons. As someone who is immersed in the educational robotics space, I consider myself lucky to be able to see what so many teachers are doing with these platforms every day.

The point is, students aren't afraid to learn new things. They aren’t afraid to be pushed. They are rarely afraid to fail and when they do they’re quicker to get back up and try again. There's never been a better time, and there have never been better products. So if you’re a primary teacher, consider bringing robotics into your classroom. Your students will amaze you and thank you for it. 

Disclaimer: This post was NOT sponsored by Makeblock or Matatalab though I currently have a business relationship with Logics Academy in Canada which sells these platforms.