CS Education

How do we teach coding, algorithms, and software design? How do people learn web development, data science (the computer-y parts), or how to build a mobile app? How is that changing with the proliferation of online courses, large and small? What’s the best site to send to a 19 year old to help them practice CSS?

Computer Science is amazing, and I love it - and I love to teach it.

It’s also intimidating, confusing, and frustrating to beginners and outsiders.

Why does it matter?

There’s a lot of news and noise near CS education. Tech industry inequality, pipeline problems, software bros, K-12 STEM Education, coding bootcamps, MOOCs, the future of education, the future of technology, the future of work, the future of society.

People care about this stuff because it matters. It matters that we create access to powerful technology and the ‘jobs of the future’. It matters that we create non-frustrating learning pathways, so folks who are short on time, energy, and attention span can avoid getting stuck on meaningless BS. It matters because computer science is a powerful toolset for understanding the world, and it sucks that we lock people out of that toolset with gatekeeping and poor design.

Here, we’re going to focus on how to teach code well.

We’ll cover lots of of learning theory and pedagogy as it applies to learning computers. On the way, we’ll discuss the context of coding education, explore the the learn-to-code landscape, and try to figure out how to help more people make sense of computers (and all those funny bugs and error messages).

Regular and Occasional Features

• Insights and tips from code teachers

• Paper summaries (think The Morning Paper, but CS Education)

• Links and analysis of code teaching resources

• Profiles of people and organizations teaching code

• Code bootcamp pedagogy, product, and business models

• Coding Tutorials

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