There’s no question that in the 21st century, knowing how to code is one of the most widely useful skills a student can have. But many students aren’t exposed to code until college, partly because school teachers themselves don’t have sufficient coding experience.
CareerFoundry, an online platform for learning vocational skills, and TeacherTube, a community for teachers to share educational videos, are teaming up to help change this. With their new Teaching Teachers to Code program, the companies hope to prepare educators with the skills they need to get their students interested in writing and understanding software.
The program is being led Alan Greenberg, formerly the head of Apple Education. It consists of a series of online courses, videos and assignments on a variety of code languages. It also includes weekly Skype sessions between mentors and teachers as well as feedback for all assignments. TeacherTube hopes to leverage its network of 1.5 million teachers to help the program roll out throughout the US.
While there are plenty of online resources for autodidacts to learn to code, it’s great to see a program that focuses specifically on educators. Teachers have the ability to influence many people at once, and getting students started early can better prepare them for a job market that values coding ability more every day.
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