Is your kid addicted to the computer and video games? How many hours does your kid spend in front of the computer and mobile screen? Do you want him to study books and reduce the time he spends with technology? Well, do not make him do that! They are the kids who belong to the 21st century, a digital century. Be smart enough to turn the meaningless time your loving kid spends in front of a screen into something useless. But do not drag him away from technology. CODING is your answer! Teach your kid how to code and introduce him to a platform where he can develop his own games and websites.
Kids growing today are totally different from us and they are not the type to be excited over getting their driver’s licence some day like we used to be because they simply will not need one. Instead, they will need the literacy of coding to develop, command and maintain the apps of their auto pilot car. The world has traveled so much farther from the state at which it was 20 years back.
Almost everything has become automated. Computers are everywhere and we use them in every task. With AI we have been able to do many other things that was not even imaginable a few years back. Without doubt it will be the same in the years to come. The future will have a number of things that seems impossible and imaginary today. When you were a kid, did you ever imagine yourself learning in a virtual classroom?
Coding is writing a step by step solution to a problem, in the form of an algorithm, in a language that your computer can understand. With coding and programming, a whole new world has been opened for the kids. It teaches your kid to work together and co-operate in peace across geographical and physical boundaries acting as a universal language. Coding is a key part of literacy in 21st century and we need to introduce the kids to coding at very young age as we introduce them into their mother tongue. It is unfair for the kids if we do not allow them to have the chance of learning computer sciences in their earlier age. Coding is important for 21st century kids because 90% of the upcoming occupations will require digital competence, mostly coding. Soft skills like analytical thinking, teamwork and problem solving which are needed and has a higher demand in job markets can be practiced easily with coding.
We use a language to communicate and a music instrument to play or compose music. Likewise, we use coding to express ourselves to computers. It is a tool that challenges our creativity and enable us to follow new things. Computer sciences lay a vital role in driving the technology forward, helping people to live their lives in a better way.
Code literacy is outlined as the ability to interpret, revise, and produce computer codes to tailor custom software in computer systems. In basic terms this explains the ability to read and write codes to make applications. This was incredibly important in 2020 because taking advantage of the efficiency and power of computers in the workplace can enable a massive shift in productivity.
As the world goes online, the domination of many applications such as zoom and face time for video conferences, virtual school rooms and even virtual concerts has begun. As a by-product, programming is rising in quality, popularity and is desired more than ever by technological firms and start-ups of all sizes. Programming is a necessary talent for the 21st century kids and is beginning to be tutored in elementary schools at a more advanced level than ever. Fortunately, programming can be easily picked up by anyone with a general knowledge of computers and math.
Coding is not only for younger generation. Even if it looks like rocket science anyone can learn coding very easily with proper guidance and practice. Old and young, you all should learn coding because today it is like the people who know how to code run the world. From this web page you are reading now, to your mobile, house appliances and your office room everything is programmed to perform some task, and thus, it is not wrong to say that we live in a world that is run entirely by coders. Just turn back in time and see how much the coding has changed the world during the last five to ten years. If you need to live in your own environment and not in a world that is entirely run by other coders, you need to know how to live in this digital environment and the logics and concepts behind it. Soon the things will be much more complicated for your kid if he does not know how to code. The most common problem with starting to learn coding is that people think that they are not smart enough or capable enough to continue learning so much information. Nevertheless, if you can continue to learn and build passion for it coding, math and computers, coding is one of the easiest subjects to learn. You do not have to be a math whiz or a genius to learn how to code.
Not only coding is enjoyable, but it can also alter our patterns of thinking to help become more problem solving and generally more understanding of how the today’s world works.
However, it can be assumed this evolution of computer science and coding can be taken the wrong way. Some believe that being a programmer is a very stressful job. But a real coder will only know the beauty and the sensation in coding. If your kid is not guided properly and he becomes a coder, then only he will be complaining that coding is stressful. Some people believe that using a software driven machine in the workplace is bad for the labour force, it affects the vacancies available and finally leads to unemployment. This is entirely incorrect and rejected because there are over 2.1 million jobs only in computer science field currently and they are growing almost by five percent each year with the development and advancing of this technology-based lifestyle we spend. Coding is nothing different to learning a new language. All the mind-blowing work is done solely with the brain of the coder. He practices coding and uses coding to give life to his ideas in the real world in the mode of a programme that can make the lives of the people better. That is why brain activity and health are highly regarded as the most influential aspects of coding. Coding has been shown to stimulate the brain activities and highly affect its problem-solving capabilities. This is very much similar to how puzzles and reading affect and stimulate different parts of your brain. Coding stimulates a number of areas in your brain that are responsible for different tasks. Thus, kids who know coding become highlighted among the peers and they will be offered even with scholarships for further studies in coding because there is a huge demand for coders in the world. Keeping your brain focused on cognitively demanding projects like working on codes can decrease memory loss, prevent Alzheimer’s disease, and can actually improve the brain’s creative imagination. Further, coding can be an extremely valuable coping strategy to improve mental health. According to research, coding can induce the reward system of the brain by releasing dopamine and essentially awarding you for completing a tough or enjoyable project within the given time frame.
I can present you with four main reasons why coding is important for 21st century kids. It helps to develop communication skills, critical thinking ability,creative confidence, and collaboration in kids. As parents, we encourage children to learn at least two languages to communicate with foreign people. Mostly the two languages would be their mother-tongue and English, which is considered the universal language. But with the technology the kids will need to communicate with the electronic devices in the near future. Coding is the universal language that enables the communication between the humans and electronic devices like computers. Therefore, it is very important for your 21st century kid to learn coding if he is to express his ideas and make them realistic. Critical thinking is another very important skill your kid needs to develop to face his future. If you want to do something, where would you start? Coding is a great way to teach kids to think and perform a task systematically because the computers being pretty dumb, they need everything to be fed into the system without missing a single step. If we skipped a step or two in a programme, the whole programme would have no use at all because the computer is clueless from there onwards what it is to perform next. Therefore, every step needs to be coded carefully and bugs should be fixed one by one. That encourages your child to think carefully and work responsibly with minimum erors. The third reason is building up the creative confidence. Kids are born
with creativity. Being born to this digital era, the creativity of most kids
has been hidden because they either watch YouTube, play games, or browse internet mindlessly. Coding can return their natural creativity of the kids by turning the technology in to a blank canvas where children can paint on it with the paint of coding. With coding the children will have the opportunity to turn their ideas real. It can be in the form of their own games, websites, 3D models or applications. The collaboration or the teamwork is a skill that needs to be developed in every single person. By programming for robots and other devices in groups kids will learn to collaborate with each other to arrive at a better output.
The scenario of the importance of coding is very much similar to the situation where the world was at about 150 years back. Back then only about 10% of the population could read and write and therefore, the power of knowledge was centralized only to those 10% of the society. But now the global literacy rate is above 80% of the population and with that we have been able to do amazing things over the past years, coding too is a result of that. The amount and speed of progress in science and development that appened because the world became more literate is huge. The 21st century version of this literacy is coding. Today, coding is known only by less than 1% of the adult working population and the knowledge and performance of coding is limited to that 1%. If that 1% of the population were able to make our lives impossible without codes, if all the people in the world knew coding imagine all the inspiring and amazing things, we would be able to do!