With the advent of the information age, technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data are booming; National policy attaches great importance to programming education. As you can see, programming has become an essential skill in the 21st century. In the future, children who don't know how to code may miss out on many opportunities.
Celebrities learn to code.
Bill Gates, the richest man in the world and the founder of Microsoft, learned programming at the age of 13;
Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, began learning programming at the age of 12;
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, learned programming at the age of 10;
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and Space X rocket companies, learned programming at the age of 9 and so on.
What is Programming for Kids?
Children's programming, as the name suggests, is programming learning for teenagers and children. Children's programming uses graphical programming tools, like assembling building blocks, through dragging, clicking and other simple operations can make their own animations, games, paintings, etc., and can even use it to learn mathematics, physics and chemistry knowledge.
There are some differences between children's programming and programmer programming, children do not need programmers to hit the keyboard on the screen, boring to write lines of English**, on the contrary, graphical children's programming, increase the fun of programming, but also reduce the threshold and difficulty of learning.
What is programming thinking?
Computational thinking is the thought process of "understanding the problem – finding the way", and it consists of four steps:
Decomposition, breaking down a big complex problem into small, actionable, easy-to-understand steps.
Pattern recognition, find similar patterns based on experience, and efficiently solve subdivision problems.
Abstraction, focusing on the most important information and ignoring useless details. Simply put, it's about getting to the root of the problem and filtering out other irrelevant factors.
algorithms, design a step-by-step solution path to solve the whole problem.
Through these four steps, a complex problem is first disassembled into a series of smaller problems; Each small problem is examined and considered individually to find a solution; Focus on several important nodes, form solution ideas, design step execution, and problem solving. The so-called "programming thinking" is not a skill in writing a program, but a way of thinking to solve problems efficiently.
Should children learn to code?
Let children be the leaders of the future, not the ones who are forced to be eliminated.
Programming is the foundation of artificial intelligence, and Finland's Minister of Education said: "In the future, if your child knows how to code, he will be the creator of the future world; If he doesn't understand, he's just a user. ”
Artificial intelligence is getting deeper and deeper, and AI will be intertwined with all aspects of our daily lives. Programming is also becoming more and more important as a tool for humans to communicate with computers. Countries around the world have adopted programming as a basic discipline.
We don't want all kids to be programmers in the future, but we want every kid to have the power to change the world.
English is the language to the world, and programming is the language to the future.
Nowadays, many families will let their children study abroad, and they are also aware of the importance of English from primary school, English as a global language, the earlier children are exposed to it, the more familiar they will be. At present, 30% of colleges and universities in the United States, which is the most popular place to study abroad, have opened programming courses, and the local ** also hopes that more and more students can master programming skills and develop the characteristics of the college.
Apple CEO Tim Cook once said, "Learning to code is more important than learning English." Because programming languages can affect 7 billion people around the world. ”
To exercise children's logical thinking ability, kindergarten and primary school are the best enlightenment period.
Scientific studies have shown that 4-12 years old is the first stage of children's brain development, and it is also the learning stage for children to transition from environmental perception to logical link.
Programming languages are more in line with the brain's logical thinking, and at the same time as children read and understand words, visual drag-and-drop games and programs are used to teach them programming knowledge. **No longer difficult to understand, as natural and fluent as the "mother tongue".
Therefore, the best time to learn programming is in kindergarten and elementary school, taking advantage of the fact that children are not burdened with schoolwork and thinking logically, to help them master a lifelong skill, which is to do the right thing at the right time.
Programming can improve a child's academic performance.
According to the research of foreign authoritative institutions, programming has increased children's academic performance by 30% as a whole. Programming enables children to transform from game users to rule developers, using data to understand, analyze, and solve problems.
Programming is very helpful for the improvement of other subjects, including mathematics and physics, and in the process of improving children's logical thinking ability, learning ability, attention, etc., which is particularly helpful for building thinking in other disciplines, and at the same time, the grades will be greatly improved.
Learning to code pays more attention to cultivating children's programming thinking and allowing children to continue to grow.
The most important thing in learning programming is to learn programming thinking, which teaches children the ability to solve problems. No matter how complex the problem is, it can be broken down into a series of small problems that are easy to solve, and each small problem can be examined and thought about individually. Then, focus on several important nodes to form a solution idea; Finally, the design step is carried out to solve the problem step by step.
In the process of learning programming, children are also growing, in this process, it can effectively improve children's attention, concentration, self-confidence, reasoning and other abilities, and constantly break through the various problems they face.
In the foreseeable future, "programming" will become a basic quality that every educated person must have, just like today's mathematics and English, and will be the foundation of the future era of artificial intelligence.