Teaching Code through Visual Web Design Courses
December 13, 2017
Now that coding is widely recognised as a core skillset that students should learn, schools around the world are looking for code curriculums.
Too many code courses!
There are plenty of code courses out there, but unfortunately, the vast majority are created by coders who have no teaching skill, or experience. For adult students, you can get away with that, but when it comes to middle school and high school students, you need a set of courses created by experienced teachers.
What makes a great coding course for middle school and high school students?
It comes down to a few things:
- The lessons have to be video based.
- The video lessons have to be a reasonable length, otherwise students will quickly get bored.
- A code teaching platform should provide instant feedback, and other incentives to engage students.
- Code courses should breakdown concepts into small chunks that students can learn.
- A teaching platform should provide flexible lesson plans and other materials teachers need.
- Most of all, the courses have to fun!
Why use web design to teach code?
I am now going into my 7th year of working with schools to teach code, and I’ve seen great success with coding courses based on the coding languages of web design:
- HTML5
- CSS3
- JavaScript
Web Design based coding courses are a great fit for schools for several reasons:
- The web design languages teach 3 different TYPES of computers languages: markup, styling and programming.
- Web Design can be taught on any type of computer. Compare this (for example,) to Apple’s Swift, you need to have expensive Apple hardware. Whereas with web design, you can teach it on Chromebooks, Windows, Macs, Linux computers and tablets!
- Free web design code editors – so many to choose from! In fact, you can teach web design just using a simple text editor … every computer has one!
- Web design is visual …. students see their work come alive on screen.
- Web design is real! Watch student engagement skyrocket when they see their code do real things.
For schools and teachers who want to give their students an amazing coding experience, there is no better way than using the web design languages.
Full disclosure:
StudioWeb provides a fun interactive training platform and curriculum designed with the help of many teachers and their students across the US, Canada and places around the world.
Thanks for reading!
Stefan Mischook
StudioWeb
