Coding education in South Africa

Cameron Busch, guest · [01:37]So the nice thing about the curriculum that Apple offers, the Everyone Can Code curriculum, the curriculum itself is free. If you want to have access to the curriculum, yes, we do need a device. We need an iPad or a MacBook. But to access the curriculum, you don't need to go out and purchase textbooks. It comes out with a learner guide as well as a teacher guide. So if you as a teacher are taking the journey on and you're new and you're fresh and, you know, you only have a Bachelor of Education and you're scared to take this journey, The teacher's guide that is supplied comes with all the solutions, it comes with extra research to do, extra puzzles to do for, to equip you as a teacher to ensure that you aren't bombarded with this new content and you aren't taken out of your comfort zone. But I feel like if you're taken out of your comfort zone, that's where you grow and develop. Sure. So I think more teachers in our country should be taking on this responsibility and bringing coding in, because I feel coding is something that is cross-curricular. It shouldn't just be a coding classroom. Sure.

Gershom Aitchison, host · [02:30]And it's not something that you can break. Coding is, by its design, is about trial and error, and I think that's a lot of the value in the curriculum. Definitely. Well, that's a lot of the value in the cross-curricular part of things. So if you don't get the code right, the device just won't do what you want it to do. Correct. And then you can stop and start again, and I think that's Kids can teach teachers a lot about that, because that failing fast, failing forward, trial and error is part of what we'd like them to do, and we certainly want that to be able to translate into maths and science, where that's actually the learning. It's not just about putting out the perfect formula and getting it right every time.

Cameron Busch, guest · [03:04]Definitely. I think it also goes to the philosophy that I hold dearly to myself, is there's no winners and losers, there's lessons learned and lessons taught. Sure. And coding is something that really drives that narrative where you'll see these children try over and over and over again, and I find myself battling, if I get something wrong, I'll try three times and I just give up. Sure. Where these kids, when they, when they going with, when they're trying to solve this coding problem, they don't stop until they get it right. So there's a lot of resilience and grit that's been built in the same place. I mean, these are transferable skills that these, these learners start to harness, where it's not a, it's no longer a coding skill, it's a, it's a skill that they can take into their life.

Gershom Aitchison, host · [05:35]So I think a lot of people are terrified of the concept of coding, because it feels like they have to suddenly become math geeks and engineers and things like that. But in its simplest form, code is using a language to give an instruction. A hundred percent. And it doesn't matter if that language is pictures or colors or shapes that instruct something to happen, that's what it means. So if you've got triangle, triangle, square equals stop, Then you want to know that when you read triangle, triangle, square, that that means stop. Correct. And if you've got circle, circle, square, that means go, and if you add another square, it means go fast. So if kids are reading the code, even if it's in a GUI, a graphic interface, they should be able to read the instructions like a sentence. Go forward, stop, wait two seconds, go forward, turn right, stop. Correct. So I think if people understand that code is just a way of telling a digital device how to do something, be it a robot, a picture, or a book that you're busy writing, that's what code is. It's just using a different language to do so, and there are a lot of languages out there. And fortunately, it seems to me that the accessibility to coding is not hard coding, which is actually typing out the, the, the language as it were. It's about understanding they've put it into a graphic user interface where you can drag blocks with variables and it's do what you need to do. Block-based coding. Block-based coding. I think that's where it starts, and I think if people understand that, because it's Tapes and pictures and colors that do that. It's why you can do your first part with the youngsters without doing screen time, because they can pick it up like that. It's a logical sequence. I can see that learning coding is going to help with math, as we spoke about the cross-curricular part of it. And the problem-solving aspects that coding provides that you can translate into mathematics. Sure. But also, it's going to make them better writers of English, because they're going to be clearer with their instructions and the intent of what they're writing.

Cameron Busch, guest · [07:30]The, the common example I use, there's a, there's a video that circulated quite a while back where a father got his son and daughter to write an instruction to make a peanut butter sandwich. And they would give this instruction to the father, and he would go to a T, their instructions, and when you actually see how he understood the instructions and deli- and actually executed it, you can see how skewed the instructions were. And this is where that whole English encoding translates. If you don't sequence your code properly and you don't give the instructions or the commands the way it's Meant to be intended to be executed, you can see where these things can start to fall apart.

Cameron Busch, guest · [08:48]I think what helps me is I was a teacher myself before working at ISO Education, and, you know, you mentioned that teachers are overburdened, and it was clearly evident to me that yes, we are. The admin is ridiculous, on top of all the teaching we need to do. And learning code and going through ISO Education's coding program, that's how I ended up at ISO Education, is going through their program, I realized the tool that Coding and Robotics offers in terms of content delivery. And we spoke about cross-curricular, and coding and robotics helped me execute my objectives and my deliverables in a more creative way where I found myself I had to repeat content less. I didn't have to try and re-explain things. With the practicality that the robotics and the coding offers, learners were able to retain all the information. They were able to critically think about the information, and it made my life easier. I didn't have to go back and think, because you know, feedback is crucial as a teacher. So that instant feedback where if they would code something in quickly in my lesson, and the robot Sphera would talk it out, I would be able to see immediately, okay, where is this lapse in information? It made my job easier, and also it got the students excited to come to my class. And when students are excited to learn, they retain information on a much higher level.

Cameron Busch, guest · [13:50]we see a lot of parents wanting their young child to have less screen time, and Sphera identified that, and they developed this awesome little robotics tool, this little robot, that allows you to solve puzzles that translates to coding in terms of getting a competition, thinking up, getting a problem-solving skills up, and the collaborative aspect as well, because they're communicating with their peers on, where do you think this tile goes? This is a left, this is more of a 45-degree turn, where this is a 90-degree turn, do you think this should go here? Do you allow them to communicate their, their questions, their problems, and this is where it all translates to that scaffolding, where we develop young brilliant minds with the Indy, and then we take these coding concepts that they have developed with this product and translate it to eventually when we get to our intermediate phase and we start to use the bolt more often. Now the bolt is still a Sphero, it's a Sphero bolt, where it's a little sphere, which has a LED screen on it, and it has a little robotic... Think of it as a robotic ball, a Sphero that moves around with a LED screen. Now, Sphero has a curriculum for this that is available, but we like to use it in conjunction with our Everyone Can Code curriculum, where when we start to learn commands, how do you issue commands to the Sphero? When you're looking at conditional statements or you're looking at your for loops, you should have this robotics encoding element intertwined. So you're allowed to reinforce this new information at the learners' gathering. So if you're bringing coding into your school, whether you're starting at grade one, grade four, grade seven, or matric, if you're introducing the concepts, introducing commands, command is a command, we all need to start somewhere. But once we've gone through our process of introducing it at a younger level, then we can start getting to the more complicated sections where we've already established and developed these problem-solving abilities and their coding knowledge, that's when we can start getting into the really technical stuff that's available in our higher ed offerings or in Spheros and, and sort of playgrounds, higher ed offerings.

Cameron Busch, guest · [17:36]So if parents would like to find out more information with regards to our coding offerings, they can contact education at iStore.co.za, and there they will put you through to the relevant people in terms of what equipment you would need, what, apps you would need. We are there to help you. We aren't there to just dropbox and leave you alone. We, we believe in walking the journey with you. We know it's a, it's a treacherous path, okay? It's a very scary path. I mean, you look back ten years ago, you mentioned it, it, it was deemed as a very geeky, very, you know, you got to just pump a bunch of lines into a computer and this is your code. It's a, it's a much more interactive journey now where they've realized the, the need for it in the South African context and to make it accessible. You read the stats that only nineteen percent of learners at grade four can read for understanding. You can see how difficult it can be when introducing a thing like coding. So we need to ensure that our parents, not just our teachers, understand what's going on in the school context to ensure that they have the support when they go home, and us at iStore Education will be able to help them walk this journey.

Gershom Aitchison, host · [18:39]And what do you offer schools? you said that either iStore lead coding and robotics facilitator. What do you offer schools? If edu, if schools want to

Cameron Busch, guest · [18:47]get into this, what do they do? So as well, you, you would contact education at iStore Education, and we would tailor make an offering that suits your school. parameters. Whether you are a public school with a thousand and three hundred learners or you're a private school with four hundred learners, even less, we ensure that we come to your school before giving you a quote to see what it is your school requires. Do you need us to come and look at your access points in terms of just setting up your internet to ensure that your devices will con- consistently be connected to the, to the network? So we'll come through to you, see what solution we can provide you, and remember, we don't just offer a coding and robotic solution, we offer an education solution. So we use the iPad superpowers alongside our coding offerings to ensure that the holistic cross-curriculum approach, we can tick that box. Sure.

Gershom Aitchison, host · [19:41]So I suppose while you need to have Apple devices to access the coding and things like that, you're certainly not going to turn your nose up at a school that has, you know, Microsoft products and Google products that they're using. It, you know, you're not threatened by that.

Cameron Busch, guest · [19:58]No, not at all. I mean, we, we see that Google Classroom, all of our Google apps work on the iPad as well. So if you want to have a class with a lab of twenty iPads, we're not asking you to throw away all your Chromebooks. We aren't asking you to work, throw away all your Microsoft software, or your, or hardware, that is. We, we encourage you to use it as a collaborative aspect, because I mean, when these students leave school, they aren't guaranteed to go into an Apple-only ecosystem or a Windows-only ecosystem. If they are able, just like coding, if you are able to understand multiple languages, you're only setting up yourself for, for, for greener pastures.