Games+Learning+Society 12 Conference

Coding is an incredibly popular subject in schools and in game-based learning. Right now there is an abundance of excellent apps and games for teaching programming for ages 4-18. Broadly speaking, these tools either use drag-and-drop ‘block programming’ or ask players to type script or code - approaches with very different goals and affordances often lost in the rush to "teach programming." \ \ In the spirit of “tastes great/less filling” we offer a debate between these different approaches that educational designers are taking to “teach coding”. Is the point to develop algorithmic thinking, to learn real languages, or to build something? Is it ‘better’ to start with blocks or jump right into text? Why is this so important in the first place? Join CodeMonkey, AllCanCode, and BrainPOP as they argue productively over something that they really agree on - and learn about practical pedagogical issues with STEM education along the way.