Games make coding more accessible

Coding is not the new frontier but teaching it and teaching it well to students may be. As Raj Sidhu points out in Programming through play: Why teaching kids to code will change how the rest of us code,

Kids are natural builders, quick learners, and generally a lot smarter than we give them credit for. But if I could barely stay engaged in my college Java lectures, there's no way they could hold a 10 year-old's attention. We need to redefine how education works, not by asking kids to conform to our patterns and expectations, but by attempting to conform to theirs.

Sidhu describes how games developed by MIT and others are helping children learn to code and work together to solve problems, which is what coding is all about, after all. As an added benefit, games and this new way of teaching can help everyone. Last week, Sidhu shared links to and descriptions of coding games; see the Tweet below.

12 games that teach kids to code — and are even fun, too http://t.co/ruRUgOnVco via @GamesBeat

— Raj Sidhu (@_raj_sidhu) June 4, 2014