It is nearly impossible to believe, but this week we turn FIFTEEN!!!

Millions of blogs, websites, and digital portfolios later, we’re still growing and getting better. Most of all, we wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of our users, readers, and everyone we’ve been able to learn alongside over the past decade and a half. We look forward to many more years together!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The beginning of a new decade also marks 10 years for me personally since I left the classroom and joined the team here at Edublogs and CampusPress. I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect back on where we’ve been and actively define what our next 10+ years together might look like.

In 2010, we were still regularly using the term ‘Web 2.0’ to describe applications and websites like Edublogs, WordPress, and social media platforms where users create and publish content.

2010 was the year that the first iPad came out but mobile traffic was still a tiny portion of all website visits. It wasn’t until 2017 that mobile traffic would become greater than that of users on desktops.

2010 was the year that Facebook overtook Google to become the most visited site on the web, which led to Mark Zuckerberg being named as Time’s ‘Man Of The Year’.

And does anyone remember the popular ‘Klout‘ service that ranked us all and our social media influence? This was all before the term ‘social media influencer’ was even a thing.

That brings us to today – where we may not still say ‘Web 2.0’ anymore, but we’re all actively part of building the information on the web in one way or another.

With today’s web, we are all more aware and more impacted than ever by false and misleading information, cyber-bullying, and trolls.

We are all learning our way around data privacy and the impact that our digital footprint can have.

We are continuing to silo off our interactions into separate ‘networks’ and applications for specific purposes and audiences, like for photos (Instagram), for families/groups (WhatsApp or GroupMe), or for work (Slack).

Our expectations of content that we will consume have changed – binge-watching shows is a relatively recent phenomenon. Does this maybe suggest that ‘binge-learning’ a topic in school (concentrating on a topic all day for several days) could be more engaging in some cases instead of spending less than an hour on it each day over many weeks?

And what we watch, read, and listen to is of ever-increasing production quality. Our students expect this too in our lessons, technology, and curricula resources.

Our news is in realtime and for most of us, it is more commentary and opinions than it is a presentation of hard facts. Very much related, students expect more relevancy in their learning and as educators, we walk ever-finer lines in challenging their preconceptions (and checking our own preconceptions at the door).

All of this culminates in a reaffirmation that what we are doing here at Edublogs and CampusPress is as important as ever. We must continue to put WordPress, the very tool that powers over 1/3rd of the internet, in the hands of students to foster authentic publishing experiences. We must regularly reinforce with students what quality content, comments, and feedback look like. We must practice synthesizing what we learn and think critically about the content that we leverage while learning and teaching. Most importantly, we must model and continue to define good digital citizenship as the times continue to change.

I am excited – we have a lot of work to do!

As you look forward to what the next decade may bring, do you have any predictions to share or thoughts to add? If so, please leave them in the comments below.

Happy New Year!

PS: For those that like controversy, the math teacher in me really wants to be on ‘Team 1’ and say that since the very first year was 1 AD and not 0 AD, the new decade won’t really start until 2021. But let’s be real, ‘Team 0’ is more correct. We say the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, etc. such that starting the new decade in 2020 just makes sense. More on what I’m talking about here.

This is a companion post to a talk I gave yesterday at WordCamp Europe 2019 – the largest conference of its kind for the web and WordPress community. What follows is somewhere between a transcript of the presentation and a blog post. 

You can see the video of this talk here.

Or see a copy of the slides here.

Let’s get started by taking a look at a few photographs…

What do we all immediately notice? Besides the interesting clothes and the first two photos being in black and white, all three are very similar. In schools around the world, for as long as we can remember, kids sit at desks in rows and all face a teacher at the front of the room.

A little confession. I ripped off this idea to start this talk with photographs of classrooms over the years from a few different talks that I have seen before. But in those talks, the speakers used these photos as evidence that our education system is stagnant and therefore broken. We have similar views shared by the likes of Sal Kahn, Sir Ken Robinson, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and many more thought leaders in recent years. They suggest that we need a technology revolution to solve all of our problems. Most believe in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a viable vehicle for instruction. And scariest of all, some are claiming that we don’t even need teachers anymore.

Here’s the deal. Traditionally, education has been about how we best take a bunch of facts and download them into someone’s head. Then, we try and prove that those facts actually made it in ok – through assessments, exams, a certification, or a diploma. I call this the ‘Inputs + Outputs’ definition of education. Inputs are the curriculum, concepts, and learning objectives. Outputs are how we assess and show that the inputs were in fact ‘learned’. 

As discussed above, many great minds champion the promise of the web and technology to significantly improve education and learning. But in most cases, folks saying these things do so for the wrong reasons, and to be fair, most have never actually taught in a real classroom before. Sure, some of what they say is true. The web does make it easier and cheaper to make knowledge and information more widely available, and that can make it a great equalizer. 

The problem is, I don’t believe that education is about facts and knowledge. The ‘Inputs’ aren’t as important today because we can just pick up our phones and ask Google or ask Siri anything and everything we ever wanted to know. 

If you take just one thing away from me today, it should be that education is really about the personal and individual experiences, about project-based and service learning, and about the struggles, and the failures – which are all so much more important than any learning outcomes (or ‘outputs’).

In the post-information age, experiences are more important than knowledge.  

A big problem with my ‘experiences’ philosophy (and this may have gotten me in trouble a bit when I was a teacher) is that it is hard to quantify. And our society likes verifiable results. We can’t easily asses experiences on an exam or on a quiz. It can be challenging to assign meaningful grades or marks.

We have investors and billionaires focusing all of this money on new and more efficient ways to make textbooks more interesting and videos more engaging. We have this idea that if we just collect enough data points on students, then Artificial Intelligence can deliver personalized learning wherever and whenever. Again, in this new world, do we really need teachers anymore?

What would happen if we were to focus more on technologies that empower students to do, to build, to collaborate, and to create? This would be more in line with an ‘experiences’ approach to education than one defined by ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’. 

This is a photo of me on a tour of schools and the education system in Israel a few years ago. We met with these Bedouin students – all girls – that were studying physics at the time. If you aren’t familiar, the Bedouin are Muslim majority communities in the Middle East known historically for being nomadic and though it is slowly changing, the majority live in poverty.

One of the more interesting stories that the students told was about how important the web, mostly accessible only on their phones, was to them in connecting them to the entire world. It wasn’t about better open content, learning games, or ‘flipped’ lectures on videos. These students were actually following famous scientists and chatting with and learning alongside other girls studying the sciences from many different countries. This was powerful stuff.

It wasn´t about how they were using tech for curriculum. Or how video games improved their learning. It was about authentic connections that they were making.

If only there was a web publishing platform that would help facilitate the syntheses of learning by students sharing their work and thoughts. Maybe it was foster collaborations like these students experienced but on properties that the students own and control.

Well, of course, there is! 

WordPress allows for doing – content creation and curation of thoughts, experiences, videos, images, and all sorts of media. This is why WordPress can and should play a central role in education at many levels. It is the glue that holds everything else together. I get even more excited thinking about this with what we know is coming in the next phases of Gutenberg and block editing.

When you compare WordPress to social media platforms or proprietary portfolio solutions, there’s no question that the authentic audience when publishing on the web, coupled with a digital space that they can design and make their own, increases engagement and the quality of work.

And we know that WordPress works because we see it used every single day.

The Edublogs.org platform launched nearly 15 years ago, actually just shortly before WordPress.com itself. Here, there are literally millions of WordPress sites and blogs from students the world over.

WordPress is used for blogging, for ePortfolios, for communication, and collaboration in schools and universities – from kids as young as 4 or 5 years old, through those in Ph.D. programs. All the while, the big money Silicon Valley keeps pushing their solutions, which are slightly flashier, with better marketing, and in line with the large textbook companies schools are used to working with.

WordPress is big, but it can be better and it can do more. To do this, there are three key areas that WordPress developers and those that work on WordPress really need to think about.

The first is data exportability – there are Learning Management (or LMS) plugins that don’t use custom post types and can’t be easily exported. Same with forms plugins, or honestly, page builders are the worst – build content in those, and it is often impossible to get that content out.

One of the reasons that I hear from schools about why they choose WordPress over a proprietary system is that students can take their work with them. And this includes 20-30 years from now, that it will be in a format that is still usable by whatever comes after WordPress if WordPress happens to not still be around. However, this doesn’t work if every plugin or theme being used isn’t following best practices or is not using the default Tools > Export/Import XML format. 

We’ve noticed a trend in recent years of page builders and plugins building their own stand-alone import/export tool. But that really isn’t good enough.

If you think laws like the GDPR for data privacy are confusing and daunting for the general public, it gets even more intense when it comes to laws around data and privacy in education and with kids.

Thanks to the hard work of the WordPress Privacy core team, there are now tools that allow plugin developers to list and make clear any needed data privacy concerns about their plugin. You can also easily make use of the new core functionality so that individual users can request a log of their data or for all of their data to be deleted. It is seriously cool, and also incredibly important for compliance with a growing number of laws and regulations. Sadly, many plugins that we all use every day don’t yet make use of these features.

Let’s change that, please. 

See the privacy section of the core handbook for more information.

And I save the most important for last. Accessibility. We can’t have a quick chat about education without talking about accessibility.

My very first paid job on the web was working for this man here, Dr. John Slatin, at The University of Texas. Dr. Slatin was blind, and he was also one of the leaders in the world around raising awareness of web accessibility. He was instrumental in developing the very web accessibility standards and guidelines that we still follow today. And he’s often credited with the phrase “good design is accessible design” which he signed at the bottom of all of his emails. It is still as true as ever, nearly 20 years later. And though Dr. Slatin has since passed away, this is a fight we are still fighting.  

I’m hopeful that we are all learning together through the Gutenberg development experience that you can’t tack on accessibility to the end of a project, or even start working on it in the middle. It should be considered and addressed from the first wireframe and the very first line of code.

It also keeps me up at night that if we aren’t careful, WordPress may develop a reputation for “not” being accessible – even though evidence suggests that it is among the most accessible platforms around. If this happens, we will quickly see a sharp decline in the use of WordPress in education, enterprise, governments, and more – who may choose something else, even though that platform may be worse for accessibility, just because of the reputation. We walk a difficult fine line as a community of advocating passionately for the much-needed improvements while still making sure we are evangelizing WordPress in a positive way to those that need it.

Here is my guide to WordPress accessibility.

If you are interested in education and WordPress, here are a few resources that I wanted to share:

WPCampus – with a fantastic and active Slack community, an in-person conference in Portland Oregon next month, and an online conference around the New Year.

PressEdConf – a full day twitter conference that has happened the past few years, organized by universities in the UK, I believe, and the #PressEdConf hashtag can be useful to connect with others.

Student Blogging Challenge – free and held twice a year for 10 weeks, connects students from around the world to work on the same projects and tasks. Open to anyone on any web publishing platform, but organized by us at Edublogs.

So, to wrap up. Please don’t get caught up in the hype about online courses and new fancy ways to replace textbooks or even to replace teachers. Instead, with WordPress, invest in what could and should be the future of education – which is learning experiences that puts the learner in charge of creating content and contributing to the body of knowledge we all share.

Thanks for reading (or watching the video). I look forward to continuing this conversation about how we can truly democratize education with WordPress in the comments below. 

I’ve been watching in awe and admiration of the teacher walk-outs around the US as we grapple with the results of decades of underfunding (and a more recent all-out attack) of our public schools.

In my home state of Texas, we can only hope the movement will impact us tangentially, as it is illegal for educators here to strike in any way. Doing so would result in giving up teaching certifications and any retirement benefits already earned. Scary stuff.

For years I’ve been pondering one idea that I believe if implemented, would raise teacher pay, improve quality of life, and better recruit and retain educators. It wouldn’t be easy and popular with everyone, but given the current climate, perhaps this is worth a public debate. So here goes…

I think we should require teachers to work through the summer months and pay them for it.

We wouldn’t need to significantly increase daily rates (though we should consider that too), but instead, we pay teachers for more days.

For example, here in Austin, a first-year teacher works 187 days a year (officially) and makes $47,257. We all know everyone, especially a first-year teacher, puts in more unpaid days anyway.

Add the summer months in, to 230 paid days a year, and that would take the annual salary to $58,123. We could go even higher with days worked which would raise the pay more – in the US, the average employee outside of education works 260 days per year.

At a minimum, that would make 43 additional days where teachers wouldn’t be teaching. That means 43 days where the professional could grow as an educator, contribute back to the field, write and improve lesson plans, create assessments, and prepare for the year ahead.

All of that planning time would mean that during the school year, teachers would have much of the planning already done and at the ready. We could also give back more time to teachers during the school year with fewer meetings, professional development, and paperwork, which could be done on paid days without students.

I might be strung up for this, but I might even propose we pay teachers to work during all or part of fall, winter, and spring breaks too. With the trade-off being significantly less time taken away from them during the instructional days. Let’s give teachers back their nights and weekends! They’ll be better teachers as a result.

But how do we pay for this?

I’m just the blogger here, so I don’t have all the answers. But I do have some thoughts:

First, no longer allow teachers to miss instructional days for professional development. We spend a lot of money on substitute teachers for this – and everyone, especially students, suffers as a result. PD, data days, and collaboration pull-outs should ONLY be on paid days where students aren’t in. Substitutes should be reserved for days when teachers are sick or have personal days.

Second, the real savings could come from allowing the teachers to be the professionals that they truly are. This might be controversial, but if given more time, teachers won’t need anywhere near the number of coaches, facilitators, trainers, and programs that we spend billions of dollars on each year. Certainly, collaboration and EdCamp style PD is important and should be required. But if teachers have the time to create curricula and assessments, we won’t need to pay the giant publishing corporations for them. The expertise is there – we treat teachers as professionals and not robots. We also won’t need the number of non-teaching school and district employees that currently implement and manage these services. With more paid time on their hands, teachers will be just fine.

Won’t this cause more problems than it solves?

For some, maybe. Some teachers won’t like giving up their summers – and some may have more lucrative summer gigs they’d miss out on. Others will be financially burdened even more with childcare costs and will miss the time home with their own kids. I get that. Schools are pretty good at taking care of children, so maybe schools could work something out with their teachers as a benefit with programs to help take care of their kids on non-instructional days.

I’d also suggest a discussion to allow for some teacher paid days to be remote or on their own time and schedule. This would provide teachers perks like much of the professional and business world (and saving schools money on heating/air and other operational costs).

Most agree, teachers are generally overworked and don’t have the spare time they need. By paying teachers for more work days, we can help both with increasing teacher pay and improving the daily life of teachers during the school year – with the ultimate goal of improving the learning experiences of students that teachers serve.

What do you think? Has this been tried before or is it in place somewhere? I’d love to hear about it!

We’re looking forward to connecting again with WordPress users from all areas of education at the third annual WPCampus conference!

While this conference is specifically for higher education, anyone with an interest in WordPress and education is warmly invited to attend.

We know that quite a few of our CampusPress customers will be in attendance, including folks from the host university, Washington University in St. Louis. See sites.wustl.edu for how they use CampusPress, one of our most active and customized networks.

The call for speakers is also on until April 7. If you have an idea you’d like to chat about, let us know! We’d love to help.

Conference Details

The WPCampus conference will take place July 12-14, 2018, at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. What a beautiful spot for a little summer getaway. We’re also looking forward to seeing if the local BBQ will be up to par for this Texan

Visit the conference website to find out more.

So what do you say? Will you meet us in St. Louis?

Blogging from your phone or tablet can be useful, for sure. We love seeing students documenting trips and projects as they happen and being able to upload that content immediately to their blogs. Teachers are able to moderate comments or keep tabs on students’ posts from anywhere.

Before digging into more about moible blogging, we wanted to share that you will no longer find the ‘Edublogs’ apps in the iOS or Android app stores. The good news is that the mobile browser experience is better than ever, and you have several options to meet your mobile blogging needs.

For those of you who may miss the app, we discuss our reasons for removing them from the app stores in more detail at the end of this post.

The Browser Experience

Our recommended way to post to your blog from your device is to use a browser. No app needed!

Simply enter your blog URL in the address bar, login, and off you go. You’ll find the same dashboard that you are used to, but in a size and form that works on any screen size.

This is our preferred method for several reasons. First, it is the same experience as on a desktop, meaning no extra time needed to familiarize students with the app experience. Also, updates happen immediately for all devices – no need to wait for app updates to have the latest tools.

Everything in the mobile browser will be the same as the desktop experience: editing and publishing posts, uploading media, changing themes, and activating plugins.

Our CampusPress customers, who often use services like Google or Shibboleth for Single Sign On will find their logins work seamlessly in the browser – something not possible with most mobile apps.

Tip: Save Your Blog To Your Home Screen

Even better than just using the browser on your mobile device is saving your blog to the home screen. This is a quick and easy trick that will let you add an icon that looks just like all other apps on your device. Tapping your icon will take you directly to the login screen for your blog.

We put together a detailed guide that you can save or print out to help with blogging from your browser and saving to your home screen. Download the PDF guide here.

Mobile Apps

For those that still prefer a more native app experience, there are other options for mobile apps besides the old Edublogs apps too.

Edublogs and CampusPress networks are built on the open source project called WordPress. You will find a free WordPress app in both the iOS app store and in Google Play.

The only trick is that you’ll need to know the full URL of your blog and enter it after installing the app. There is a ton of great information on the apps here.

To help, here’s a quick guide on how the WordPress app works!

Post By Email

Did you know that it was also possible to simply send an email to a secret email address, and it will automatically publish to your blog?

Many teachers use this method to have their students post to a class blog. All it requires is setting up the Jetpack plugin and having a WordPress.com account – which powers the Post By Email tool.

Here’s a one page cheat sheet to make setting it all up easy.

What About The Edublogs Apps?

It wasn’t an easy decision to stop work on the Edublogs apps, which have been around for over 5 years and used on tens of thousands of devices. But there are quite a few reasons why we have reached this conclusion.

First, with the various ages of devices in use and the differing versions of operating systems across them, it has become nearly impossible to support them all. For good reason (they aren’t cheap!), schools tend to use devices for longer than the manufacturer (particularly true with Apple) intended.

Second, we originally built the Edublogs mobile apps off of the free and open-sourced WordPress apps – which are actively contributed to by multiple companies and a massive community. They get updates regularly, and there is no way that we can keep up with that work – especially given that the WordPress app is also free and works quite well for most.

Lastly, the browser experience continues to improve considerably, and we believe that it is now the most complete and easy to use way to blog from a mobile device. And with the trends changing such that more schools are adopting devices like Chromebooks and laptops, and not tablets, we’ve seen the use of mobile apps generally to be on a steady decline. It makes the most sense for us to put all of our resources into improving the browser experience for all sizes of devices, and leave the apps to others.

We know that this decision may be disappointing for some, and we welcome all feedback and your questions. Leave a comment below, or reach out to us directly at edublogs.org/contact.

The Complete PDF Help Guide

If you’d like our new Mobile Blogging Help Guides in one handy ebook, you can download the PDF below.

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Happy blogging!

There has never been a better time to give our CampusPress service a try!

For the entire month of February, we are offering a six month free pilot and trial of everything we offer.

During this time, you’ll be able to use a full version of our service free with as many sites and users as you’d like. With complete support, no limits, and no obligation to purchase when the pilot is over.

What is CampusPress?

CampusPress is the sister service of Edublogs and makes it easy to manage websites, ePortfolios, and blogs across an entire school, district, or university.

Is your school looking for a new website? One that is modern, accessibility compliant, and mobile friendly? CampusPress is for you!

Are you wanting to make it easy for faculty and students to create their own sites or blogs, but still maintain some control and accountability? CampusPress is for you!

Or perhaps you know that ePortfolios provide a tremendous opportunity for hands-on learning, student engagement, and critical thinking, but you don’t know where to begin? CampusPress is for you!

Example Sites

Here are just a few examples of what CampusPress can achieve:

Main District Website – RoundRock ISD

School Website – ABVM Catholic School

Learning Blogs – Saint Maur International School

Portfolios and Websites – Leander ISD

University Websites – Providence College

Learning Blogs – Columbia University

Self-Service Web Publishing – Northwestern University

And so many more!

What’s Included?

• Hosting – a WordPress Multisite network at a domain of your choice (like blogs.yourschool.edu)
• Authentication –  integration via LDAP, Google Apps, or other services that we can support
• Template – a customized default template for all of your blogs or sites
• Support – 24/7 support for all of your users – teachers and even students too
• Training – access to webinars, videos, and guides to maximize use of WordPress to meet your needs

Applying and getting started is quick and easy! We can have you up and running within as little as 24 hours.

Interested? Complete our quick registration form and we’ll take care of the rest.

Your pilot can run from now through the end of August. Our normal trials that we offer are limited to 30 days and don’t include the unlimited users, authentication, template, and training pieces. Full pilots such as this offering typically incur a fee.

Applications will remain open until the end of February or until we run out of space in the program. Be sure to signup today

FAQs

Who: Any faculty member or employee of a school, district, or university is eligible to signup.

What: You’ll have access to all the plugins, themes, and features we provide for our paying customers.

When: Pilots will last between now and the end of August. When the pilot is over, you’ll have the opportunity to continue with a license or we can help with exporting any and all content off of our service.

Where: It’s best to set up your network at a URL affiliated with your school or organization, meaning someone on your end will need access to DNS – we can discuss what this means.

Why: You can use one platform for multiple purposes – student projects, faculty websites, course blogs, etc.

Don’t forget, get in touch here to sign up, and applications are only open until the end of February or until we run out of room.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

This post was originally posted by Sue Waters on her personal blog here. Sue is not only the Support Manager here at Edublogs and CampusPress, she started this very blog, and has personally helped tens of thousands of educators – maybe even more. She’s the hardest working person we know, and we are honored to share her story here in hopes it helps others and spreads her important message. Sue, all of us that work with you are in awe of you every day.

When a doctor first suggested that my mother probably had Motor Neurone Disease (MND), also known as ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), I told him to remove it from the list.

Why?  Because how can that be?  Only people you don’t know get MND.

Well — people you know can get the disease.

And it’s a cruel, progressive, terminal neurological disease that can strike anyone. MND has no cure or treatment, and it kills over 50 percent within 2 years of diagnosis.

MND attacks the nerves that control movement so muscles no longer work.  Symptoms vary considerably between MND sufferers as it depends on which muscles are affected.

I’ve cared for my mum since she was diagnosed with advanced MND 6 months ago.  She requires 24/7 care which I couldn’t provide without the support of my family, the Silver Chain Palliative Care team, the MND Association of WA and support from the company I work for.

My goal is to raise awareness of Motor Neurone Disease (ALS) to make others understand why donating to MND associations is important for:

• Supporting people with MND
• Funding research to find a cure

Enduring Motor Neurone Disease

Make time to watch Enduring Motor Neurone Disease (MND/ALS) to appreciate how the disease impacts the sufferer and their family.

Spread the Word!

How can you help?  Spread the word and the facts by sharing my post on your social networks.

MND Associations can’t support sufferers and fund research without donations.  Increased awareness helps people understand why it’s important to donate and help fundraise.

MND Association Infographic

Our MND Story

And for those that want to know our story …

Symptoms vary considerably between MND sufferers as it depends on which muscles are affected.

My mum has the least common form of MND and is a respiratory onset MND.  Most MNDs start with limb onset and eventually have their respiratory muscles affected.

So far the disease has had minimal impact on my mum’s limbs, speech or ability to swallow but she has extreme drop head syndrome and her respiratory muscles are so affected that she is attached to non-invasive respiration 24 hours a day to ease the respiratory discomfort. Her room is her life because moving too much, even attached to a VPAP, causes too much discomfort.

It’s like being constricted by a boa constrictor and not being able to breathe.

Her day is spent juggling between 3 different types of masks, depending if she’s awake/asleep, and she has two different VPAP machines (day/night).

I keep her comfortable through the support of my family, the Silver Chain Palliative Care team, the MND Association of WA and support of the company I work for.

And my story?  I fear what all other MND carers fear.  What lies ahead? And am I strong enough to face the journey ahead?

Thanks for helping to spread awareness of Motor Neurone Disease (MND/ALS)! 

If you would like to help fundraise to fight for a cure or to support MND sufferers, please contact your local MND or ALS Association. There is a great list of associations from around the world here.

This week, teachers and students around the world are participating in ‘Hour of Code’ projects.

It is huge! In its fifth year, there are over 100,000 registered events taking place in all corners of the globe. The ‘Hour of Code’ is an initiative by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org to introduce millions of students to one hour of computer science and computer programming.

While there is so much good and excitement in teaching kids to code, there are a few areas around it that deserve a bit of our time to discuss…

The Good

First off, for the record, I don’t hate ‘Hour of Code’ or teaching kids to code at all. The tech industry, both big and small players, have given countless hours and funding to education to provide quality free resources – that alone makes it a worthwhile cause.

And kids are loving it. We see story after story of kids as young as 4 that are spending their own time outside of school on coding games and projects. There are more opportunities for students to follow their own interests and learn skills at their own pace than ever before.

Plus, most schools don’t have educators in house with a coding background such that they’d be able to lead instruction of students without the resources that projects like ‘Hour of Code’ provide.

The Bad

Note: The following criticisms are not at all meant to minimize the benefits and impact described above! 

It is frequently suggested that all kids should learn to code, much like we say all kids should learn math and sciences. We just need to be careful about our reasoning behind wanting these requirements to be implemented.

One argument made for why everyone should learn to code is that technology and coding expertise will lead to better jobs and, in particular, will be critical for the jobs of the future. But this tends to ignore all sorts of important skills and competencies that the tech industry desperately needs, like project and group management, user experience, design, marketing, data analysis, sales, writing technical documentation, and providing support to users. Most tech companies have more non-developers on staff than developers.

Of course, a basic background and understanding in logic, coding practices, and computer science concepts will be helpful to anyone in any industry, but most ‘Hour of Code’ activities tend to make the sole focus on “coding” and ignore everything else. We risk discouraging and leaving out all of the other critical needs of the very “jobs of tomorrow” we are trying to ready kids for.

The Ugly

My biggest fear is that one discouraging or unsuccessful experience of a student that participates in an ‘Hour of Code’ event may turn off some students for life. Any math teacher will tell you that simply getting students to believe that they can “do math” is often the biggest obstacle we face in the classroom. Coding is the same way, and a student that is confused after playing a coding game or isn’t successful the first time they try to program a robot will be that much harder to reach down the road.

So how do we ensure success? We must implement any coding program or activity in a purposeful way. Coding is about solving real problems, and if you ask just about any professional developer, they will tell you that they got their start because they wanted to fix, build, or improve something specific. For me (though I’m not a professional developer), it was building a website with static HTML for my high school marching band at the age of 14 – ya, I’m not nerdy at all!

Here’s the thing. The majority of activities that teach kids to code use games, apps, and robotics. They are often built or designed by companies that have the tech knowledge, but aren’t professional educators. And we usually implement ‘Hour of Code’ activities as a supplement and almost as an afterthought.

All of this can create a few problems:

1. It can be unauthentic – kids will be more motivated and more likely to be successful when working on something meaningful or real. Their first coding experience should involve building something useful or that might serve a real purpose. As just one example, maybe students could experiment with basic CSS customizations of their WordPress site or blog on Edublogs. And here are some thoughts on teaching coding through math class.
2. Not all kids like video games – the education community is all in on integrating game theory and games in learning. But the truth is, games are more motivating to some students than others. Like anything we do in teaching, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Here are some ideas for teaching “coding” without any computer or device.
3. Too much is not accessible – kids with various unique needs like visual impairments or inability to use a mouse are often left out with these sorts of apps and games. Assistive technologies and best accessibility practices need to be a high priority of every app and website we use with students.

So, just as you shouldn’t implement something like blogging in the classroom without a clear and specific purpose, the same should be for ‘Hour of Code’ and coding. Choose activities that are related to other subjects or topics you are teaching students, and not something that is just “one and done.” All of this will help set up students for success, and hopefully will lead to a solid foundation they’ll be able to build off for years to come.

Do you agree or disagree with anything above? And if you’ve used ‘Hour of Code’ activities in your classroom, how has it gone? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

Happy coding!

Hurricane Harvey and the ongoing flooding in Texas and Louisiana has hit close to home for several of us here at Edublogs. Our thoughts are with those still dealing with the aftermath of the storm and we feel deeply for the loss, pain, anxiety, and hardship the storm has caused.

If there is a bright side to it all, we are heartened by the acts of kindness, the selfless hard work, and the “all in it together” attitude we are witnessing. We couldn’t be more proud to see public school districts already enrolling evacuees (and making registering easier) into their schools, and that Houston ISD will be able to provide 3 free meals to all students for the rest of the school year.

The storms have impacted well over 1 million students in hundreds of school districts. For many students (and teachers), schools will be the only sense of normalcy and routine for quite a while. Educators and school systems will be taking on an even greater responsibility in the overall well-being of students. And they’ll be doing all of this while some schools themselves have taken on significant damage and may not be able to open for a lengthy amount of time as well. The impact is far too wide.

In hopes that it is helpful, even in some small way, we’ve compiled a list of links and resources for those affected and also those looking to provide support to those in need. Please leave a comment below if you know of anything we should add.

• The Best Ways To Help Victims Of Hurricane Harvey – Larry Ferlazzo
• Hurrican Harvey Relief Fund – Donors Choose
• Principals Helping Principals – Adopt A School Campaign
• 7 Ways to Help Schools Affected by Hurricane Harvey – We Are Teachers
• How Teachers Can Help With Hurricane Harvey Relief – Edweek
• How School Children Will Cope With Hurricane Harvey – The Atlantic
• Hurricane Harvey Book Club – Facebook Group
• Advice For Salvaging Wet Paper, Photos, and Materials – University of Texas
• Hurricane Harvey Resources And Disaster Relief Grant – Texas AFT Union
• Assistance to School Districts Hit by Hurricane Harvey – TCEA
• Hurricane Harvey Resources and Relief – National Education Association

The road to recovery and normalcy will be long for many. We’ll continue to look for ways to lend a hand wherever possible.

#TexasStrong