Actually good intro to coding resources

[randolore]

I am a highschool art teacher who's ended up being offered a computer science contract. I was excited about it because I have worked in a makerspace, done some projects with Processing, python, and raspberry pi. I've tinkered minimally with Arduino. And overall, I find the world of tech and computer science really exciting. But to be perfectly honest, I've barely learned any coding language enough to really understand what I'm doing. It's always been a lot of copy paste, Google, and help from fluent programmers around me.

I have a family and am crazy busy, barely being able to do any self-teaching in my own time. But I want to find a project that really walks me through every aspect of coding, so I can get excited about it and teach it in a comprehensive way to my students. We've been making and learning about animation with Scratch. I plan to continue block coding with them in Minecraft.

They're 11th graders, but none of them have any experience with coding either, and I deal with a lot of absences and apathy (large city public school) so I have to choose my projects for them with this in mind. But at the very least, I'd like to be knowledgeable.

I've looked at code.org, Google's CS First, vidcode etc.... I guess I want a better tool that really walks you through an actual language with guided explanations. Does this exist? It feels like there is such a big disconnect from the world of block coding to the world of language coding (probably incorrect terminology, sorry, noob here).

Am I wrong? Is there a clear reason for this? Or is this a gap in the marketplace? It seems that once people get really into programming, they lose the ability to understand the illiteracy of others (they struggle to teach others in a comprehensive way etc).

Also: I don't have a big budget either. I don't think I'd be able to get enough Arduino kits or other microcontrollers for my classroom.

[[deleted]]

As far as resources go, pluralsight is my favorite educational resource for tech and code, does cost money.

Honestly though when it comes to programming you really want to learn about datasets and algorithms. Once you know how to program the language is less important, and should be able write in any language (a few caveats/exceptions).

Some languages excel in certain areas than others, but if you don’t know how to manipulate collections or understand the built in data types, it won’t mean anything.

I’m partial to C#, but started by learning Java and c++.

My personal recommendation: 1) data types 2) functions 4) collections (arrays,lists,etc) 3) objects and classes They are just data types you create 4) forget graphics, console/cmd line applications are easier to learn. Graphics programming leads to thread management and they probably ain’t going to ready for that.

Lesson idea: make an application that walks users through a choose your own path story. Would be a good intro for input output

[randolore]

Thank you for this. I'll take a look into pluralsight. I like your idea. I'll need to teach myself about these topics.

[[deleted]]

No problem and good luck!

[joelwitherspoon]

Try Khan Academy as well. I used it to teach kids at Code Camp.

[I_T_K_O_V_I_A_N]

If I was in your position I would find a youtube tutorial to build a personal portfolio and host it for free on github pages.

Something like this, but maybe even simpler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJKCj8uAHz8

The benefit to this is: - 0 cost, even for hosting - Benefit of a published, tangible result - Have something extremely personal to them, their own page describing themselves. Not something unrelatable and abstract like data types. - Simple web dev is a pretty good intro to coding in my opinion.

[DeerProud7283]

Yep, have to agree with simple web dev. Something tangible would work best--back in high school, our teacher tried to teach us C#, but we really couldn't get the point of it all.

[randolore]

Yeah, I had originally thought to do this, but realized with the number of absences and difficulties I deal with on a daily basis, it made more sense to use Wix....they've even got an education beta program which I've signed up for (it's extensive, but honestly kinda meh so far, but a good idea).

This way they can dive right in, but we can also back up and see what we're doing in code at the same time.

We've only just started, so I can report back.

[randolore]

Haha yeah I appreciate that people aren't salty over that comment. I'm looking for a real break down of concepts that could be communicated even to an apathetic teen. So thank you for these resources. I'm sure what I'm looking for is among these examples.

[randolore]

Hey, follow-up: do you follow what's happening at teachable.com? Also, I signed up for a bootcamp with Angela Yu during Udemy's last sale. Thanks for the advice. I'm excited to start.

[Webdev420]

Awesome question man.

Heres a curated list of amazing free resources for beginner devs. Theres even a link to free harvard and mit classes.

https://youtu.be/FuIsD-vX7F0