I’m posting this on my last day teaching high school computer science. In the past two years, I’ve worked with over 200 students and for many, my class was their first experience coding.
I did not succeed in getting 100% of my students interested in programming. (Not even close)
By the end of my class, many were determined to never try coding again in their lives.
As I leave teaching to start Pickcode (a new platform for teaching CS), my primary concern is how to design the product to engage a higher proportion of students. I don’t need every student who tries Pickcode to become a software engineer, but I want every student who uses it to understand the joy of using coding to create programs they’re proud of.
Python Music and Engagement
While I failed to get 100% of students to enjoy coding, almost every student had a couple of “on” days.
Take Braeden, who took my intro to CS class as a junior and found absolutely every opportunity to goof off in class. His final project for our App Inventor unit was a soundboard app with one button: a picture of Pitbull that made the Taco Bell ding when clicked. (He completed this in 25 minutes and played web games for the other three weeks available for the project)
When it came time to learn Python, Braeden was almost universally disinterested. Project 3.10 however, was called “Python Music” and he was tasked with composing a song using a small library I made to wrap a Python waveform package.