Wednesday, December 26, 2012

BBC Radio 4 - Viewpoint: Computer code frees us to think in new ways

BBC Technology Website and Radio 4 - Four Thought 8.45pm 26th December.

Viewpoint: Computer code frees us to think in new ways -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20764273 - By Tom Armitage - Technologist

'At the start of 2012, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York tweeted: "My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy."


And throughout the year, "learning to code" seems to have been a hot topic in the media.

Around the same time as Bloomberg's tweet, in the UK the Education Secretary Michael Gove was announcing plans to replace the schools ICT curriculum with a "computer science" programme.

Existing ICT courses often focus on "digital literacy" - teaching particular software packages such as popular spreadsheets and word processors.

The changes are an attempt to reach a more balancing sense of literacy - not just being able to "read" technology, by using it - but also to "write" with it.

And in computing, writing with it means exploring the world of programming: creating with computers.'

'This is an edited version of The Coded Word - a talk delivered by Tom Armitage for BBC Radio 4's Four Thought. It will be broadcast at 2045GMT on 26 December.'

Tom Armitage: The Coded World - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pg54z



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