On Code.org’s Code Studio

by jrwestgarth

Today Code.org announced its new Code Studio. This open source platform is designed to support students as young as kindergarten to pick up computer science concepts. It is still a visual programming language (similar to Scratch) but is HTML5 based (so runs in most browsers) and has puzzle based lesson plans for K-12. The lessons teach the usual loops, conditionals, and functions as well as branching into new topics such as how the internet works and digital citizenship. Other neat features are tools that let you build apps and new tutorial videos by tech celebrities.

For me, the most interesting part of this is the new teacher interface. This allows teachers to monitor where their students are in the lesson progression. An interesting idea that pushes Code.org further into the area of curriculum support/lesson plan development.

To help the rollout – Code.org is running training across 60 cities in the US – aiming to prepare up to 10,000 teachers to use the resource. [Source: Announcing Code Studio (Code.org blog, Sept 2014)]

My thoughts:

Nice! While there are a number of STEM related education organisations out there – Code.org is the one that consistently aims for scalable outreach. The organisation keeps coming up with new ways to keep its purpose relevant and on trend. In this case – if those planning the curriculum are moving too slow, then Code Studio is a solution for schools that are in a position to do more than the basics.

Its around this point that the organisation could start considering how it localises its product suite. While computer science concepts may not differ around the world – curriculums and teaching requirements do. In Australia they almost differ from state to state. It would be gold if someone could start mapping these Code.org classes against the local syllabus. Almost a localised wiki of lesson plans that complement the Code.org platform – or at least explain it in localised terms.