Some 20 preschool teachers attended a free workshop on “Teaching Coding without Technology” conducted especially for them at the Dhoby Ghuat Campus on 28 April 2018.
This offer was made by KLCII Advisor, Dr Jane Ching-Kwan on the topic “Coding an Children: Education in the 21st Century” at the at the Yayasan Mendaki Education Symposium at the NUS Shaw Foundation Alumni House on 14 April 2018.
The special workshop was designed to help the teachers understand the basics of coding for children. They also learned how to explore and design fun and interactive activities to teach coding without the use of tech toys and computer.
By teaching them to think critically, young children can learn how to break tasks into steps and perform them in order – a programming concept called sequencing – or to repeat a series of steps until a task is complete – a concept called loops.
More importantly, the teachers learned how to link developmentally-appropriate activities to the Nurturing Early Years (NEL) framework, using binary number, sorting algorithm and text compression systems.
The workshop was conducted by by KLCII lecturer, Mdm Radiah A Razak. Mdm Radiah had a ECCE Degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a Master’s degree in EC Education from Monash University, Australia, and more than 30 years of experience in early childhood education services.