BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. -- A bill in the Florida Senate right now could transform students from consumers of technology into tomorrow's creators of technology.
Technology resource teacher Sue Baillie brushes up on coding with this class of second graders at Poinciana Elementary School. “The students come through the computer lab and the technology lab,” Ballie explained. “They do robotics projects and coding in the technology lab, in the computer lab we focus just on coding.”
Seven and eight-year-olds in the class are building robots and coding them to make them move.
“The engineering is an important piece, but the coding is what makes it comes to life,” Ballie said.
Fourth graders Brandon Burke and Derek Alcin built a robotic car. They're fine tuning the code needed to make the robot run smoothly.
“The code is telling it to move to blocks up or two feet and then do a U-turn,” explained Alcin.
Right now the Florida Senate is discussing Senate Bill 468. It proposes coding classes at the high school level fulfilling foreign language requirements. The bill would also require Florida colleges and universities to recognize coding as filling foreign language credits.
“They’re learning algorithms and computational thinking which is more than just coding,” Ballie said. “It's part of everything we teach.”
