In Hollywood movies, coders are often depicted as lone geniuses who impact society with just a laptop and their raw skills. For example, The Social Network depicted the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, along these lines, and there’s a long list of movies where one coder takes on multinational corporations or even countries.
Away from the silver screen, in real life, coding can be a group activity where kids rely on each other’s skills and willingness to help them achieve their ultimate goals. RP4K is proud to foster a collaborative environment where kids learn to code and larger goals about teamwork.
Please read on to learn how it works.
Students forced into a noisy, disruptive environment usually find it hard to focus on their lessons. Teachers may struggle with classroom management issues instead of concentrating on the class materials. It may seem ironic, but students have an easier time connecting with each other and working together when there are fewer of them in the same class.
RP4K limits class sizes to a maximum of four per session, so, at most, there will be your child and three other students. This small class size provides the best coding opportunities for kids because they’ll get ample support from their teacher and a calm environment in which to collaborate with their peers.
Some young students are shy or timid, and can thrive in learning situations when they don’t need to raise their voices above those of louder, more assertive students. Kids shouldn’t slip through the cracks, no matter how quiet they may be. Small class sizes make it easier for them to stay connected to their teachers and other students.
Coding involves learning to think like an engineer because potential solutions need to be tested and reassessed from different angles and perspectives. There are always ideas some people think of that others don’t, so coding by committee is an excellent way to prove concepts.
Working together is one of the important indirect skills that kids can learn when they sign up for online programming because they look for holes or shortcomings in their peers’ lines of code. In turn, they get their work assessed along the same lines.
The practical benefit of multiple perspectives about coding is great, but there are also important lessons about crucial intangibles related to self-esteem and ego. Learners of any age may have a difficult time accepting criticism, taking it as a hit to their ego. In contrast, young learners in RP4K classes come to view mistakes as an inevitable part of the journey towards finding the right solutions.
Errors aren’t something to hide from or be afraid of. They’re something to identify, unpack, and correct. Coding in teams can help instill these fundamental values that help them become better programmers today and lifelong learners.
More advanced students can take our more challenging courses, like Applied Math and Artificial Intelligence. The more difficult the concepts are, the more students benefit from working together. While AI feels like a relatively new phenomenon since Open AI’s ChatGPT took the world by storm a couple of years ago, RP4K has taught AI concepts for years.
Artificial Intelligence is nothing more than lines of code! Kids learn to refine their thinking by distilling their prompts as they peak behind the curtains at what coding really is. Like with many coding concepts, students learn more effectively when they help each other.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, there has been a surge in online programming classes as businesses have rushed to adapt and give kids a safe way to keep them informed and stimulated. RP4K has operated for more than 20 years, and we’ve refined our proprietary curriculum since then to ensure kids learn the most important material the most effective way possible. We’ve taught kids how to program since before it was trendy.
RP4K is proud to hire undergrads in computer science and computer engineering programs for a few reasons. Our top coding instructors have the domain knowledge and are more than qualified to teach in-demand coding languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, C#, and C++.
Beyond that, RP4K also makes our coding sessions revolve around teaching kids how to create their own video games, so it’s important that our teachers are young enough to have also grown up playing such games. Teachers with relevant first-hand experience in gaming pass on a level of passion and enthusiasm that’s impossible to fake or transmit any other way.
When parents think about the benefits of coding classes for their kids, they usually want their kids to learn fundamental computer skills in a world and economy dominated by digital technology. This is a very understandable goal, but for kids, they just want to have fun and play games!
Even our beginner students learn to design and create a video game they can play with friends and family, showing off what they’ve learned in class in a fun, joyous way. Our students learn to work together while coding the video games, but they’re united by playing together.
Some parents worry about the level of their kids “screen time,” and kids being addicted to gaming, apps, and social media is a real concern. However, the parents of kids who spend their time absorbing new digital skills to create video games, apps, and websites rather than playing or browsing them don’t have this problem.
Historically, people thought of computer coding as something people did privately. Today, computers and digital technology connect people across the globe instantaneously, and like-minded programmers work together in sessions to finish their projects and achieve their goals. Fostering the underlying skills for teamwork is something RP4K takes seriously, and it also naturally occurs in our classes as students pick each other’s brains and rely on each other for help. Consider signing up your child today for our online programming sessions to teach them fundamental lessons about collaboration and coding.
