🎧 Something In The Water And The Bones – Rebel Code, Rebel Code

John Philpin unpacks the question, should everyone learn to code? His response is nuanced. He suggests that learn to code if you have a love and interest, but do not feel that it is an occupation that is guaranteed to make a lot of money. Instead, choose something that you are passionate about, understanding that appreciating how technology works is an important part of any business.

You wouldn’t think about running a business if you didn’t have the fundamental understanding of law and accounting, why would you assume that it is ok not to understand technology.

For me this comes back to Douglas Rushkoff’s message: program or be programmed.

Rushkoff’s discussion is broken down into ten modern day commandments:

• Time and the push to be ever present.
• Place and the disconnection with the local.
• Choice and the pressure to forever choose.
• Complexity and the ignorance of nuance.
• Scale and the demand of the global spread.
• Identity and the digital self.
• Social and contact as king.
• Facts and the demand to tell the truth.
• Openness and the importance of sharing.
• Purpose and the power of programming.

This reminds me of something I wrote a few years ago:

The challenge to me is to go beyond the question of instruction and understanding of different languages. Beyond debates about fitting it within an already crowded curriculum. Instead the focus should be on creating the conditions in which students are able to take action and create new possibilities. Maybe this involves Minecraft, Ozobot or Spheros, maybe it doesn’t. Most importantly it involves going beyond worrying about training or competency, as Ian Chunn would have it, and instead embracing the world of making by leading the learning.