A curriculum for teaching coding to children in Africa
As much as coding is becoming a buzz word in Nigeria and many parents are looking for where their children can learn to code, a coding curriculum that children can use to learn computer programming offline has not been available in Africa. A few books are available on Amazon but when you add the shipping fees to Africa, those books become unaffordable to most families.
This is why we developed the Early Coding for Kids Textbooks, Africa’s first computer programming curriculum and textbook for children which can be used for classroom, self-learning or homeschooling.
How the curriculum is organized:
- Computer Science Concepts: the first section of the book covers the basic computer programming theory concepts for children to have a firm foundation of how computer science works. Concepts such as Algorithms, Sequences, Events, Loops and Conditionals are explained in a very child friendly way.
- Unplugged Activities: activities that help children practice programming without using computers. These puzzles require the same amount of brain power that it takes to code on a computer, but they can be done in class and without access to a screen. These unplugged activities help children in schools where they don’t have computers learn.
- Coding with Scratch: the curriculum uses Scratch to teach hands-on programming to students. We chose Scratch because it is free and works offline, so everybody who has access to a computer can access Scratch. It can be used to build games, stories and animations.
- Digital Citizenship: as children live in a technology driven and internet enabled world, they need to learn the rules for life online. From learning about privacy and internet safety, to their digital footprints, passwords and cyberbullying, the Digital Citizenship curriculum prepares students to be responsible users of technology.
- Python Programming: the last level of the curriculum teaches students to code in Python. They already have a firm grasp of the computer science principles and how coding works in other languages, so they can easily learn new languages.
The Early Coding Book helps students in primary and secondary schools learn computer programming easily. It is the first textbook for computer programming in Africa that actually follows a curriculum.
