Programming: The New Literacy
Doug Holton,
EdTechDev,
Feb 05, 2008
My take on this is "yes and no". Here's the proposition, which Doug Holton cites from Mark Prensky in Edutopia: "the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do." Happily, I'm a pretty good programmer (ok, well, I know some programming) and I can say this: the basics have nothing uniquely to do with programming (it's all about logical structures (like if-then) and data structures (like entity relationships)) and actual programming is mostly very language (and hence, platform) specific. What this means is that programming, per se, will never be the foundational still. But there's a good case to be made that an understanding of logical and data structures will. Happily, these can be taught equally well in the contexts of media literacy, mathematics (in a redesigned curriculum), programming, art (and especially multimedia) and business management.
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