The MIT Press Podcast

Yasmin B. Kafai and Quinn Burke, “Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming” (MIT, 2014)

07 Mar 2015

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Although the push to persuade everyone to learn to code is quite the current rage, the coding movement has roots that extend back for more than a few decades. In 1980 Seymour Papert published his book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, arguing that learning to code would help children to better understand not only educational subject matter, but how to think. This book influenced the push in the early 1980s to place coding in schools. This early “learn to code” movement, though revolutionary, was unsustainable for many reasons. In the new book Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (MIT, 2014), Yasmin B. Kafai, Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, and Quinn Burke, Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston, reexamine this early movement and the necessity of reintegrating coding into the K-12 curriculum. Kafai and Burke, too, view coding education as essential in assisting children in understanding how to think about different subjects. But the authors do not simply theorize coding as helping with computational thinking. Kafai and Burke assert that learning how to code is productive for computational participation. That is, programming helps learners not only with thinking, but also with communicating and making social connections. Computational participation, therefore, has ramifications that go beyond the schoolhouse.

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3ª PARTE | 17 DIC 2025 | EL PARTIDAZO DE COPE

01 Jan 1970

El Partidazo de COPE

13:00H | 21 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

01 Jan 1970

Fin de Semana

12:00H | 21 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

01 Jan 1970

Fin de Semana

10:00H | 21 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

01 Jan 1970

Fin de Semana

13:00H | 20 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

01 Jan 1970

Fin de Semana

12:00H | 20 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

01 Jan 1970

Fin de Semana

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The MIT Press Podcast

Yasmin B. Kafai and Quinn Burke, “Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming” (MIT, 2014)

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other recent transcribed episodes

3ª PARTE | 17 DIC 2025 | EL PARTIDAZO DE COPE

13:00H | 21 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

12:00H | 21 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

10:00H | 21 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

13:00H | 20 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

12:00H | 20 DIC 2025 | Fin de Semana

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