Learning Spiral by MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group and Learning Creative Learning
I’ve been spending a lot of time curating articles about Coding in the elementary school. I usually collect them in my Evernote account. It occurred to me that maybe I should share what I’ve been collecting. Maybe other elementary/primary school teachers are in the same boat as I am: interested, don’t know a thing about Coding, but willing to learn. 
It’s enough to make a teacher “loopy”! ha ha. So, I decided to share all the articles I’ve been collecting in a Paper-Li, which interestingly enough is from Switzerland, where I’m living. It’s definitely loopy times, so I’ve entitled my newspaper the Loopy Times. ha ha ha.
OK. Seriously, my vision for Coding was inspired by MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group’s Learning Spiral: Imagine, Create, Play, Share, Reflect… (see the above image for the spiral)
So, the tag line of my newspaper is this,
Coding in the Elementary School. Forever imagining, creating, playing, sharing, reflecting…
On my newspaper, I’ve attributed the tagline of my newspaper to the Lifelong Kindergarten Group, so I hope it’s OK I’ve used it. I also put a note on my newspaper that there is no official affiliation with them; I’m just inspired by their vision.
It seems like Coding as a subject-area is getting some serious attention. My vision for Coding in the elementary school is that it stay a playful and creative activity. I would say that the overall arching goal of Coding in the elementary school is not to crank out Coders. It would be to illicit interest in young children about Computer Sciences and the area of Coding. It would be to give them beginning confidence to pursue this in the future. (Let high school worry about certifying Computer Programmers.) In elementary school, it would only be just the first baby-steps. In order to do these things, I believe we need to keep Coding in the elementary school playful and fun. Thus, the reason for the newspaper’s tagline…
The newspaper is called (tongue-in-cheek), the “Infinitely Loopy Coding Teacher Times”. The “infinite loop” refers to the never-ending cycle of imaging, creating, playing, sharing, reflecting and then back to imagining.
I’ve embedded the latest edition of my Paper-Li below. I promise to carefully curate content for you with my underlying philosophy of keeping Coding fun and playful. If you might find this newspaper useful, please subscribe to it and share it. Tweet me links if you would like something shared through this newspaper too.
Many thanks!
I hope you will enjoy!
~Vivian