Music Education, Coding for Kids
The Value of Music in Schools Guests: Brittany May, PhD, Professor of Elementary Music Education at BYU; Andrew Dabczynski, PhD, Professor of Music Education at BYU and Expert of String Pedagogy; Sam Tsugawa, PhD, High School Orchestra Teacher and BYU Music Education Professor In schools across the country, children learn to play the violin, the piano or maybe the ukulele. They’re not all prodigies and won’t all become accomplished musicians, but that’s beside the point. They learn to work hard, listen to each other and contribute to a common goal. The No-Child-Left-Behind era of performance measures led many, many schools to slim down music and arts programs and spend more time preparing for high-stakes reading and math tests. But you’ll still find districts around the country committed to weaving music into the student experience. In high-poverty schools, such programs are all the more powerful because they democratize music, in a sense. Learning to play the piano or violin is no longer just for kids with parents who can afford to buy instruments and enroll them in private lessons. Why Kids Should Learn to Code Guests: JD Tueller, CEO of App Raptors; Hunter Rentz, 17-year-old coder; Jay Jayaseelan, Founder of Learning through Robotics; Angela Jones, Director of Curriculum for the Do Good Foundation at InsideSales.com; Majestic Billings, 9-year-old creator of over 100 projects using code It’s not much of a stretch to envision a day when children will need to know the basics of coding as much as they’ll need to know how to write. Lots of kids are learning how to code, and girls, in particular, need exposure to coding while they’re young.