How Coding can be Used in the Classroom to Enrich Math Education

As math educators, we utilize a diverse set of tools to help our students learn. 

We want to help educators add computer coding to their proverbial toolbox, so in our courses, teachers will learn how to code and how to use code to teach math. Our courses are meant to give a practical, low-stakes introduction to math teachers who have no experience coding but want or need to introduce coding into their math classrooms. 

Our courses focus on two functions of coding for educators- coding to teach and coding to learn. 

Coding to teach is an umbrella term for the use of coding in the practice of teaching. Consider the calculator. You use it. Your students use it. But the way you use it to teach is different than the way your students use it to learn. In order to craft activities, you might write or install a program, utilize data lists, or utilize functions that you don’t expect or require students to use. You might use a calculator to work backward from a solution in order to write a good exercise for students to complete. Similarly, coding to teach means utilizing computer programming in a manner that facilitates your work as an educator.

Coding to teach means teachers utilize coding to create organizational tools, simulations, demonstrations, and interactive experiences that facilitate their students’ learning.

Coding to learn is an umbrella term for the use of coding by students to learn disciplinary content, in this case, math. Returning to our calculator metaphor, we can give our students access to technology to deepen their understanding of the target content. Calculators in the math classroom are for more than just computation, but allow exploration and play and enable a greater variety of problem solving methods- and therefore reinforce more problem solving skills- than without them.

Coding to learn means students write, modify, and run code in a structured activity that creates a formative experience and opportunities to learn math more deeply. Facilitates learning. 

In our courses, teachers will see numerous examples and complete interactive activities, both coding to teach and coding to learn. Each lesson in our courses will approach coding topics through the lenses of coding to teach and coding to learn, as well as computational thinking and computational methods.