The paper and Internet press comments that programming is like the Latin of the new times. I don't agree at all because I think it's nothing comparable. I also believe that the thing to demystify is that the Programming subject will produce great programmers, that they will create companies and employment, that they will take their company to the stock market and that they will put Spain as a technology leader. No, the programming subject is aimed at train ESO students in skills, knowledge and teaching how to handle with tools so that they learn to face challenges, that are not overcome and that are resigned.
So the initiative of the Community of Madrid will have to be followed, taken care of, pampered and encouraged because the expectations at the present time may be too high. What we have already known is that the Community will allocate 16 million euros over the next four years to develop the new subject of Compulsory Secondary Education Programming, which begins pioneeringly in Spain since this course in the 15 Technological Innovation Institutes of the region, and that will allow students to complete this stage to create a website, develop mobile applications or design a game of computer.
The subject of Programming and Communications it will have two key elements, the Scratch program and the Arduino platform. We have already talked a lot about Scratch in Peques y Más and Arduino, although we will continue talking. And they are very prominent applications to train teenagers. The first because it allows children to create their own computer programs, simple but with basic programming fundamentals, and the second because it allows access to concepts of robotics and control mechanisms that respond to the cause-effect relationship, you can even do artistic installations like those of Kuai Shen!
He President of the Community of Madrid, Ignacio González, explained that this important economic endowment will facilitate, among other actions, updating the equipment of the educational centers with the latest technology, such as 3d printers, robotics kits or simulators. In addition, it will also allow that in September 2015, all institutes in the region have access to the Internet via fiber optic. In the video below you can see him in the intervention, of two minutes, managing expectations of the initiative.
How complement to the implementation of the Programming subject, you will invest in the training of the teachers, the announcement of technological innovation projects for the centers and will be organized competitions of robotics, entrepreneurship or developing Of applications.
The Community launched in 2010 the Institutes of Technological Innovation, which have placed the region as a national reference in the introduction of digital education in secondary school classrooms. Is about 15 Institutes that have 168 fully digital classrooms in which students and teachers use information and communication technologies as the main learning tool.
