The Digital Adventures Blog
For parents, educators and students to discuss tech education for kids, best practices for teaching coding & engineering design to kids & emerging technology trends
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Kids Learning Coding Just Wanna Have Fun
It goes without saying that kids enjoy having fun. Kids constantly gravitate towards having fun regardless of the environment that they are in. In fact, one could argue that the best part about being a kid is the ability to have fun without having to worry about the responsibilities that adults consider on a daily basis. However, here’s where we have a challenge. Parents wants to see their kids...
Cobra Kai Coding
One of my favorite movies as a child was The Karate Kid. The story centers around the main character, Daniel, and his karate teacher, Mr. Miyagi. Daniel is interested in learning karate so that he can protect himself from bullies at school and in his neighborhood. To develop his karate skills, Mr. Miyagi has Daniel embark on a series of seemingly unrelated projects like waxing cars and painting...
The Lack of Technology Struggle is Hurting our Kids
When I was a kid, there was a high level of struggle inherent in learning to build and engage with technology. If I wanted to play a video game on the computer, I had to type in a bunch of commands. And, even after I corrected all the typos, that was no guarantee that the game would load up.Or, if my friends and I were playing Nintendo and wanted to switch games; there was a chance that the new...
Just build it! - You don't need permission to create
With the polar vortex creating the coldest temperatures in decades in Chicago, the local school districts decided that the conditions were unsafe and so kids were out of school for a few days. Since they had 2 days without the burdens of school, my kids were free to organize their days around what they were interested.My daughter decided that she would create a drawing of a flower using Scratch...
Why technology excels at creating teachable moments
One of the best parts about being within the education space generally is being able to participate in teachable moments. Whether teaching math, science or philosophy, there is nothing like illustrating a concept and seeing the gears start to turn in a student’s head and then having them ask a question that enables you to solidify the lesson for both the individual and the group.At Digital Adve...
3 key learnings from launching our new edtech product BrainSports
This past Fall we launched a new edtech product, BrainSports. Our goal was to bring together elements of sports (training, competition, community) while also re-imagining an educational framework for teaching our students coding & engineering design skills that will power their future success.During the Fall season, students in both our Lincoln Park & Wilmette studios worked towards bui...
3 Ways Tech Builds Problem Solving Skills
One of the major challenges in an unpredictable and ever-changing world is the ability to creatively solve problems.Technology is one of the most useful platforms to not only create the solutions that will be broadly useful but also to simultaneously build the problem solving muscle with practice.Through repeated interaction and engagement with hardware and software platforms, we’ve found that ...
We Teach More Than Just Technology Skills
As an education technology program, our primary focus is teaching kids how to build with technology so they can one day change the world. However, there are also skills that students develop that go beyond just the 1 and 0’s of building hardware and software projects. In fact, there are key areas embedded within education technology that help build not just technical skills but also those skil...
Should my kid learn how computers work?
Many parents will often ask us a variety of questions about computer coding and programming. Embedded within their question is a curiosity about whether or not this technology acumen is really for their child. Or, at times, it may even be an insecurity because of something that someone told them when they were a kid about who should learn about computers and who shouldn’t. And, often there is a...
11 Inspiring Videos for Why Kids Should Learn Coding
Technologists like Mitch Resnick, inventor of the Scratch Programming Language, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, have voiced support for teaching kids to learn coding. Successful immigrants like Ali & Hadi Partovi, the founders of code.org, have discussed how programming has positively impacted their lives.There are also examples of young kids who ...
6 Off-Screen Ways to Teach Coding Logic to Kids
While we often think of technology learning as the exclusive domain of screens and devices, there are also many other ways to introduce and develop the logic necessary to successfully build with technology. Below are 6 Off-Screen ways to teach coding logic to kids. 1. Sandwich Exercise One of the fundamentals of technology is to internalize that programming is the process of giving a series of ...
Learning to code develops lifelong learners
For our parent’s and grandparent’s, there was a high level of comfort in developing a skillset and then monetizing it throughout your career. Whether that was working in a factory building automobiles or being an accountant, there was a reasonable chance that if you were good at your job, your employment was guaranteed for life. Not only that, but the confidence employer’s had in the rate of ch...
10 Great Hardware & Software Platforms for Teaching Kids Coding
At Digital Adventures, we’ve been fortunate to work with hundreds of students to build thousands of technology-based projects at our state-of-the-art learning studios. During that time, our instructional team has had the opportunity to pilot and ultimately incorporate numerous hardware and software platforms that are designed to teach kids coding.Many of the organizations that are highlighted b...
5 Important Criteria When Picking A Kids Coding Class
With Facebook and Instagram feeds filled with back to school pictures of the next generation of leaders, now is a great time to start thinking about after-school activities for the kids. At the top or near the top of the list should be computer coding or technology classes. Statistics published at code.org says that jobs are being created that require computer science or engineering degrees at ...
10 Surprising Lessons We’ve Learned From Teaching Over 1,000 Kids to Code
Digital Adventures was founded in 2015 with the mission to teach kids how to build with technology so they can change the world! Since opening our first learning studio on the North Shore of Chicago, we’ve taken more than 1,000 students through our fun, engaging, hands-on coding and engineering design projects. During that time, we’re proud to have earned over 50 5 Star Reviews on Google, Yelp ...