The K-12 Education Administration in collaboration with universities has launched online classes for high-school and vocational school students based on the Python programming language.
The course would provide the economy with an artificial intelligence (AI)-literate workforce, the Ministry of Education-run agency said in a statement yesterday.
Teaching the course online would help bridge the urban-rural divide in access to educational resources, the agency said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Education
The course design emphasizes hands-on learning and encompasses skills ranging from variable operations and differential statements to loops, which are incorporated into realistic tasks for coders, it said.
The core mission of the lessons is to teach students the principles of coding and the ability to apply programming to solve real-life problems, it said.
It cited a student as saying that they had expected coding to involve the rote memorization of commands, instead of learning a language possessing its own syntax and logic to communicate with machines.
Another student was cited as saying that they hope to use their new coding skills to develop games, Web sites and AI designs.
A teacher from New Taipei City Municipal Jinshan High School said in the statement that coding is a good way to sharpen students’ ability to think through problems and think for themselves.
For example, debugging teaches students to rely on their own wits to deal with a puzzle instead of waiting for an answer to be handed down, they said.
Encouraging the spirit of discovery and the courage to overcome fear of failure are invaluable lessons on top of coding skills themselves, the teacher said.
Facing the rapid evolution of AI and digital technology, boosting students’ technological application skills is a key policy direction, the agency said, adding that it would continue to partner with universities and cross-school teaching communities to offer a diverse range of online courses.
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