5 Unexpected Soft Skills That Your Child Will Learn From Coding
Besides literacy and numeracy, digital literacy is a crucial skill that children today have to pick up to thrive in our digital age. One of the ways in which children are developing their digital skills is through coding and robotics classes, where they learn knowledge related to the STEM fields. For many parents, coding is an activity that allows their child to acquire a new interest that will also benefit them in the future.
Moreover, coding and robotics courses have an unintended advantage in addition to improving students' technical skills: they also help students improve their soft skills. These are personal characteristics that enable students to interact with others in meaningful ways. As a result,soft skills include attributes such as communication, interpersonal and problem-solving abilities, emotional intelligence, as well as a person's manners. Since these are just as necessary as hard skills for children to succeed in today's world, this article will go over the top five personal skills that students will gain from coding classes.
Top 5 Soft Skills That Children Will Learn From Coding Classes
1. Resilience
While classes for children are typically gamified so that students can learn in a fun setting, coding is still a difficult skill to master. Subsequently, students will inevitably face a lot of challenges through their learning process. For example, the answer to a coding problem might not appear right away, or they might spend hours on a code only for it not to work properly. Instead of giving up, these classes will inspire students to push through and commit to finding a solution that works, thus, building in them resilience. This quality comes hand in hand with patience, particularly when students have to debug and take apart their code to examine it line by line.
2. Communication
When people hear the word ‘programmer’, an image that comes to mind is probably of a single person who is slaving away in front of a computer screen. Many often do not realise that programming, especially robotics, typically involves a team of people working together to create an innovative product. In such cases, having strong communication skills will be crucial in ensuring that students’ group coding projects will be successful. This also means that students will be more open-minded to different approaches as they brainstorm ideas for their projects, which directly leads to the next soft skill.
3. Teamwork
Coding is a complex process that often requires multiple people to brainstorm ideas, check for errors, and find patterns. Therefore, students will need to learn how to work and communicate with different types of people in order to see their coding project come to fruition. This skill is not only honed during class, but also through entering robotics competitions, where teams of students have to collaborate with each other to solve robotics problems effectively. Moreover, it also teaches students that they do not have to do things alone - rather, there are always people who will be willing to help them.
4. Meticulous
In coding, even a small error might be enough to cause a computer programme to malfunction. As a result, students have to be meticulous and pay attention to small details to create as well as execute a working code. Apart from ensuring the consistency of their code, being meticulous would allow students to go about their work in a structured manner, allowing them to quickly identify and address problems.In addition, practicing this ability improves a student's mental concentration, which is essential for academic success.
5. Life-long learners
The area of coding is rapidly expanding and evolving, alongside new technologies that are constantly changing our lives. That’s why today's children must be able to become lifelong learners capable of seamlessly adapting to the demands of our rapidly evolving world.Furthermore, learning to code teaches children a disciplined approach to learning new skills, new perspectives on our world, and new approaches to problem solving. As a result, the willingness to learn new things is a critical life skill in the twenty-first century.
Thriving In The Digital Age
When technology becomes more incorporated into our everyday lives, coding not only helps children to become more comfortable with the digital world, but also allows them to think critically about how this tool can be used to improve lives. As a leading coding school in Singapore, Roboto Academy wants to nurture your child’s talent in coding so that they can become the next generation of changemakers in technology. Contact us today to learn more.