To kick off our podcast series, we’re exploring the reasons why computing education is so important to the lives and education of all our students. There are many reasons why we might want our young people to be confident and literate, not only in how to use technology but also in how it works and is created.

• First and foremost, computing should be tremendous fun and is one of the most creative disciplines; it enables our learners to create, invent, explore and simulate the world around them.
  
  


• Exposing students to computing skills and concepts is incredibly empowering, giving them new ways to solve problems, represent their world, and express their ideas.
  
  

“Computing is one of the richest, deepest, most fascinating, most creative, most ingenious playgrounds of the mind.” – Simon Peyton Jones

• Computing is a broad, rich, and deep discipline that has something for everyone; beyond its core concepts and ideas, it connects with almost every other subject, making it truly multidisciplinary.
  
  


• It is an academically rigorous discipline which promotes maths, logic, creativity, and problem-solving skills.
  
  


• Computing is already pervasive within society and the workplace, so the workforce of tomorrow (across all sectors) will need a solid level of computing literacy. This will enable them to understand and harness the power of computing to make good decisions and solve new problems.
  
  

In order to explore the question “Why teach computing?”, we spoke to a number of experts and practitioners of computing education to find out why they think computing is so important. If you want to find out more about the topics we discuss in the episode, you’ll find some useful links below. You can find a full set of show notes including links and downloads on the Teach Computing Blog, you can also download a full transcript of this episode.

We want to make a show that is both interesting and useful to computing educators, to do that we need your help. Complete this feedback form to tell us what you liked (or didn’t) and what you’d like to see more of.

Finally, tell us what you think, why should we teach computing? Leave us a voice message and we may feature you in a future show.