A Beginner's Guide to Coding
- Submitting institution
-
Leeds Beckett University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 33
- Type
- K - Design
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- A Beginner’s Guide To Coding is an easy-to-follow introduction to computer coding. An integral component of the step-by-step instructions, Marston’s illustrations make a field often regarded as daunting more accessible to aspiring young programmers. A key question is how illustration, in getting the reader’s attention, directs it to the more challenging technical information of each step. In a visually saturated society, this is a developing area of pedagogy.
Using an informal style aimed at children unfamiliar with the subject, the illustrations make the information more comprehensible. Irreverent in tone, they contrast markedly to previous books of this genre, whose visually unsophisticated style mirrors that of programming software. Marston’s style has a 2-d, ‘retro’ feel reminiscent of early 80s computer graphics, the illustrations working as visual stepping stones to the equally flat screenshots they accompany, and which require more focus from the reader.
The book, published by Bloomsbury, is translated into Chinese, Russian, Bulgarian and Polish, and is being updated in the United States.
The work’s impact lies in Marston’s consideration of how illustration can be didactically woven into the learning information, rather than superimposed on it: how a child’s attention moves from seductive visual data (animals, robots, spaceships) to the technical data of a specialist field. In many books, illustration appears merely to adorn the specialist field, but Marston integrates it into the formal structure and content of the book. As the reviewer on Reading Time, The Children’s Book Council of Australia and American children’s literature website Kidsreads.com, says: “The lessons are easily and clearly outlined, with help from Mick Marston’s skilful illustrations. A Beginner’s Guide To Coding makes it truly easy for children to understand otherwise difficult concepts in computer science and is a great lead to higher levels of programming.”
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
