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Get Me Coding is your place to learn about coding, the tools, and getting help along the way

A guide to help you figure out how to begin your journey to teach a young person to code or get you moving on your own journey.

10/11/2026

This week my college cybersecurity students learned about a $250 tool that wants your password.

My college cybersecurity students kicked off Cybersecurity Awareness Month with a true story from our friends at Stay Safe Online. A hacker made a very comfortable living selling password-cracking software to other criminals for about $250. His tool tests thousands of password combinations every second, and what it loves most are short passwords, reused passwords, pet names, and birthdays.

Here’s the Star Wars version: a short, reused password is a screen door on the Death Star. A long, unique password is a blast door.

Stay Safe Online says an 8-character password can be cracked in seconds, while a random 16-character one would take billions of years. (The bad guys don’t have that kind of time!)

The 3 habits that make life hard for cybercriminals:
- At least 16 characters
- A different password for every account
- A password manager to create and remember them all

Your 5-minute mission: start with your email, since it unlocks password resets for almost everything else.

Kids, here’s your challenge: invent the silliest, longest, made-up sentence you can (with a grown-up’s help, and don’t use it as a real password!) and share the funniest one in the comments. 👇

Grown-ups, which account is getting fixed first?

More free tips at staysafeonline.org

09/27/2026

Proud professor moment:

My students just won the AI Division at OwlHacks, Temple University’s student-organized hackathon.

A hackathon compresses many important parts of professional technology work into one intense experience:

• Identifying a problem
• Developing an idea
• Collaborating under pressure
• Using emerging tools responsibly
• Testing and revising
• Communicating a solution clearly

The award is wonderful, but the deeper lesson is even more important.

Students need more than exposure to AI. They need opportunities to use it thoughtfully while strengthening the human skills AI cannot replace: judgment, persistence, creativity, communication, teamwork, and the ability to explain their decisions.

That is what workforce preparation looks like.

Congratulations to the entire team. You earned this.

09/25/2026

This week, I gave my first-year security students a challenge involving encryption, access control, and a suspiciously endangered grade file.

There was competition. There was confusion. There were teams trying to figure out what the other teams were doing.

In other words, it looked a lot like learning.

That activity brought me back to the remarkable story of the Code Girls. During World War II, more than 10,000 American women were recruited to help break German and Japanese codes. Their work shaped military decisions and saved lives, yet many kept their contributions secret for decades.

The newest episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks is called:

🎙️ Code Girls: The Women Who Cracked WWII’s Secret Messages

Search for Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks wherever you listen to podcasts or find the episode on YouTube.

Before today, had you ever heard of the Code Girls?

09/24/2026

Quick heads up for families using Claude at home.

Claude is merging its two modes into one, and there's a new setting in the message box worth knowing about. It has two choices: Manual and Auto.

Manual means Claude asks before it does anything. Auto means it goes ahead on its own and only checks in when something needs your eyes.

On a shared or family computer, keep it on Manual. Same rule you'd give a new babysitter: ask before you rearrange the kitchen.

Not sure if you have the update yet? Look at the message box. If you still see separate Chat and Cowork buttons, you don't have it. And once it switches, you can't switch back.

09/23/2026

Name one video game that looked incredible when you first saw it.

09/19/2026

There’s just something about an Atari 2600 that still makes me smile.

And yes… this is the LEGO version, which may be one of the coolest retro-tech mashups ever.

But it also got me thinking about something bigger.

We went from blocky characters, simple colors, and one-button joysticks to games that now look like entire living, breathing worlds.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about in the newest episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks:
Blocky to Beautiful: How Video Games Went From Pixels to Worlds

It’s a fun look at:

* why old games looked blocky
* how graphics evolved from sprites to 3D worlds
* what GPUs and ray tracing actually do
* and why some modern games still choose a simple look on purpose

And I’ve got a question for you:

What was the first video game that made you stop and think, “Wow… that looks amazing”?

Drop it in the comments. I have a feeling this could turn into a pretty fun trip through gaming history.

09/13/2026

Apparently, QR codes followed me on vacation.

Airports, fundraisers, Disney, rental cars, theme parks…once I started noticing them, they were everywhere.

We use these little squares constantly, but most of us never really stop to think about what they are doing or why they work. That became the idea behind this week’s Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks episode.

I break down what is actually inside a QR code, why those three big corner squares matter, why a damaged code can sometimes still scan, and one simple cybersecurity habit that is worth remembering before you tap.

My Tech Challenge this week is a fun one too: create a QR code, cover part of it, and see how much you can hide before your phone finally gives up.

I’d love to know this one: where is the strangest or most unexpected place you’ve seen a QR code?

Come tell me. I may be building a collection.

09/05/2026

I don’t think students always realize this. Sometimes after everybody leaves, I wonder: “Did I land that class today?”

Nearly three decades of teaching and, yep, I still ask myself that. Sometimes the activity works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you leave thinking, “Well…I’m doing THAT differently tomorrow.” 😂

This question actually came from Milo, my AI interviewer, during this week’s Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks. Apparently my AI has decided to start evaluating my teaching career. I’m not sure how I feel about this. 😄

Full conversation on Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks.

Teachers: tell me I’m not the only one who has walked out of a classroom thinking this.

08/29/2026

First week of class is over but something happened on the other side of these desks this week that made me smile.

I had some first-year students, aka freshman, together in one of my classes. They didn't know each other before college, but during an activity they started talking.

Later, some of those same students showed up in another class I teach and now they were sitting together. Talking and joking. Getting to know each other. I asked if they had known each other before coming to college.

Nope. They had just met.

After what I've watched students experience socially during and immediately after COVID, that little moment felt bigger than it probably sounds. We spend a lot of time talking about what students are supposed to learn in college. But they're also learning how to meet people, work with people, disagree, try things, make mistakes and figure out who they are.

Funny enough, I ended up talking about this with an AI this week. Actually...the AI was interviewing me. 😄

That's the experiment in this week's Mr. Fred's Tech Talks.

But I'm curious: Parents and teachers, have you noticed any change in how young people connect with each other over the past few years?

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