Coding for kids
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- ladbroke
- Sr. Rocketeer
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Hi, I'm a bit frustrated with the IT lessons provided at my sons school, and was wondering if anyone has any experience of online courses or tutorials specifically for kids? He's 11, and very technology focused, but I want to give him some real direction and knowledge. To begin with a broad knowledge in many areas, rather than specifics. A bit like learning to drive, I don't think it's a good idea to try and teach family in that way myself, and as I'm self taught, may pass on a whole load of bad practise! I'll be there looking over his shoulder and helping when needed obviously!
I've seen a company called Treehouse teamtreehouse.com/ but this isn't aimed specifically at kids. I'm not discounting it on that reason alone, as he's quite mature and grown up for his age, but wondered if anybody has experience in this area?
I've gone through some really basic javascript and css with him in the past, but would be a great alternative to him mindlessly playing Minecraft for hours on end!
Any suggestions welcome!
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- prim
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- DanG
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
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I saw this a while ago and it looked pretty cool. Its somewhat of a pseudo-code but I think that might be what you're looking for to build coding practices that can be applied to any coding language.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexklein/kano-a-computer-anyone-can-make
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- Andy Miller
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- Web Kahuna
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I started my son off with Scratch
scratch.mit.edu/
which is very visual. Unfortunately my programming brain runs a little more old-school, so I couldn't get my head around the drag-n-drop UI enough to really teach him. We then moved on to Lua which is a great scripting language that is used widely for writing games. There's the LÖVE framework, Moai, Corona SDK + more. We've also looked at Python and JavaScript. There's plenty of books available on amazon that focus on programming for teens, we've had good success going through some of these.
My theory is to get my son interested in programming by focusing on the programming side of things he really enjoys, namely video games. I really liked Corona SDK as it's full featured, powerful and you can easily see the results running on your mobile device. I'm always on the look out for other good frameworks and languages but right now my son is most interested in Lego EV3 and is writing code for it with their own programming environment. -
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- Web Kahuna
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Oh another one to look at is Monkey X:
www.monkeycoder.co.nz/
This is a very simple but suprsingly powerful BASIC style language that is strongly typed like Java. It's really what Blitz Basic evolved into and it's totally free for desktop/HTML5 deployments. It's also very cheap if you want to create IOS or Android games. I actually wrote a 3D Space Invaders game in Blitz 3D a few years back as little fun excercise for myself and found it most enjoyable. I think i'm going to give Monkey X a try if I ever get any free time
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- midgard.li
- Jr. Rocketeer
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- midgard.li
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I agree wholeheartedly that kids should be taught proper IT skills - if not, at least knowledge of it and being aware of the realities of the internet and the digital age.
For example, the same people who would complain about government surveillance use Facebook and Google, clicking their Terms of Service without a blink of an eye. This is a small slice of the kind of dichotomy that is created when there is a dichotomy between those who are knowledgable of an area versus those who are ignorant.
I see it the same as knowing at least cursory information about your vehicle's engine, so that you at least know if you're getting taken advantage of at the garage. Same goes with the internet, we need to teach people at least how to differentiate between a safe and a sketchy part of the 'net. It's a lot easier to tell in real life, given the graffiti and resident thugs, but it's a lot harder to tell over a desktop.
The best way to learn for kids is to make it a game - if there is at least some degree of challenge and risk-reward involved in the activity, then you're set. Best way to make it happen is to make them as curious as possible, and have them continually surmount challenges when learning to code. Unfortunately with video games (that are like drugs - designed to stimulate a certain area of the mind for a period of time) there is a completely synthetic high-risk, high-reward mindset that you get into while playing, so it's sometimes difficult for someone to shift their focus on code. Perhaps working on small projects, like building a javascript clock, or making a text-based RPG, might prove both useful and productive when it comes to trying to shift attention away from these new distractions.
Easier said than done, of course, but curiousity is definitely the key. I remember learning purely from trial-and-error and not from any books or courses (at least to start out, and even now, I haven't taken a single class). Having a computer (disconnected from the internet, any kid will discover how to break parental controls or get around them) for that reason might be beneficial too.
Hope some of these thoughts or ideas help, and best of luck with the teachings!
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- J!eremy
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- We started with scratch then code.org and now he spends most of his time on www.khanacademy.org/ Its hands down amazing..
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