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Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?

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Re: Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?

#13

Post by Cyph0n »

Nice video! How did you film the Lego stop-motion stuff? Some advice: make sure your voice is clear next time. The music was too loud in this video.

I agree with the other comments in that they need to be interested first. Well, how do you get them interested? That depends on their interests and hobbies. So what I would do is create a short video that ties one of their hobbies to programming, and try to discuss what they thought of the video. Once you get them hooked, they'll be ready to learn.

Re: Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?

#15

Post by katzgrau »

For more in depth JavaScript exercises, I built this for some hour of code sessions at some pretty big high schools.

It's basically a UI for writing/sharing/leading code exercises.

It should obviously be using a database and have better security, but that wasn't a major priority for my original purpose.

https://github.com/katzgrau/hour-of-code-developer

Re: Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?

#16

Post by shurcooL »

I know of a game that incorporates programming lessons in a really cute way. I discovered it when I was around 15 and loved it so much, I wished I ran into it at an earlier age.

It's a 3rd person view where you control an astronaut on different missions. It has some RTS elements as there are various robots to control.

However, in addition to being able to directly control the robots (which is fun and accessible), you can write code that it'll execute and automate some simple tasks, like fetching resources, defending a base, etc. It's very high quality and well made, and incorporates step by step lessons, starting with basics of programming. Your creativity is the limit.

What I've found out recently is the game was eventually released as open source (it was originally commercial) and picked up by a community of people working on making it better, and it's suppported on modern systems.

It's called Colobot [0] and I highly suggest you try it out, see if you think the kids would find it interesting.

[0] https://colobot.info/

Re: Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?

#17

Post by wslh »

I found Scratch Jr. [1] and Alice 3D [2] great tools for teaching programming. I found Alice 3D more appealing for kids that the full Scratch online. Scratch Jr. for a 7 year old kid is a good way to start. A typical 9 year old is more capable of general programming (thinking in a straigthforward syntax like in Python).

For younger kids I only recommend Scratch Jr. since it is natural, has less friction, and doesn't require reading.

[1] https://www.scratchjr.org/

[2] https://www.alice.org/

Re: Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?

#18

Post by getAidlab »

How about teaching them about health?

We've recently started to teach kids with the use of Aidlab (https://www.aidlab.com/developer) to show them some basics about heart, lungs or motion data. They are able to measure themselves, develop simple apps thanks to Unity engine, and make use of those data (ex. building games that use respiration level to control game character).

Re: Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?

#19

Post by Eridrus »

red-indian wrote: post #7

I teach. I have the kids learn Python between age 9 and 11 depending on when they are interested. We write games and learn the fundamentals of CS by following the curriculum of Rice's "Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python" class designed by Rixner and Warren. It has a Python interpreter and game library that compiles in-browser into javascript, which is a very helpful design for a first class, and for sh…

Why Python rather than JavaScript?
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