Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids? • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by rixed » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:11 PM UTC

rickyc091 wrote: post #62

There's already a lot of good advice here, but I really wanted to emphasize Scratch ( https://scratch.mit.edu/ ) as a first step. A 7 year old (2nd grader) and 9 year old (4th grader) should be able to navigate their way through Scratch. Start off by following the tutorial on the right panel when you create a new project. Once you're done with that, your cousins will probably be exploring on their own. Help their exp…

Similar but better than scratch: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language

Better because portable, works offline, and the language itself is more sane (although I haven't checked recent versions of scratch)

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

#72

Post by cube2222 » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

First and foremost, teach them using something that creates something tangible quickly, this'll keep them interested.

Second, depending on their personality, it may give them more motivation to use a language actual software developers use.

So all in all, good ideas are:

* Python because of the load of libraries

* Haskell because it's very human and has a great REPL

* C because it's pretty easy, and gives them the feeling of something "serious"

* Scratch because it's playish

(This is from a perspective of an 18 year old who started at 11 with C and went through a lot of languages and various programming categories. I think those are things that would've motivated me even more if I had them.)

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

#73

Post by et-al » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

jampa wrote: post #30

Game modding The first contact I had to actual programming was messing with Pawno scripts to make gameservers in San Andreas multiplayer when I was 12... Spent hours and hours programming with it. It started simple placing coordinates where the cars should spawn until I started to mess with more 'complicated' stuff like gates that open when player get near. I would get some game that is popular among kids that age (m…

Games are a great way to get kids into computers and code.

Many of us who grew up around MS-DOS had to figure out ways to get around the 640kb base memory limitation and deal with conflicting IRQ ports. Did we want to do that? No, we just wanted to play Dune II. But through that, it got us tinkering with installing new programs, tinkering with configuration files, and eventually learning BASIC, putting together your own computer, etc.

Unless the kids are extremely mature and patient, the best way is to focus on an appealing end product. Don't present it as "oh, let's learn about boolean operators" today, as much as "hey, want to build a [something cool] together?"

And you know what? It may not stick; maybe they'd rather be outside, bake some cookies, or beat on some drums, and that's fine, too.

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

#74

Post by knicholes » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC

Adobe has partner with Goldman Sachs, Vschool, DevMountain, and The Department of Workforce Services (and originally Cotopaxi, but they ducked out) over the last year to teach refugee youth how to code using code.org (the accelerated course) interlaced with robotics using the mBot. It uses the same scratch interface, so their code.org knowledge easily transfers to seeing some real-life application of something that they can touch/hear/see move around. They seem to like it. They definitely hate lectures, though. Clearly one needs to give them instruction, but excessive instruction definitely works counter to one's purpose. These are youth aged 13-18.

The mbot lessons slowly work them up towards a "sumo wrestling competition" where they have to push one other opponent's mbot out of a ring.

If anyone is interested, we made a little repo to hold our code. It's a little outdated, but we'll get it updated soon.

https://github.com/STEAMGEN/mbot-curriculum

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

#75

Post by jimnotgym » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

I have 3 kids, eldest is interested in web pages so I showed them html on a neocities site (thanks HN). They now have a photoblog based on w3schools css gallery. They didn't much care for Python.

The middle kid learnt some scratch at school and loves it, and has taught themselves loads about it on the web (youtube is by far their favourite way of learning). They have done a fair bit of Python with me too. However they are interested in 3d games so are teaching themselves Blender and Unity (and therefore some C#) aged 11! Now it seems they enjoy 3d modeling as much as coding. Interestingly they are also fascinated by working with the command line for anything, so they are learning some basic bash too.

The youngest is an avid Minecrafter, but at age 8 they have had a go at Scratch junior. However, they have decided they are too grown up for it and are dabbling in 'proper Scratch' now.

I don't push them, but try and create opportunities for them to see new things

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

#76

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #21

In my (very limited) experience, building text adventures is a great way to teach kids programming: * You don't need any complicated stuff for it, just printing to stdout and reading from stdin. * Kids love making up stories and games * When they understand the basics you can gradually increase the complexity: Add if/then/else conditions (do you wanna go left or right?), functions (e.g. to parse answers to questions)…

>I'd recommend a scripting language to get started, as it removes the need to compile code //

Or use a REPL (eg repl.it)?

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

#77

Post by dorianm » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:25 PM UTC

"turtle" is the what I use to teach kids programming, this is one in JS: http://berniepope.id.au/html/js-turtle/turtle.html

As they get more interested I switch to https://tryruby.org then scraping with nokogiri then asking them about the problems they want to solve.

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

#78

Post by Havoc » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

With Logo.

It gets the basic mindset right (loops and what not) while making things visual so that the kid's mind can follow what's happening in an intuitive manner.

If you launch them straight into "real" programming they'll get bored imo.

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

#79

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

hywel wrote: post #25

Depends whether you want to teach code or computer science (and code). I wrote a book to teach 7-11 year olds to code in Python and Scratch and teach them some computer science along the way - I read a few other books out there first, and there's a lot of "just copy out this code and things will happen", which is exactly what I tried to avoid in this book. The reviews: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28232614-codi…

Hywel, I notice the blurb says "in line with the new National Curriculum" is that a USA-wide curriculum or is it in another country. I've got kids in that age range in the UK and they don't do any such computing/coding [at school!].

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

#80

Post by mbubb » Sat, Feb 18, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

I've co-taught classes on Scratch and Python (seperate classes) to kids from 8 to 13.

One recommendation is https://www.nostarch.com/ - No Starch Press. There are a number of good titles in the kids section. They were also very decent in giving us a classroom discount for materials.

We used ChromeBooks as that is what the school had for kids. It is OK for Scratch but less than desirable for Python. We used repl.io for an IDE and it wasn't bad. It is better to use IDLE if possible...

I've had an idea of teaching a class where the beginning part is to get a Rasp Pi up and running - 1 per kid or 1 per pair. After that use the Raspberry Pi to learn Python / Scratch.