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Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

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Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#51

Post by kevindeasis »

I'm teaching three of my younger siblings to code.

It was one of the more meaningful things that I've ever done and was nothing short of hard.

Here are the things I've learned teaching my siblings full stack development in a few months.

You have to be patient, programming is complex and takes time. Sometimes you have to re-introduce the basics multiple times and hold their hand along the way as they try to connect the dots.

Offer them free food, support their interest, help them with their school work, reduce their stress levels, and take a keen interest in their hobbies

Build something right away, and introduce theory immediately after the project is finished. When introducing new concept explain it in an ELI5 fashion.

Give them multiple resources. Sometimes one source of knowledge is not good enough and giving them other resources not only helps with repetition, but it gives them other places that will explain the same topic in a different manner.

Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#52

Post by obombration »

bearble wrote: post #11

I taught a group of 9-12 year old basic logic and algorithms using Scratch to animate a scene. One kid wrote a basic brick breaker and another pong. They all seemed to enjoy the process since it's pretty straight forward drag/drop logic. https://scratch.mit.edu/

Agreed. I taught a CS club to 4th and 5th graders during college and they all loved Scratch. It's very easy to get going with audio, images, animation, etc., which got them really interested quickly. Even for older (middle school aged) kids I'd probably start with Scratch because it teaches most of the CS concepts you'd use in any other language, but doesn't require the tedious environment setup (editor, compiler/interpreter, etc.) that "real" languages need. Spark their interest using the concepts, then sprinkle in the boring parts.

Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#53

Post by lojack »

Make it fun! My company recently hosted an Hour of Code to teach young kids to learn how to code. Since your goal is to teach them without necessarily being present every day, you may need to change things around, but their website is an amazing resource of fun projects that help teach.

https://code.org/learn

Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#55

Post by camperman »

I did it this way us9ing Lua and Love2d (love2d.org):

Teach them what data is: numbers, strings of characters, true or false statements. Let them play in the interpreter. Let them see the computer work for them. Teach them that a variable is just the name of a box and the value is the contents.

Then introduce tables. Just like a set of boxes with labels.

Then simple control flow. Now you can introduce them to Love2d and start them off making simple graphics programs.

Eight hours or so later, they can code small games using Love and will understand each line. Then you can leave them to their own devices and point them at further resources.

Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#56

Post by koolba »

mattferderer wrote: post #25
ideonexus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for the DOM Inspector. I have found that kids LOVE pulling back the curtain on a website to see the wizard and play with the code. A fun activity is to have them go to a news site and have them edit the headlines and replace the images to silly things and take screenshots to share with their parents. What really impresses me with this exercise is how quickly some kids will figure out some intermediate hacks when t…

I think you said that better than me. I'm stealing this line as it's to good not to - "Code should be a playground. Give the kids a rich playground to run around in." Let me know if you want me to credit it to you ever.

Well there's a reason we refer to virtual environments as sandboxes!

Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#57

Post by gkop »

This curriculum is over 10 years old and I think doesn't go beyond HTML/CSS (I.e. stopped short of JavaScript), but I found at least a couple perennial helpful concepts for teaching young kids (the original developers of the curriculum were really smart and dedicated): https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/58467154/Wired-Woods

I taught this curriculum to 120 or so kids aged 6-13 from underprivileged backgrounds in the Boston area. The experience changed my life - kids are so amazingly smart and learn so fast - and they ALL got really into making websites! I have no doubt that for at least a couple of my pupils the early exposure led to success in tech careers, helping to break them out of generational poverty.

The Web is an incredible platform for learning, self-expression, creativity, and empowerment. Unfortunately in the age of iPads etc. I think it's more difficult now to get kids into web development than it was 10 years ago.

My contact info is in my profile if you read the curriculum and want to ask any questions.

Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#58

Post by samayshamdasani »

Kids want to have fun while they learn. As a fifteen year old, I'm sure this can be by building interesting projects that has to do with characters they identify it - maybe like a website with pictures of them and describing who they are. (HTML, CSS)

After some of that, you can move on to JS where they'll actually understand programming logic. I built a site to teach people to code the web. Maybe it'll help you a bit: https://enlight.ml

Re: Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?

#60

Post by notzorbo3 »

ideonexus wrote: post #18
mattferderer wrote: post #15

I've done this for several years. Here's what I've learned. TLDR: Focus on getting them to have fun & enjoy learning about 'code'. Don't care so much on how well they learn it. Every kid is unique & will respond to different things. Social & mentors are awesome. It's usually more fun to build with others if possible. Also they will want to easily share & show off their creations with others. Show them how to "hack" G…

+1 for the DOM Inspector. I have found that kids LOVE pulling back the curtain on a website to see the wizard and play with the code. A fun activity is to have them go to a news site and have them edit the headlines and replace the images to silly things and take screenshots to share with their parents. What really impresses me with this exercise is how quickly some kids will figure out some intermediate hacks when t…

> Instead, when I give kids a great big block of javascript code that does something fun and animated, those kids will go wild with it. This is because changes to different variables can have big effects.

I remember being a kid and typing in Mandelbrot code from a BASIC computer magazine. Even though I didn't understand the code, I had endless amounts of fun with stuff like that for exactly this reason.

It's what sparked my imagination and interest in programming.

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