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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?

#91

Post by hywel »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #79
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!].

Yeah, the UK National Curriculum says children need to learn a visual language (like Scratch) and then a text based one (like Python). Your kids should be doing visual coding in school from Key Stage 2.

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

#93

Post by EpicEng »

caseysoftware wrote: post #92

Don't. Teach them to experiment, problem solve, to be creative, and that failing is okay. Coding is useful today.. none of us know what will be 10 or 20 years from now.

+1. I think the high level concepts are far more valuable. If they decide to write code in the future then great, they've got a leg up. If they don't then they still walk away with more capacity for problem solving and logical decomposition.

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

#94

Post by Confiks »

inglor wrote: post #42

I teach code to kids. From age 9 to age 16. What I've found that really works is accomplishments. I'm a huge fan of exercises instead of frontal introduction. I've had success with the Khan Academy program ("introduction to programming") and then giving them simple web exercises.

I'm interested. How do you use accomplishments specifically to teach how to code? Do you create exercised or projects that can be completed, do students build their own projects with certain accomplishments in them, or?

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

#95

Post by camhart »

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…

I first learned programming from game modding as well. I loved it.

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

#97

Post by vatsal »

A good friend of mine has started working on the exact same problem. He comes with a background in Games/Graphics (Pixar, EA Sports etc.) and in Education, and his take is that teaching programming/math using concepts from animation/games development might be a much better approach compared to the traditional way of teaching programming and computer science. Interestingly, that's how a lot of folks got into programming in the 80s and 90s.

Creative Technology Club: http://www.ctc.ooo

He is starting this in small in-person batches for kids and adults (Ahmedabad, India), with plans to take it online in the future. Would love to hear thoughts on how to best scale this model.

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

#98

Post by darpa_escapee »

sotojuan wrote: post #84
beojan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is "why JavaScript rather than Python?" The only reason JavaScript is so popular is that it runs in the browser. JavaScript is otherwise a pretty poor language, and certainly much harder to learn than Python.

JS is a pretty bad first language to learn—too many quirks and random syntax in the last few years. Python is dead simple—I recently had to take on a project written in it having never programmed in Python before and I essentially did not have to learn it to get the feature done.

I had a similar experience with JavaScript, assuming you make _extensive_ use of ES2017 syntax and features. It's actually very nice, provided you have a compatible browser, but there's a long way to go still.

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

#99

Post by danellis »

hywel wrote: post #91
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!].

Yeah, the UK National Curriculum says children need to learn a visual language (like Scratch) and then a text based one (like Python). Your kids should be doing visual coding in school from Key Stage 2.

In case anyone else was wondering, "Key Stage 2 is the legal term for the four years of schooling in maintained schools in England and Wales normally known as Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6, when the pupils are aged between 7 and 11."

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

#100

Post by teddyh »

hal9000xp wrote: post #58

My father bought me a russian clone of ZX Spectrum 48k in 1994 (in post soviet states, ZX Spectrum was hugely popular during 90s just like in UK during 80s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum My father was not an engineer and had no idea what to do with it. I also was completely uneducated (I was 10 years old boy in 1994) and basically ignored school classes (or prefered to sleep there). So I also had no idea…

You were frustrated by Windows 98 because you could not reason about it on the level you were used to. But think back on the earlier electronic enthusiasts who were used to thinking about resistors and voltages – they would have been just as frustrated by your ZX Spectrum because they would not have been able to reason about machine code by thinking about what voltages they mean. The level to reason about Windows 98 would instead be by thinking about installed programs, registry settings, DLLs, etc. If someone came to computers fresh and started with Windows 98, this level is what they would know.
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