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Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

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Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#171

Post by nzealand »

hqwustl wrote: post #113
pryelluw wrote: post #9

Ive done something similar before. Went with a videogame and showed them how it editing the code changed the game. They started requesting silly changes and went from there. Super fun.

may I ask which videogame did you use?

Not OP, but I did the same thing.

Javascript Pacman.

I have a first grader who now knows how to edit the javascript file in Atom, increase the number of lives parameter, make edits to the map etc...

We also swapped out the pac man with my face, which is a source of continued amusement, especially the death animation.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#172

Post by twothamendment »

tetha wrote: post #166
ballenf wrote: post #28

Given their financial constraints, demonstrating to them how they could use a Raspberry Pi-level device to create a website or business accessible to people around the world might inspire. There's an unspoken dogma that without a $1000 phone and pricey Mac, you can't be a creator. Alternatively, demonstrate a very cheap Youtube or podcast production setup and show them how they could do a channel inexpensively. Commo…

>There's an unspoken dogma that without a $1000 phone and pricey Mac, you can't be a creator. You just made me realize an interesting cultural shift. I distinctly recall how an old 386 or 486 wasn't good enough to run the cool games anymore. But it was good enough for QBASIC and turbo pascal. So I spent time tinkering on that system.

I could create on my 486, but since it didn't have a math co-processor I could only create a Doom level, I couldn't build them. I spent hours blindly building and checking it over and hoping that when I put it on a floppy and took it to my friend's house that all the doors would work, the elevations were correct, etc. Good times.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#173

Post by MarcScott »

I have a CodeClub teaching 10 and 11 year olds, once a week.

Two weeks ago we built a robot buggy that can be remote controlled from an Android phone. They loved it, and were really involved in the build and programming. In Python, it's a dozen lines of code.

Here's the link to the build -https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/build-a-buggy

And this for the remote control - https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/remote-control-...

With the cost of the RPi included you're looking at a £50 robot, max.

Checkout other projects on projects.raspberrypi.org for more inspiration. It's what we do for a living.

Disclaimer, in case it was not obvious, I work for the Raspberry Pi Fou dation.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#174

Post by joeld42 »

I did a demo to a younger classroom that was a big hit. I took a simple platforming example video game, had them draw characters and enemies and stuff on a whiteboard, then took a picture with my phone and dropped them into the game. The most-time consuming part was "magic wanding" the background away. They weren't animated or even cut out very cleanly but the kids just loved being able to control something that they drew themselves a few minutes earlier.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#175

Post by yorwba »

garrettr_ wrote: post #66

I was recently asked by a friend who teaches 5th graders to do something similar for their school's "career month." I tried a few different things, and found the most successful was showing them how to use a web browser's built-in developer tools to inspect the source of and make live modifications to web pages. My reasoning behind this exercise was: - I checked in with their teacher ahead of time and confirmed that…

To enable experimentation like that, I'd like to see mobile browsers include developer tools as well. More and more people grow up using a smart phone as their main computing device, and I think they should be given the opportunity to tinker with that as well.

I realize that developer tools are information dense and fitting them on a smartphone screen would require a significant effort to redesign the layout (especially when you want to see the website, the code you're editing and the on-screen keyboard at the same time), so browsers might not want to spend effort to include a niche feature like that. Maybe it would be possible to connect to the remote debugger with an on-device client? Then it could be developed as a separate project.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#176

Post by alok-g »

imhoguy wrote: post #161
alok-g wrote: post #24

I have held many such sessions for kids. Instead of showing them the latest and the greatest: - I point them to the technology already around them, in their daily use, that they see as too obvious by now. And then share stories of how all that had come about to be. Simple things like soap, door handles, stairs, pencils, clocks, ... - Ask them simple questions that they never asked. How does an eraser erase pencil mar…

Exactly, start with basic but overlooked concepts. Give them magnifying glass and ask to watch subpixels while playing with MS Paint color fill. As 5th grader I learned electricity with some old book from my father's shelf which explained it with hydraulic analogy[1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_analogy

Exactly! I have delivered a three-hour session going from the meaning of voltage to understanding how a simple microprocessor works, using that analogy! This was intended for software developers and titled, "How does a Processor Execute my Code! And Why?!" I am planning to open it up outside my employer company. Also, am looking for some easy way to make water flow animations to go with it. :-)

Having explained many concepts to my six year old son in an easy to understand way (things that would otherwise be out of reach even for high-schoolers) and in the form of bedtime stories (!), someone suggested me to open those up by writing a children story book. Coming one day ... :-)

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#177

Post by alok-g »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #93
alok-g wrote: post #24

I have held many such sessions for kids. Instead of showing them the latest and the greatest: - I point them to the technology already around them, in their daily use, that they see as too obvious by now. And then share stories of how all that had come about to be. Simple things like soap, door handles, stairs, pencils, clocks, ... - Ask them simple questions that they never asked. How does an eraser erase pencil mar…

> Ask them simple questions that they never asked. This is key to teachinging about high-tech engineering: don't paint over vast swathes of the stack with "it just works" or "it automatically knows". Take one specific thing it does, and drill down the pyramid, from high-level ideas about user intents way down through platforms and compilers and operating systems to wires and semiconductors. There's nothing particular…

>> high-level ideas about user intents way down through platforms and compilers and operating systems to wires and semiconductors.

Indeed. I did one like that for software developers, just in the reverse order (starting from charges and voltage all the way up to how a microprocessor executes code). I just wrote about that in this comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20088868

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#178

Post by penagwin »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #116
penagwin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh gosh I just realized I don't have the self control to teach children. Context: I'm a software engineer. All my explanations would be the "realistic" but kinda sarcastic answers. Computer Engineer - Copy's pastes code until it works. Rocket Scientists - Spend 50% of the time designing rockets, and 50% of their time hoping the rocket doesn't explode. Locomotive Engineer - Whoops this isn't a real engineer! /s /s

So what do you call an engineer that designs/optimises/etc. locomotives?

I'd go with SapporoChris's answer with Mechanical Engineer.

Locomotive Engineer's basically are the one in charge of operating the locomotive. What most people think of as a "Conductor" is actually a lower level job and is mostly paper work from what I hear.

Source: Close friend is a Locomotive Engineer in Canada.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#179

Post by quickthrower2 »

pryelluw wrote: post #9

Ive done something similar before. Went with a videogame and showed them how it editing the code changed the game. They started requesting silly changes and went from there. Super fun.

Perhaps Minecraft would be the ideal game, assuming the children haven't already played it.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#180

Post by umvi »

gwd wrote: post #58
pryelluw wrote: post #9

Ive done something similar before. Went with a videogame and showed them how it editing the code changed the game. They started requesting silly changes and went from there. Super fun.

I think this is one of the key things -- so many things in technology are just given to you as-is with no way to change them. The realization that all of this is mutable -- that the computer is just going along doing exactly what it was told, and that you can be the one to tell it what to do -- is a real eye-opener for a lot of people (children or not).

> I think this is one of the key things -- so many things in technology are just given to you as-is with no way to change them

This is the main reason RMS went from being a developer to an activist. He was (and is) trying to prevent this from happening.

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