Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#1

Post by orangethirty » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 12:31 PM UTC

Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.
orangethirty.blogspot.com

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#2

Post by evolve2k » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:26 PM UTC

Beautiful story very inspiring thanks for sharing it with us.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#3

Post by dkhenry » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:31 PM UTC

I am continually amazed at the capabilities of kids. Their ability to understand whats presented to them is astounding. I really think one of the problems with the education system is we have this idea that everyone must progress in all areas at the same rate, and we stop teaching kids new things until they understand the set of things they "should" know for their age.

In a structured school system she wouldn't be allowed to program a computer until she learned the right amounts of geography and english.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#4

Post by dhume » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:33 PM UTC

evolve2k wrote: post #2

Beautiful story very inspiring thanks for sharing it with us.

Is it? I just get a blank page.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#5

Post by apaprocki » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:40 PM UTC

Has there ever been a serious study which tries to determine at what age children are able to grasp programming constructs? (loops, functions, etc) We were all once little children and I know my own personal timeline, but I can't say I've ever seen a large collection of data points analyzed.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#6

Post by cygwin98 » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

I respect the efforts the author put in to teach kids how to program. That being said, I really don't think HTML/Javascript is the right choice for kids. The web stack is even considered messy from professional web programers' perspective.

My son will turn seven soon. I did some research on programming languages/kits for kids around that age. I finally settled down on Robomind, which is more or less of a modern variant of LOGO. Instead of the well-known turtle, you have a Robot that hovers around. We tried it the first time last night, the boy seemed intrigued. I hope Robomind can warm him up and make him ready for the more advanced kit like Lego MindStorm, which I promised him as the birthday gift.

We'll see how it goes.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#7

Post by arkitaip » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:49 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #3

I am continually amazed at the capabilities of kids. Their ability to understand whats presented to them is astounding. I really think one of the problems with the education system is we have this idea that everyone must progress in all areas at the same rate, and we stop teaching kids new things until they understand the set of things they "should" know for their age. In a structured school system she wouldn't be al…

Or maybe we're expecting too much of the school system when it should be the responsibility of parents to teach their skills valuable skills. School isn't the solution to all our problems.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#8

Post by jbattle » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:50 PM UTC

cygwin98 wrote: post #6

I respect the efforts the author put in to teach kids how to program. That being said, I really don't think HTML/Javascript is the right choice for kids. The web stack is even considered messy from professional web programers' perspective. My son will turn seven soon. I did some research on programming languages/kits for kids around that age. I finally settled down on Robomind, which is more or less of a modern varia…

The big upside with starting with web pages is it is SUPER easy for the kids to show off their work. All kids are motivated differently, but for my son at least being able to get encouragement from friends at school and family members was a big motivation.

But good luck with Robomind and if that doesn't click, try something else (took my son like four different languages until he started to find some that really worked for him)

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#9

Post by Sakes » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:52 PM UTC

cygwin98 wrote: post #6

I respect the efforts the author put in to teach kids how to program. That being said, I really don't think HTML/Javascript is the right choice for kids. The web stack is even considered messy from professional web programers' perspective. My son will turn seven soon. I did some research on programming languages/kits for kids around that age. I finally settled down on Robomind, which is more or less of a modern varia…

I honestly think the differences between any starting tech is negligible. The only thing that matters is the child learns that she has the power to create (or figure out how to create) things that she wants that did not exist before she created them.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#10

Post by driverdan » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 1:59 PM UTC

cygwin98 wrote: post #6

I respect the efforts the author put in to teach kids how to program. That being said, I really don't think HTML/Javascript is the right choice for kids. The web stack is even considered messy from professional web programers' perspective. My son will turn seven soon. I did some research on programming languages/kits for kids around that age. I finally settled down on Robomind, which is more or less of a modern varia…

The web stack is only messy once you get beyond the basics and want to make it cross browser. As a teaching tool it doesn't need to have a modern design, look the same to everyone and work in IE6.

I had similar thoughts to jbattle. Giving kids the ability to do something, put it online, and make it instantly accesible to their friends and the world is huge. It also helps open their mind to how accesible their creations can be.

That said, Robomind does look pretty cool. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it when I was a kid.