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Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

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

#31

Post by wccrawford »

The other day, out of the blue, my young niece starts telling me about Scratch (online visual programming site), and how she's written some stuff on it. She then proceeds to start telling me about other people, how they had done things wrong, and how she knew how to fix them.

I was so freaking proud. I had never tried to teach her to program because she's as hardheaded as I am. Trying to force it on her was doomed to failure. But because she discovered it, she bit in pretty good. She's playing at being a cheerleader now, but I can't help but think the experience will help her later, even if she never programs again.

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

#32

Post by sunraa »

zimmru wrote: post #26

Another great resource for teaching kids programming that I haven't seen mentioned in the discussion is Scratch ( http://scratch.mit.edu/ ). My daughter (just turned 11) has been playing with it for a couple years now and it's pretty amazing the stuff she can create. The best part is that the scratch website hosts projects for free, so she can share them with friends and family. It's a great introduction to programmi…

I'm about to do an multi-week after school "Intro to Programming" session at our local elementary/middle school in Scratch in Baltimore city. 8-10 weeks for 5th to 7th graders. It is an urban school with quite a range in the kids' abilities and not all kids have working computers at home. It'll be a challenge but I think the kids will surprise me.

Last school year I taught 2nd graders a little bit using Scratch and many of them got it and with a bit more exposure this year they could be creating programs on their own.

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

#33

Post by viscanti »

cbhl wrote: post #17
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've always thought that you'd have to worry about "technical elitists" dismissing HTML/JavaScript as "not programming", since that's what I experienced when I was growing up. On the other hand, Khan Academy CS chose JavaScript because it made it easy to share the results with others. So... nowadays I wonder.

Haters are going to hate. It doesn't matter what field/discipline you're in. JavaScript is as much a proper programming language as Python or Ruby or Lua. They're all high level scripting languages that do roughly the same things. Only one of them is natively in every browser (JavaScript). JavaScript turns out to be fairly forgiving (you can intentionally or unintentionally leave out semicolons and it will generally still run as intended).

I wouldn't worry about "technical elitists". It's really the Dunning-Kruger effect at play more than anything. The less someone knows, the more they think they know, and the more likely they are to be outspoken about people they think are "below" them. There's also a fair amount of disdain between people in different programming paradigms (OO vs Functional, Low-level vs High-level languages, etc). NONE of that matters though. Build cool stuff and keep getting better. Let the "technical elitists" spend all their time worrying about what is or is not proper programming while you get on with your life, build cool stuff and continue to get better.

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

#34

Post by EliRivers »

Are there plumbing pages where people teach their children to plumb, or dry-walling speciality sites where folks discuss how to get their kids into plasterwork? Is this just a few cases, or is there something about programming that makes people think it should be done by everyone? I recall not so long ago a thread about how programming should be taught at school alongside English (read "mastery of relevant language" for non-English speaking nations) and Maths.

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

#35

Post by jessriedel »

EliRivers wrote: post #34

Are there plumbing pages where people teach their children to plumb, or dry-walling speciality sites where folks discuss how to get their kids into plasterwork? Is this just a few cases, or is there something about programming that makes people think it should be done by everyone? I recall not so long ago a thread about how programming should be taught at school alongside English (read "mastery of relevant language"…

> is there something about programming that makes people think it should be done by everyone?

Yes.

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

#36

Post by biotech »

This is great. I'm working with a local elementary school teacher this fall to teach kids (9-10 year olds) programming. We plan to use Scratch as it gives immediate results and demonstrates many core programming concepts (variables, loops, conditionals, etc). If they take to it very quickly, we may try a real programming language.

If anyone has experience teaching kids this age programming, or if you know of any resources available, please let me know. This is a new experience for me.

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

#38

Post by EliRivers »

jessriedel wrote: post #35
EliRivers wrote: post #34

Are there plumbing pages where people teach their children to plumb, or dry-walling speciality sites where folks discuss how to get their kids into plasterwork? Is this just a few cases, or is there something about programming that makes people think it should be done by everyone? I recall not so long ago a thread about how programming should be taught at school alongside English (read "mastery of relevant language"…

> is there something about programming that makes people think it should be done by everyone? Yes.

Is it possible for you to expand on this? To give just one example, plumbing is far more fundamental to civilisation and we're happy to have a trained cadre of plumbers, and for most people to go their whole lives with no knowledge of it. Do plumbers wander round shaking their heads and wondering why nobody else knows how to do it?

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

#39

Post by xyzzyb »

biotech wrote: post #36

This is great. I'm working with a local elementary school teacher this fall to teach kids (9-10 year olds) programming. We plan to use Scratch as it gives immediate results and demonstrates many core programming concepts (variables, loops, conditionals, etc). If they take to it very quickly, we may try a real programming language. If anyone has experience teaching kids this age programming, or if you know of any reso…

Hackety Hack! comes most quickly to mind: http://hackety.com/

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

#40

Post by xyzzyb »

biotech wrote: post #36

This is great. I'm working with a local elementary school teacher this fall to teach kids (9-10 year olds) programming. We plan to use Scratch as it gives immediate results and demonstrates many core programming concepts (variables, loops, conditionals, etc). If they take to it very quickly, we may try a real programming language. If anyone has experience teaching kids this age programming, or if you know of any reso…

Oh, and Computer Science Unplugged has a ton of fantastic exercises for kids in that age group: http://csunplugged.org/
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