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MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

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Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#21

Post by sdg1 »

tarr11 wrote: post #19

I love Scratch, but it is irresponsible of them to still not be using SSL.

Almost there with SSL - we will be rolling it out for testing by the community in the next month, and we hope to get the entire site SSL only by summer 2015. Sorry it took so long.

(One of the annoying things when we tried rolling SSL out a while back: we got a bunch of reports that users with OS X couldn't access the site - turns out the OS X's parental control blocks SSL sites by default unless explicitly allowed in the whitelist: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201813)

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#22

Post by sdg1 »

thunderbong wrote: post #16
VonGuard wrote: post #5

We have been teaching kids Scratch for 3 years in a weekly free class in downtown Oakland. The response has been wonderful. It unleashes the creativity in kids, and some children that are utterly silent and shy open right up when they have questions about how to make their game do this or that. I have literally heard kids shout out "Oh! That's why we learned those x y things in school!" when learning how to move spri…

I'm also looking at using Scratch in a school curriculum starting with children from grade 4 through grade 6. Are there any course ware, workbooks available for those grades? How old are the children in your class? Can you give any other suggestions about other programming languages that can be used as kids grow older?

You should take a look at the ScratchEd community - they have a lot of resources for educators: http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/

Also, we have started to build a Scratch Extension system, where Javascript can be used to extend the functionality of Scratch (you can define blocks that call web-apis, etc.) We will have more information about that in 2015.

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#23

Post by fractallyte »

waimate01 wrote: post #20
thunderbong wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also looking at using Scratch in a school curriculum starting with children from grade 4 through grade 6. Are there any course ware, workbooks available for those grades? How old are the children in your class? Can you give any other suggestions about other programming languages that can be used as kids grow older?

Scratch is totally awesome, but the huge conundrum has always been where to go "after Scratch". Python isn't it, because its too textural and you can't easily share graphical games unless the recipient also has pyGame installed. Javascript hasn't been it for a lack of appropriate on-ramp, and many of the available resources (eg, CodeAcademy) are too vocationally-based and lack the fun of Scratch. But there's now a fr…

Why not Smalltalk? It was, after all, designed for kids (and look where that got us... Java - pffft!)

Squeak has a comprehensive ecosystem; here's an excellent book for high-schoolers: http://www.apress.com/9781590594919

The complete pdf can also be downloaded from the associated website: http://rmod.lille.inria.fr/botsinc/

Now imagine this combined with hardware robots...

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#24

Post by jonaldomo »

waimate01 wrote: post #20
thunderbong wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also looking at using Scratch in a school curriculum starting with children from grade 4 through grade 6. Are there any course ware, workbooks available for those grades? How old are the children in your class? Can you give any other suggestions about other programming languages that can be used as kids grow older?

Scratch is totally awesome, but the huge conundrum has always been where to go "after Scratch". Python isn't it, because its too textural and you can't easily share graphical games unless the recipient also has pyGame installed. Javascript hasn't been it for a lack of appropriate on-ramp, and many of the available resources (eg, CodeAcademy) are too vocationally-based and lack the fun of Scratch. But there's now a fr…

Lookup the concept of turtles: Netlogo http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/dictionary.html and Python https://docs.python.org/2/library/turtle.html

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#25

Post by krsmith35 »

thunderbong wrote: post #16
VonGuard wrote: post #5

We have been teaching kids Scratch for 3 years in a weekly free class in downtown Oakland. The response has been wonderful. It unleashes the creativity in kids, and some children that are utterly silent and shy open right up when they have questions about how to make their game do this or that. I have literally heard kids shout out "Oh! That's why we learned those x y things in school!" when learning how to move spri…

I'm also looking at using Scratch in a school curriculum starting with children from grade 4 through grade 6. Are there any course ware, workbooks available for those grades? How old are the children in your class? Can you give any other suggestions about other programming languages that can be used as kids grow older?

I run a nonprofit in Arizona where we introduce 8-13 year olds to coding at 10 libraries and other locations. We start the young ones with code.org for a "quick win" and most of them dig into scratch with relish by the second week. I agree with the original post about seeing the creativity unleashed. It's amazing.

After scratch we have seen some of the kids get excited about js mostly through the khan academy resources (have you tried it)? Also code combat has been a recent favorite.

Our older and more advanced coders are ok with codecademy.

Also we have some that really want to get their work out to the world, so after a while on scratch they teach themselves html and css.

We are very particular about not lecturing, not forcing a learning approach, just facilitating as different learning styles find their way.

Also if anyone is interested we are giving away our "code club kit" including resources for starting a code club. It has been the most rewarding part of my career. Just let me know and I'll send it in email.

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#26

Post by DeepDuh »

A few years ago I looked up what's available to make a kid interested in programming when I found this. I ended up spending quite a few days doing my own little project... that I'm almost not ashamed to link here ;-).

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/941811/

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#27

Post by mlady »

krsmith35 wrote: post #25
thunderbong wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also looking at using Scratch in a school curriculum starting with children from grade 4 through grade 6. Are there any course ware, workbooks available for those grades? How old are the children in your class? Can you give any other suggestions about other programming languages that can be used as kids grow older?

I run a nonprofit in Arizona where we introduce 8-13 year olds to coding at 10 libraries and other locations. We start the young ones with code.org for a "quick win" and most of them dig into scratch with relish by the second week. I agree with the original post about seeing the creativity unleashed. It's amazing. After scratch we have seen some of the kids get excited about js mostly through the khan academy resourc…

I'm starting a coding club for a few kids in my neighborhood and would appreciate any help with introduction resources!

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#29

Post by VonGuard »

krsmith35 wrote: post #25
thunderbong wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also looking at using Scratch in a school curriculum starting with children from grade 4 through grade 6. Are there any course ware, workbooks available for those grades? How old are the children in your class? Can you give any other suggestions about other programming languages that can be used as kids grow older?

I run a nonprofit in Arizona where we introduce 8-13 year olds to coding at 10 libraries and other locations. We start the young ones with code.org for a "quick win" and most of them dig into scratch with relish by the second week. I agree with the original post about seeing the creativity unleashed. It's amazing. After scratch we have seen some of the kids get excited about js mostly through the khan academy resourc…

Gimme gimme gimme! alex at themade.org thanks!

Re: MIT Scratch – Teach kids to program stories, games, and animations

#30

Post by krsmith35 »

mlady wrote: post #27
krsmith35 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a nonprofit in Arizona where we introduce 8-13 year olds to coding at 10 libraries and other locations. We start the young ones with code.org for a "quick win" and most of them dig into scratch with relish by the second week. I agree with the original post about seeing the creativity unleashed. It's amazing. After scratch we have seen some of the kids get excited about js mostly through the khan academy resourc…

I'm starting a coding club for a few kids in my neighborhood and would appreciate any help with introduction resources!

just email me at my HN username at gmail and I'll send it
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