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Kids do program – Experiences from the course

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Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#11

Post by yumaikas »

thrower123 wrote: post #10
jasonkester wrote: post #5

I've personally never been a fan of drag/drop puzzle-piece coding things like Scratch for teaching programming to kids. It just seems like it's sending them down this dead end path. It took me a long time to find something better, and I've finally settled on Pico-8. It's the perfect combination of a simplified language that you have to actually type out in a stripped down editor, but with built in sprite and sound-ef…

QBasic's loss should be deeply mourned. Say what you will about it, it was almost the perfect beginner's environment. Simple, english-like syntax, good built-in documentation, support for graphics and sound right out of the box, and an IDE with a debugger.

> good built-in documentation

As someone who was a beginner in QBasic, the docs left a _lot_ to be desired, especially the graphics ones. As a teenager, I had a hard time make heads or tails of them.

Granted, that isn't to say I wouldn't be able to navigate them pretty well today, but I distinctly remember struggling to understand large parts of QBasic back in the day

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#12

Post by ArtWomb »

>>> with this individualization I was flabbergasted a few times

Don't be! Kids are digital natives. And given programming tools designed specifically for K-12 they will produce useful programs. Operational applications beyond mere Roblox zombie shooters to manage their increasingly complex young lives ;)

I was working with AWS last summer with the goal of creating a cloud based IDE for ChromeOS. And I feel the current barrier is programming languages and paradigms as they exist today. Visual logic languages and blocks programming, dating back to Turtle Graphics and the original Logo designs from 1967 by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon have been used for generations. But I could see the next evolution as being voice based. In the era of Siri and Alexa, perhaps kids should be composing blocks as parameterized tasks spoken in natural human langauge. This is a big undertaking and more than I can handle at the moment, but I have been experimenting with a Google Nest Mini, and even simple trivia games or joke applications can amuse kids for hours. "Hey Google, what's the weather like on Mars today" opens a portal to infinite curiosity and exploration about the cosmos we live in.

The other era of promise I've seen is the engagement around simple physics games and simulations. Think of the level design mode in 2D collision games like "Crush the Castle" or "Angry Birds". With the amount of available energy kids have they are able to build epic structures and take delight in watching them fracture unpredictably.

Bottom line is these games and interfaces have to get much better. And that requires targeted investment as well as vision

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#13

Post by ArtWomb »

raegis wrote: post #6
jasonkester wrote: post #5

I've personally never been a fan of drag/drop puzzle-piece coding things like Scratch for teaching programming to kids. It just seems like it's sending them down this dead end path. It took me a long time to find something better, and I've finally settled on Pico-8. It's the perfect combination of a simplified language that you have to actually type out in a stripped down editor, but with built in sprite and sound-ef…

Can you say something about your child's experience using Pico-8?

I tried introducing a few "under-10s" to the joys of Pico-8

But it actually requires tons of patience if you really drill down into it

I made the fatal mistake of firing up a GameBoy emulator to show them examples of what they may create and naturally they became obsessed with classic pokemeon crystal instead ;)

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#14

Post by jasonkester »

raegis wrote: post #6
jasonkester wrote: post #5

I've personally never been a fan of drag/drop puzzle-piece coding things like Scratch for teaching programming to kids. It just seems like it's sending them down this dead end path. It took me a long time to find something better, and I've finally settled on Pico-8. It's the perfect combination of a simplified language that you have to actually type out in a stripped down editor, but with built in sprite and sound-ef…

Can you say something about your child's experience using Pico-8?

Really positive thus far. We'd done a bit of javascript before in the browser so he had some fundamentals already but it was always a bit distracting to have to deal with the additional HTML and CSS bits, as well as having to introduce the file system and an external editor.

But yeah, the 8 year old had a game up and running the first day, and the 5 year old picked up enough just watching to suggest code changes.

I set up an old laptop to boot straight into fullscreen pico8 so they can just open the machine and get moving. Just like my overly romanticized memories of myself at the same age.

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#15

Post by edtechdev »

hmlwilliams wrote: post #4

Thank you for posting this, I also volunteer in a local school running a Code Club. I would be very much interested to know how you handle differences in age group. I sometimes struggle as the group ranges in age from 4/5 yo to 11 yo. Finding suitable material that can be approachable for all is nigh on impossible and being only one individual I do not have the capacity to have multiple courses running in the same ho…

The main challenge is students who can't read yet vs. those who can. In an after-school elementary school coding club I did a while back, I mainly used https://code.org/

If Scratch is too advanced for the youngest of kids, try ScratchJr: http://www.scratchjr.org/

The kids also really liked Lightbot. Unfortunately, the web version uses Flash which means it won't run nowadays on most computers. There are apps though, including a LightBotJr version for 4+.

Here's a google doc with several other elementary school coding & robotics resources, although I haven't updated it in a while: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r1b2CM1uTdST47IbWa7zlZYm...

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#16

Post by jasonkester »

aedron wrote: post #9
jasonkester wrote: post #5

I've personally never been a fan of drag/drop puzzle-piece coding things like Scratch for teaching programming to kids. It just seems like it's sending them down this dead end path. It took me a long time to find something better, and I've finally settled on Pico-8. It's the perfect combination of a simplified language that you have to actually type out in a stripped down editor, but with built in sprite and sound-ef…

It's not a dead end path, it's not far from how Unity works (of course you may consider Unity a dead end path). I think your stance is needlessly puritan. At some point, the program has to actually do something and put it on the screen. Whether that is printing lines of text or moving a colorful sprite in some way is really not that different, except one is a lot more appealing to a young learner.

Perhaps we're talking past each other. Scratch literally has little graphical puzzle pieces that you drag around and dock together to create programs.

Beyond that it's pretty similar to the thing I (and you) recommend.

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#17

Post by paulryanrogers »

thrower123 wrote: post #10
jasonkester wrote: post #5

I've personally never been a fan of drag/drop puzzle-piece coding things like Scratch for teaching programming to kids. It just seems like it's sending them down this dead end path. It took me a long time to find something better, and I've finally settled on Pico-8. It's the perfect combination of a simplified language that you have to actually type out in a stripped down editor, but with built in sprite and sound-ef…

QBasic's loss should be deeply mourned. Say what you will about it, it was almost the perfect beginner's environment. Simple, english-like syntax, good built-in documentation, support for graphics and sound right out of the box, and an IDE with a debugger.

Got QBasic in the 90's from a parent and bounced right off. Klick'n Play however consumed many hours. Or even batch files, if it meant I could get those Origin Systems games to run.

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#18

Post by jessaustin »

jasonkester wrote: post #16
aedron wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a dead end path, it's not far from how Unity works (of course you may consider Unity a dead end path). I think your stance is needlessly puritan. At some point, the program has to actually do something and put it on the screen. Whether that is printing lines of text or moving a colorful sprite in some way is really not that different, except one is a lot more appealing to a young learner.

Perhaps we're talking past each other. Scratch literally has little graphical puzzle pieces that you drag around and dock together to create programs. Beyond that it's pretty similar to the thing I (and you) recommend.

The purpose of the puzzle pieces is to prevent syntax errors, right? Do kids (or anyone, now that I consider the question) really need to deal with syntax errors?

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#19

Post by zozbot234 »

jasonkester wrote: post #16
aedron wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a dead end path, it's not far from how Unity works (of course you may consider Unity a dead end path). I think your stance is needlessly puritan. At some point, the program has to actually do something and put it on the screen. Whether that is printing lines of text or moving a colorful sprite in some way is really not that different, except one is a lot more appealing to a young learner.

Perhaps we're talking past each other. Scratch literally has little graphical puzzle pieces that you drag around and dock together to create programs. Beyond that it's pretty similar to the thing I (and you) recommend.

> Scratch literally has little graphical puzzle pieces that you drag around and dock together

You could build a "little graphical puzzle pieces" tool for any AST. You could even enable it to be driven with any combination of keypress input and mouse- or touch-based drag and drop. (Or even expose a text-based dump, for "free-form" editing by advanced users.)

Re: Kids do program – Experiences from the course

#20

Post by leanthonyrn »

jasonkester wrote: post #5

I've personally never been a fan of drag/drop puzzle-piece coding things like Scratch for teaching programming to kids. It just seems like it's sending them down this dead end path. It took me a long time to find something better, and I've finally settled on Pico-8. It's the perfect combination of a simplified language that you have to actually type out in a stripped down editor, but with built in sprite and sound-ef…

I do agree about Scratch. I have starting using the web based Pyret with my 9 year old. We mirror the math and geometry problems and solve them in the browser environment. The simplicity to code, run, eval is key.

https://www.pyret.org

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