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The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

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Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#21

Post by ca_tech »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue young kids are very good at logic and reasoning, but they lack self moderation controls and the context of The Real World. For example: Parent: "We're not going to have ice cream today." 3yo: "If we don't have ice cream today, can we have ice cream tomorrow?" Or, more commonly: 3yo: "What if we have ice cream today and no ice cream tomorrow?"

Or, even more commonly: 3yo: "What if we have ice cream today and ice cream tomorrow too?". Because small children know better than to constrain themselves to artificially restricted choices offered by parents. Source: experience from navigating such negotiations for the past 1.5 year with my now almost-5 daughter.

I wish I could find the source, but I'll relay it less eloquently. Children have a remarkable ability to ask for things they know they can't have. Their innocence gives them the audacity to ask for the impossible.

This always stuck with me. I sometimes catch myself when I self-curate questions to eliminate what I "know" will be impossible.

It also has led me to sometimes just say "yes" when I get those questions, just to impart a bit of expanded possibility into their life.

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#22

Post by ghostpepper »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #9

This is wonderful. There's a market for a pre-built set like this, with preplanned mazes to produce popular children's songs.

Just make sure your xylophone is actually in tune. Its sad how many cheap kids toys look like musical instruments but don’t sound correct

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#23

Post by dkasper »

SamBam wrote: post #19

I played Robot Turtles [1] with my kids, a boardgame with a similar idea: The kid can lay out cards that define what the turtle should do, and the adult moves the turtle exactly as instructed. Slightly different because, like in the original Logo, you can say "turn left" or "turn right," and it can be hard for the kids to remember that left and right are from the perspective of the turtle, whichever way they are curr…

I feel like a next level would be RoboRally. One of my all time favorite “programming” games. I think it may still be in production

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#24

Post by darepublic »

First off I love this analog programming idea. I have young children who I would love to try this out with.

Maybe missed something in skimming through the blog post but seems like primarily it's simulating doing up/down/left/right and navigating a character through a maze. For some reason this seems to be the most popular approach for apps that teach kids programming.

i.e. https://kodable.com, which one of my kids is into and https://codecombat.com, which has been around for a while now.

I think this paradigm (navigating a character using "move" function invocations) is good but kind of exhausts its usefulness after a while. I question whether my daughter learns coding this way or just is playing a turn based top down platformer. The most code like thing is when you use 'loops' to have characters repeat sequences of moves. I think when kids grok these things these apps become just types of glofiried education flavoured video games. There are a lot of things in kodable for instance that I feel are just basic web games with coding terms slapped on it.

https://scratch.mit.edu/ is more like 'programming' imo, even at the level of the objective -- having a blank canvas to create something. It seems a little advanced for my kids right now though.

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#27

Post by dylan604 »

How is this programming rather than just learning how to recognize musical notes. Also, would this then start to associate these colors with these notes in any weird ways later in life? I'm not talking synesthesia or anything, but I can remember the music I was listening to at the time of reading a book or think of the book when I hear the music. Unless, that's the programming

Re: The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children

#30

Post by mdonahoe »

throwaway89201 wrote: post #20
mdonahoe wrote: post #14

My daughter and I play "dadbot" where I'm the robot and she has to give me clear instructions on what I should do. It started after I showed her https://lightbot.com/ but we like the "screen-free" nature of dadbot better. Eventually she jumps on my back and the game doesn't last much longer because dadbot gets tired.

The first (Flash) version is playable here: https://dagobah.net/flash/light-bot.swf It has a pretty steep learning curve if you're not experienced with building a program step-by-step from another perspective and you're only able to run it. The mobile version is a lot more gentle and has more content, but I think less challenging and less fun.

Yeah she and I prefer the flash version too.

The music is great, and sitting together at a computer is a better collaborating experience than the mobile app.

Unless you're on a roadtrip.

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