Teaching kids to code
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- chrisRG
As a new year's resolution I'll start teaching my nephew and a few of his friends, how to code.
I plan to start that using http://scratch.mit.edu/.
They are 8-11 yrs old and even though they can easily use tablets, mobile and computers they have not a single idea of what coding is, I live in London and they live in a small town in the country side of Brazil, I'll do on Skype.
I know I need to start with the very basics and I'm starting to prepare some slides (classes) of 1-2hr per week.
Does anyone have any experience teaching kids anything and would like to share any tips? Anything helps!
- goldieboy0
Are you punishing your nephew, and his mates for any particular reason?
- <pango
- cheap labormoldero
- lolZOOP
- lol @ cheap laborgoldieboy
- hahabjladams
- Haha molderoHombre_Lobo
- lolohhhhhsnap
- orrinward20
I work for a company that sort of does this, called AppsforGood - appsforgood.org
We help schools in the UK to give a much better IT education than they currently offer, by working with industry experts and the schools to offer courses that fit into the existing IT curriculum requirements but teach IT skills in a "build-a-business-and-app" context.
Secondary school teachers teach the curriculum to their students, which includes lean/agile product development process mixed in with learning the practical stuff of computer usage and also code, prototyping etc. "Expert" volunteers visit the schools on demo-days and for product reviews and general advice, and at the end of the year the students enter their prototypes and pitches into a competition, and the winners' get their app produced and released to App Stores.
If you want to branch out and potentially offer your expertyness to a school (it's an occasional hour-long session with the kids, as and when suits you) then get in touch with me at
---
As someone that hated my IT education and felt restricted in the way it was taught as a box-ticking supplement to my English/Maths classes, and have since fallen in love with startupland, I really love what we're doing.
- The Expert application is here:
http://www.appsforgo…orrinward2 - UX on the site aint great right now. I've been hired to fix it.orrinward2
- The Expert application is here:
- ideaist0
Tommorows unpaid interns... TODAY!
; )
- doesnotexist0
teach kids that they will burn in hell for eternity then see how they turn out. start with the basics.
- *if they don't believe in santadoesnotexist
- first one is better :DZOOP
- monkeyshine0
Have you heard of Kodu? It's a visual coding language for creating games created by Microsoft Research. I've heard pretty good things about it.
- chrisRG0
@orrinward2 that looks very interesting, I'll definitely have a look at it, thanks! (the only problem is that I'm talking about kids that have no IT in school, absolutely nothing, Brazilian's public schools are awful, anyway, I really need to read thru your company to find out more, as I've just read the founder is from Rio de Janeiro) Thanks for the links.
@monkeyshine thanks for that!
- AfG is a branch off of CDi, which started in Brazil and is quite big in South America.orrinward2
- boobs0
What you should do is teach kids how to supervise coders. Then they can make real dough.
- doesnotexist0
^ teach them to come up with the ideas that need coders
that's where the bags of money are at
- dMullins0
I highly recommend the Web Development track from TeamTreehouse. It's much better than Codecademy, etc. in my personal opinion and experience. You might be able to structure your lessons better in following their path.
- maquito0
chrisRG, I'm from Uruguay. About 8-9 years ago, our former President Dr. Tabare Vazquez launched a program called "Plan Ceibal", in which every kid received a laptop payed by the government for teaching purposes at school.
Nowadays those kids are at highschool, and most of them have been pretty induced to programming, robotics, design, etc.
If you have a couple of minutes, take a look at this documentary... It's not precisely a "tip" for you, but it's related to your resolution, which BTW, I applaud.
- omg0
years from now, they're gonna hate you for making them use such an obsolete language. teach them how to learn, think, and imagine instead. The true building blocks of a genius.
- trooperbill0
yeah so they can turn out like every other schmuck who has a million dollar idea but not the ability to do anything about it :/
- uan0
philosophy (logic), then math, then coding.
- chrisRG0
@omg that's what I want to do, make them think, and mainly learn logic and problem solving.
For those saying they're gonna hate, obsolete, bla bla bla etc... please understand we are talking about kids in a poor country, they have no IT in school. I just want to give them one more opportunity in life, of course I don't want to teach them html5, C++ or the latest trend, i want to introduce them to computers logic, how to be creative using problem solving and interactivity. And as I am a coder, that's the only thing I can teach them.
- yurimon0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr…
this pretty good in modern applications. if you want them to be thinkers.
Also subjects in priority listing. 1) Math 2) Music 3) Geometry 4) Sciences/philosophyDetermining difficulty to age and ability not sure how that works but very important in child development. my suggestion is to look into child development as a subject for your own understanding in guiding the education of a child. This include nutrition, exercise as well as mental capacity.
- vaxorcist0
My grandfather was an engineer and metalworker at Boeing, he thought being a skilled machinist was the key to all sorts of things, so he tried to teach my dad how to make a screw on a machinists tools out of a block of metal.
My dad wasn't too interested, but soon after he discovered HAM radios, making his own amplifiers and tuners and morse code, and staying up all night communicating with people all over the world... this of course confused my grandfather at first but he was supportive after a while.
When I was a kid, my father bought me a make-your-own radio kit, with transistors, resistors, etc... and I tried to make it work, eventually getting it, but I wasn't ever that interested in Morse code...
But when my dad brought home a computer, I went nuts, staying up all night writing primitive 8 bit video games in 6502 assembler...
I can only imagine what my nephew might be up to.... I'd hesitate to try to turn him into a coder, as he might discover the next big thing anyway.... but of course, being open to stuff is great....
- ... sure. So morale is don;t even try to pass down knowledge, whether it remains applicable or not?ETM
- no, more like being open to new applications of similar thought processes.... maybe not so clear here...vaxorcist
- love this storyBaskerviIle
- ETM0
@chrisRG
Good on you. All I can say when teaching kids is they need to see results quickly to remain engaged. Broad scopes don't play well. Call it agile learning. Tiny little tasks that amount to something measureable quickly. Then their own interest (should it be piqued) will have them willing to pursue more detailed concepts later.
Those knocking him for trying are ridiculous. So what if a language becomes outdated. The general concepts learned can be transferred.
Plus it allows an early opportunity for these kids to see if they actually like it or not. For nothing more than their uncle's time and a bit of their own.
- tap0