Teaching kids to code

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Delphinus

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#255987 9-Sep-2019 16:22

I had a friend ask about suggestions to help a "a keen young fella (11-12years) to learn coding & software skills".

"At this stage, he has mainly exhibited passionate enthusiasm for screen-based 'construction and design' (ie. Minecraft- Terraria- a bit of Sketch Up type activities). He's good at that... constantly generating ideas, and following them through. Very familiar with the creative process. He has good design ideas and a range of design interests.

He has taken some interest in 'Brainbox' sets, so maybe 'mechanical type stuff' would be more his line of interest at this stage.

So far regarding coding, he has enjoyed developing skills using Scratch, designing and making little screen-based games. The usual sorts of 'cause and effect' games, with visual and and audio effects."

Personally I learnt teaching myself QBASIC and using a a parallel port interface device to measure things and turn stuff on and off and draw realtime graphs for science fairs. But that was.... a while ago. I'm a bit out of the loop now. Any suggestions I can pass on?

darylblake

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#2313732 9-Sep-2019 16:47

Learning something like Javascript is probably a good start. Web browsers can be opened up and you can start to run scripts.

Do some Node.js tutorials as well. These will be a little more advanced. But interestingly you can start creating quite a lot of stuff, by just knowing a bit of JS.

Build out to other languages from there.

gzt

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#2313770 9-Sep-2019 17:46

MIT Scratch is popular for this. Drag and drop block interface with example programs and guidance. When kids begin to find blocks limiting they start to look at the underlying Scratch code and use that instead. Teaches the basics of control logic, loops, event detection. Typically with 2d games which can get as complex as required.

marpada

475 posts

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#2313779 9-Sep-2019 18:14

http://codecamp.co.nz/

CokemonZ

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#2313804 9-Sep-2019 19:32

One of my kids goes to scratchpad www.scratchpad.co.nz

TBH they do the same stuff as hour of code, but there are people there that help the kids work through it.

It's expensive, but if you're looking for someone to help them learn it's ok.

They also competed in the junior robocup which was pretty cool.

CYaBro

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#2314080 10-Sep-2019 10:35

CokemonZ:

One of my kids goes to scratchpad www.scratchpad.co.nz

TBH they do the same stuff as hour of code, but there are people there that help the kids work through it.

It's expensive, but if you're looking for someone to help them learn it's ok.

They also competed in the junior robocup which was pretty cool.

URL link is spelt wrong in there. :)

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

CokemonZ

1051 posts

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#2314122 10-Sep-2019 11:09

CYaBro:
CokemonZ:

One of my kids goes to scratchpad www.scratchpad.co.nz

TBH they do the same stuff as hour of code, but there are people there that help the kids work through it.

It's expensive, but if you're looking for someone to help them learn it's ok.

They also competed in the junior robocup which was pretty cool.

URL link is spelt wrong in there. :)

Works for me.

scuwp

3885 posts

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#2314124 10-Sep-2019 11:10

I think it's called Scratch, used a lot is schools. Both daughter and son have used it. Valuable place to start I think as it helps grow the building blocks before they go freestyle. Worked for my older son who is well on his way in the IT industry. Should check out what your school has to offer.

Lazy is such an ugly word, I prefer to call it selective participation

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Send money globally for less with Wise - one free transfer up to NZ$900 (affiliate link).

CYaBro

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#2314143 10-Sep-2019 11:22

CokemonZ:
CYaBro:

CokemonZ:

One of my kids goes to scratchpad www.scratchpad.co.nz

TBH they do the same stuff as hour of code, but there are people there that help the kids work through it.

It's expensive, but if you're looking for someone to help them learn it's ok.

They also competed in the junior robocup which was pretty cool.

URL link is spelt wrong in there. :)

Works for me.

That's because I changed it in my quoted post. :)

In your original post it doesn't work.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

Behodar

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#2314153 10-Sep-2019 11:28

Delphinus: Personally I learnt teaching myself QBASIC and using a a parallel port interface device to measure things and turn stuff on and off and draw realtime graphs for science fairs. But that was.... a while ago. I'm a bit out of the loop now. Any suggestions I can pass on?

If you want a "retro experience" then grab a Raspberry Pi (not a Pi 4; no drivers yet), install Risc OS, and use the built-in BASIC. It's a full BASIC environment (you can even write desktop apps with it, although C is better suited) and you can use the "GPIO module" to control the I/O pins on the Pi.

If you want something more modern then look at the other posts :)

Gordy7

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#2314181 10-Sep-2019 11:59

How do youngsters learn coding?

Surely coding is just a tool to implement an app or process using any programming language.

Are they taught to define an app or process before coding?

Do they just doodle with something like Scratchpad until something perhaps functional magically results?

However, I see from an earlier post that ScratchPad provides examples that youngsters can maybe pull apart and develop their own ideas and applications.

Me: I started out building crystal set radio receivers as a 10yo, then thru vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, microcontrollers and now some embeded programming.

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

Varkk

643 posts

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#2318428 16-Sep-2019 11:39

Gordy7:

How do youngsters learn coding?

Surely coding is just a tool to implement an app or process using any programming language.

Are they taught to define an app or process before coding?

Do they just doodle with something like Scratchpad until something perhaps functional magically results?

However, I see from an earlier post that ScratchPad provides examples that youngsters can maybe pull apart and develop their own ideas and applications.

Me: I started out building crystal set radio receivers as a 10yo, then thru vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, microcontrollers and now some embeded programming.

At my son's primary school they started with a game in new entrants where one of the kids was a robot and had to do what the controller told them. They then made a grid layout maze using tape on the floor. The controller had to tell the robot how to navigate the maze using just simple commands (forward, turn left, turn right etc). This leads in to another game where they have a robot they pre-program with the navigation instructions.

It all starts with simple logic and instructions and builds up from there.

mdf

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#2318478 16-Sep-2019 13:18

Littlest Miss MDF (aged 8) and I have a fabulous time at a local STEM club. While she quite enjoys coding, she is far more into the engineering side of things so loves soldering circuits or getting robots to do things. We're both getting into 3D printing and laser cutting stuff.

If you're after a kit, the mBot robot plus mBlock is a great place to start.