coding suggestions for a 10 year old

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howienz

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#146924 2-Jun-2014 21:33

My 10 year son has dabbled with programming and is keen to learn more about coding but he complains that it costs a lot of money and is to complicated. He is currently using my old HP NB with xp.

Any suggestions appreciated

Thanks

hairy1

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#1058259 2-Jun-2014 21:40

Here are a couple that my boys are using

https://www.khanacademy.org/

http://scratch.mit.edu/

There is plenty around. It is a matter of stumbling on the right stuff! Both my boys have used NXT mindstorms and robolab as well for the Lego NXT. That is quite cool as it has a purpose and you can see mechanical results!

Good luck,

Cheers, Matt.

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sdav

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#1058279 2-Jun-2014 22:43

Totally OT but at 10 I was making clay animations with an old tape based video player. It meant the frame rate varied from half a second to 3 seconds as the tape spooled up and then stopped again haha... Kids these days have cool toys! Anyway... back to the topic with nothing useful added!

vexxxboy

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#1058286 2-Jun-2014 23:42

my son started on the RGP maker when he was about 10-11, which he loved . He could see his work taking shape and play it, and he could get as detailed as he wanted. it is amazing at what you can do with it . you can get a free trial to see if he likes it .

http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/products/programs/rpg-maker-xp

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LesF

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#1058446 3-Jun-2014 11:54

If graphics and simple game production is of interest I found this interesting, and the ebook download option is reasonably cheap:

HTML5 games development using css and javascript [http://www.packtpub.com/]

There are also free versions of Visual Studio for C# development etc tho I don't know if that will apply for XP, needs a good amount of processing power to run the IDE.

--
Les

JoshWright

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#1058451 3-Jun-2014 12:06

Scratch, Game Maker, and Small Basic would be my recommendations.

Small Basic was really the first language I felt was relatively powerful and easy to learn from.

Now I'm in High School I'm programming with Visual Basic .Net and C#, which are sort of the steps above Small Basic.

dclegg

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#1058465 3-Jun-2014 12:28

howienz: My 10 year son has dabbled with programming and is keen to learn more about coding but he complains that it costs a lot of money and is to complicated. He is currently using my old HP NB with xp.

Any suggestions appreciated

Thanks

While not strictly only about programming, he may be interested in the Zombiebot challenge, which will have him build an Arduino based robot. It will introduce some code, but is primarily concerned with the electronics portion. There is scope to tinker with the code though.

It costs around $150, which covers all parts required for the final product. I've been working my way through this with my 13 year old daughter, and she's loved it. All steps and parts required are listed on the website, so you should be able to source them from elsewhere too.

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tchart

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#1058525 3-Jun-2014 13:30

howienz: My 10 year son has dabbled with programming and is keen to learn more about coding but he complains that it costs a lot of money and is to complicated. He is currently using my old HP NB with xp.

Any suggestions appreciated

Thanks

Where in NZ are you?

I'm a mentor for Coder Dojo Porirua (http://coderdojo.com/). As far as I know there aren't any other ones in NZ but if you are in Wellington it may be an option.

Our kids have been doing hour of code (http://code.org/learn) this term.

howienz

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#1058725 3-Jun-2014 18:05

tchart:
howienz: My 10 year son has dabbled with programming and is keen to learn more about coding but he complains that it costs a lot of money and is to complicated. He is currently using my old HP NB with xp.

Any suggestions appreciated

Thanks

Where in NZ are you?

I'm a mentor for Coder Dojo Porirua (http://coderdojo.com/). As far as I know there aren't any other ones in NZ but if you are in Wellington it may be an option.

Our kids have been doing hour of code (http://code.org/learn) this term.

That's a shame we're in Auckland :(
Thanks for the suggestion and will check it out.
Cheers Maurice

howienz

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#1061206 8-Jun-2014 11:32

Thank you to all the suggestions.

Cheers
Maurice

NZWizzkid

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#1061214 8-Jun-2014 11:39

I see no one has mentioned the "Raspberry Pi"
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

It is intended for young coders to get real world results.