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Programming for kids - this looks promising

 
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Barefoot Andrew
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Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 12 9:37 am    Post subject: Programming for kids - this looks promising Reply with quote
    

Quote:
Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.


https://scratch.mit.edu/

A.

toggle



Joined: 30 Dec 2006
Posts: 11622
Location: truro
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 12 10:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

might see what my lad thinks of this

ninat



Joined: 01 Feb 2009
Posts: 606
Location: Scotland
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 12 2:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

ooh thanks for this- I think my son will love it

anoia



Joined: 14 Nov 2010
Posts: 47
Location: Hertfordshire
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 12 6:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I love this! We've been using it at school for a few years, and the children (years 5 and 6 so 9, 10 or 11 years old) mostly get on really well with it. It's always harder to stop them at the end of the lesson than it is to get them started! We do find they need a fair bit of help at first, with the order of things rather than how to actually build up a script/program. It's a lot easier than trying to type things in exactly right though.
Quite a few go away and download it at home too, which is easy because it's free and you can get it for Windows, Mac or Linux.

chez



Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35934
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 12 8:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Thanks, BA.

oldish chris



Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 12 9:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

My Chemistry teacher (decades ago) made it easier to understand science by going through the history of the subject, for example, progressing from Dalton's theory of atoms and molecules through Mendeleev to the modern Periodic Table.

A similar approach to computer programming would start with machine code and Assembler, through the higher level languages, the need for design and then how to create modern graphical systems. I'd ban the use of BASIC or any of its derivatives. ("B" stands for beginner!)

dpack



Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45374
Location: yes
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 12 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

binary and hex have a place but you dont teach cabinet making by planting a walnut tree and hoping it will grow to useful size in your lifetime

a simple tool to create interesting systems is the way to teach creating systems imho

i used to spend far too much time looking for typos in code which makes the simplest tasks unpleasant ,

knowing how high level language is created is useful ,creating from binary is frustratingly slow

bbc basic and visual basic trained a lot of the "older"generation ,maybe this will train the next but one

OP



Joined: 28 Jul 2006
Posts: 4661
Location: Yorkshire
PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 12 8:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I also grew up on BBC Basic, but things have changed and I don't think modern children would tolerate that ratio of input (hundreds of lines of code typed by hand) to output (e.g. a program that converts Fahrenheit to Centigrade). I'm sure Spitfire pilots feel the same about today's fly-by-wire jet pilots. Progress has been made but something has been lost.

If anyone wants to know what real programming is about, you can still buy "The C Programming Language", often known as "K&R" after the authors.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/C-Programming-Language-2nd/dp/0131103628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327522471&sr=8-1

It's effectively a dead language now, but it remains an amazing insight into the essence of programming, and the concepts it introduced were adopted in all modern computer languages. I can still remember staying late after work for many weeks to photocopy pages of this book, in the days before I could afford my own copy (I have a feeling the price hasn't changed but inflation has caught up with it). This is not "programming for dummies", quite the opposite, you'll have to work to understand it - but that's a good thing. It helps that unlike most geek-books, it is written in a highly literary style. Even today its influence is everywhere - it was K&R who taught us that lower case was good!

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