My New Strategy for Teaching Kids How to Code

99 点作者 jayro超过 11 年前

13 条评论

AceJohnny2超过 11 年前

The "Don't Patronize!" lesson is new and interesting to me. Come to think of it, I remember being first introduced to programming with Logo and its "drawing turtle" back in elementary school. While fun, it didn't spur much exploring for me then because I didn't see its possibilities out of that sandbox.Only when I encountered C, a "real language used by adults!" did I really get interested...

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ronilan超过 11 年前

Based on limited experience with younger kids and <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://scratch.mit.edu/</a> the "cuties" (i.e. cat image etc.) are a distraction. I have a hunch the real browser apps idea is not as crazy as it sounds for kids who can type.

pramalin超过 11 年前

I haven't read the article yet as Google+ is blocked at work. I'm coaching young kids for First Lego League tournaments this year and witnessed that the Legos Mindstorm robot platform (<a href="http://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms" rel="nofollow">http://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms</a>) makes the kids really excited about programming. Here, one is introduced to programming through very easy graphical environment and can progress to high level language based programming in C, Java etc over time.

jrochkind1超过 11 年前

i'm pretty sure this will work.Weren't most of us old school nerds programming with 'real tools' when we were 9-13, after all?Of course, the 'real tools' were a lot simpler then. But the motivation of actually building something real should not be underestimated.

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benohear超过 11 年前

Jason, this is amazing stuff.As the father of an 8 year old, I'd love to know how you got the kids to the point where "Create a web page called big-green-circle.html" and "Hint: use the events onmousedown and onmouseup" made any sense to them.(alternatively, just put your curriculum in an ebook - I'm sold already)

bobx11超过 11 年前

I learned basic first, then c++, THEN the web started and seeing how a little markup and some javascript or vbscript (yes, that was in ie back then) could make an interactive experience, my interest in programming and creating things exploded. I vividly recall the first time I made a static site, the first time I ranked in altavista for a term, or other things that people could related to. It connected a freakish hobby (telling a computer what to do) with the real world that other people could consume and relate to.Building static sites, I completely endorse.I don't understand why they should use a VPS to do it.

stephp超过 11 年前

100% agree with #1! I would have written the heading as something like "Be relevant," though-- a little more focused on what you were saying about using real tools.I remember thinking this while watching a TED talk by a guy who created one of the programming-for-kids websites. Like, cute game and all... and I suppose it ingrains concepts like variables and "for" loops and whatnot, but how intimidated will these kids be when they see real code files in an IDE? That's the real barrier to learning to code, I think-- especially for little girls.

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drakaal超过 11 年前

I taught Kindergartners to code using "Project Europa" it was truly Object oriented, didn't require them to learn syntax, and they loved making Robots do things. TC Lego Logo is a good choice as well.The problem with most devs trying to teach kids is they don't know how to make it approachable, and to have draw. "I can make the robot dance" is both. "I can make a web page pretty" doesn't appeal to every kid, and the amount you have to do to see something do something is a lot.

sopooneo超过 11 年前

Jason, if you're reading this: bravo. Finally finally finally an article about teaching by someone that is actually doing it and seeing it through. Your words ring true because you have such extensive first hand knowledge. I used to teach, and the amount of general misconception about the craft is very frustrating.Embarrassingly: how do you create a color changing circle on the screen? A div with border radius?Anyway, big fan of your podcast also.

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wil421超过 11 年前

I like these types of things and for someone who picked up an interest in coding while in college. I wish I had resources like this when I was a kid.I wish the programming community in general was more friendly to newcomers. I see people tell others that only CS people should be doing this don't even try a lot.

dpaluy超过 11 年前

I started teaching kids Ruby on Rails with Nitrous IO virtual web environment and it's pretty good. <a href="https://www.nitrous.io/join/ByKc2ypawx0" rel="nofollow">https://www.nitrous.io/join/ByKc2ypawx0</a>

krrishd超过 11 年前

Maybe you could check out teen2geek.com when its released? It's mainly for students like yours, so that could be helpful to them.

SkyMarshal超过 11 年前

This deserves a mention of the "Scheme Story" [1] linked in PG's essay "Beating the Averages" [2]. Conceptually similar to "don't patronize".However:>Unsurprisingly, I've found that gamification works.I suppose it does for plenty of people, but personally I'm not a fan. Saying "don't patronize" and then adding badges, points, and the like as enticements triggers some non-trivial amount of cognitive dissonance in me. Then again, I'm an adult, maybe it provides a structure children need and I've long since lost touch with that.But a deeper problem with it is that to gamify something you have to measure it exactly, you get more of what you measure, and it's all too easy to measure the wrong things (or even to measure the right ones but still have undesirable untintended consequences).It strikes too much of teaching to the test, which isn't the best way of cultivating creativity and innovation in students. Students will optimize for that gamification system, instead of optimizing for depth of understanding and creativity and, perhaps, self-efficacy in real world unstructured situations.Which also begs the question, when teaching young kids, should we be focusing on drilling them in a body of knowledge, or first developing a hacker mentality - curiosity, resourcefulness, and determination to figure this thing out and make it do what you want?In that light, I find the recent Wired article on the "radical new teaching method" [3] of just giving kids computers and seeing what they do with it much more interesting.It's well documented that children pick up foreign languages much quicker than adults by mere exposure, might it be the same for computer languages?How about try giving the class a bunch of Chromebooks w/ a terminal app and SSH, and their own AWS t1.micro, and see if they can figure out how to set up a website, using whatever means they're able to (even Amazon's excellent documentation).Get a static site up, then build on it from there - HMTL -> CSS -> JS -> backend whatever.Web development is not exactly hardcore programming, but few things are as exciting and captivating as seeing your own website on the Internet for the first time, and the combination of that plus the relative ease of figuring it out would be perfect for 9-13yr olds, I think.[1]: <a href="http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html</a>[2]: <a href="http://paulgraham.com/avg.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/avg.html</a>[3]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6553155" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6553155</a>

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