Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Kids and Programming
So I'm interested in exposing my older son to some programming stuff. He has expressed interest in making a Ben 10 quiz game. His idea is to have people match images of the villians to Back in the early mists of time, programming seemed to be more kid friendly with lots of magazines about programming..I even took a class at a Radio Shack on a TRS-80 that was a true blast.
So, here's a link to the Wikipedia entry on Educational Programming Languages. Oddly enough, my friend Simon sent me a link to a talk about childhood dreams the other day. Turns out the speaker was one of the developers of Alice. Here's the link to the talk. It's long but worth it. Make sure you have some hankies at the end, especially if you have young kids. Randy Pausch reminds me a lot of Simon. They have some similar mannerisms. And I think a similar philosophy about life being fun.
Anyway, take a look at the entry and let me know if you've had any experience with any of them. I'm thinking that Ben can take things a bit further than his original idea with some of the programs available.
I'm not so sure that I want to use a textbook for teaching it either. My current plan is to learn it myself and design mini-lessons to incrementally teach tools. Or, I can just let him rip.
So, here's a link to the Wikipedia entry on Educational Programming Languages. Oddly enough, my friend Simon sent me a link to a talk about childhood dreams the other day. Turns out the speaker was one of the developers of Alice. Here's the link to the talk. It's long but worth it. Make sure you have some hankies at the end, especially if you have young kids. Randy Pausch reminds me a lot of Simon. They have some similar mannerisms. And I think a similar philosophy about life being fun.
Anyway, take a look at the entry and let me know if you've had any experience with any of them. I'm thinking that Ben can take things a bit further than his original idea with some of the programs available.
I'm not so sure that I want to use a textbook for teaching it either. My current plan is to learn it myself and design mini-lessons to incrementally teach tools. Or, I can just let him rip.
