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Most "Teach Kids Programming" are build on the idea that programming means sitting still in front of a keyboard typing stuff. Most kids under 10 can manage at m
by harryf 11y ago
Most "Teach Kids Programming" are build on the idea that programming means sitting still in front of a keyboard typing stuff. Most kids under 10 can manage at most about 15 minutes of that before getting bored and either wanting to get up and jump around or watch YouTube / play games.
Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://scratch.mit.edu/) helps a bit but it's still "stuck in front of a screen" and reaching a "reward", in terms of a meaningful result takes longer than the average childs attention span.
Best starting point I've ever seen is this "How to Train your Robot" real world game - https://drtechniko.com/2014/07/09/teaching-the-how-to-train-your-robot-to-jump-game/ https://drtechniko.com/2014/07/09/teaching-the-how-to-train-... - which is based on the idea that adults play the robots and kids get to tell them what to do. That's immediately a fascinating starting point for kids to hold their interest while they pick up some basic ideas of logic and creating instruction sets for a 3rd party to execute.
- jvvw 11y agoAttention span varies considerably from one child to another. The 'How to Train your Robot' game appears to be aimed at a 2.5 year old and as the mother of a 2.5 year old myself, it seems ludicrous to try to get a child that age into programming. On the other hand, my 5 year old needs something more than directing robots around - Robot Turtles is too easy now for example, but he does enjoy playing with ScratchJr on the iPad, sometimes for quite long periods of time. It also of course has the big advantage at this age of not requiring literacy.
- harryf 11y ago> The 'How to Train your Robot' game appears to be aimed at a 2.5 year old and as the mother of a 2.5 year old myself, it seems ludicrous to try to get a child that age into programming. I've found it works best as a party game with a group of kids where it can have a competitive dimension - whoever can "write a program" to get the "robot" to achieve some goal fist e.g. navigate an obstacle course and pick up an object. Even better when kids are in pairs; one pair might focus on winning, another pair might get absorbed on getting the adult to do stupid things which is hilarious etc. And from what I've seen it can be fun for kids up to 10 at least, if you add some additional dimensions e.g. "robots" that can "fight" by throwing rolled up paper balls at other.
- progressive_dad 11y agoSimilar to ScratchJr, you might want to look at Hopscotch, Tynker, and Codea as well.
- maroonblazer 11y agoThere was an iOS game out about 5-ish years ago where you did essentially this. You had a robot on a small grid/map with a start and end point. The objective was to get the robot from the start to the end. You had a set of icons/commands, each one indicating a different instruction (step forward, turn left, turn right, jump, etc) that you used to navigate the robot. Successfully completing each map unlocked a more challenging map with more steps and obstacles to avoid. It also gave you a way to combine a set of instructions into what was essentially a function/method so that you could then call the function/method instead of retyping all the steps. My kid was too young at the time but now that he's older I can't find it or it was never updated. Anyone happen to know of this app, or something similar?
- nvusuvu 11y agoLightbot. My kids liked the free version.
- maroonblazer 11y agoThat's it, thanks! Also looks like they've updated it considerably. I'm going to stick my kid in front of this and see how long it sticks.