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Lego ... and on a more serious note, work back from the sort of things he might like to make, not the tool. I have an 8 yr old - he gets on well with sketchup
by samlittlewood 16y ago
Lego
... and on a more serious note, work back from the sort of things he might like to make, not the tool.
I have an 8 yr old - he gets on well with sketchup and lego digital designer. I have shown him the sort of things that scratch and processing can do - he hasn't explored them beyond some tinkering.
The most likely candidate is lego mindstorms - he loves building with Lego, and I have already set him up with brick that does drive+steering. This hols, I will sort out all the tools on the house machine, and see what he makes of it.
- kls 16y agofor a boy, scratch is a good choice: http://scratch.mit.edu/ http://scratch.mit.edu/ for a girl: http://www.alice.org/ http://www.alice.org/ and storytelling Alice. My little girl is interested in Scratch but Alice just hit the nail on the head when it comes to keeping a girl interested in the subject. I am also going to second Mindstorm it starts them down the right path, hardware and software. It is worth the money. Whatever you use, you want to get to games fast, if you want to keep them interested. It is hard to use a traditional language because you can't get the feedback of a small game quickly. Now I know there are some great programmers that can, but with the coding boat anchor that is a kid trust me, you be lucky to get to a simple game even on the iPhone in a week. The only traditional tech that comes close is Flash or a 3d game engine scripting language. Back when Macromedia was around, Director was great for this, I know Adobe still sells it, but I don't know if it is worth it anymore, not having touched it, in over a decade.