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This is great. I'm working with a local elementary school teacher this fall to teach kids (9-10 year olds) programming. We plan to use Scratch as it gives immed

by biotech 14y ago

This is great. I'm working with a local elementary school teacher this fall to teach kids (9-10 year olds) programming. We plan to use Scratch as it gives immediate results and demonstrates many core programming concepts (variables, loops, conditionals, etc). If they take to it very quickly, we may try a real programming language. If anyone has experience teaching kids this age programming, or if you know of any resources available, please let me know. This is a new experience for me.

xyzzyb 14y ago
Hackety Hack! comes most quickly to mind: http://hackety.com/ http://hackety.com/
xyzzyb 14y ago
Oh, and Computer Science Unplugged has a ton of fantastic exercises for kids in that age group: http://csunplugged.org/ http://csunplugged.org/
ehsanu1 14y ago
Khan Academy has a pretty amazing live environment inside the browser: http://khanacademy.org/cs http://khanacademy.org/cs It's been tested to work pretty well with middle school children, so it seems right up your alley. John Resig (creator of jQuery) made it happen, his blog post on it: http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/ http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/
ktf 14y ago
Two new books on the way from No Starch Press: Super Scratch Programming Adventure (http://nostarch.com/scratch http://nostarch.com/scratch -- available now) and Python for Kids (http://nostarch.com/pythonforkids http://nostarch.com/pythonforkids -- available soon). The Scratch book is probably appropriate for ages 8 and up, the Python one for ages 10 and up (depending on the kid, of course). Disclaimer: I work as an editor for No Starch.
SkyMarshal 14y ago
http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html Especially check out the footnote, A Scheme Story: http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html
orangethirty 14y ago
I would absolutely love to be involved in a project like that one. Been wanting to develop one locally, and this might be the push I needed. Good luck with the project, and keep me update on how it progresses. My email is in my profile.

by biotech 14y ago

xyzzyb 14y ago

Hackety Hack! comes most quickly to mind: http://hackety.com/ http://hackety.com/

xyzzyb 14y ago

Oh, and Computer Science Unplugged has a ton of fantastic exercises for kids in that age group: http://csunplugged.org/ http://csunplugged.org/

ehsanu1 14y ago

Khan Academy has a pretty amazing live environment inside the browser: http://khanacademy.org/cs http://khanacademy.org/cs It's been tested to work pretty well with middle school children, so it seems right up your alley. John Resig (creator of jQuery) made it happen, his blog post on it: http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/ http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/

ktf 14y ago

Two new books on the way from No Starch Press: Super Scratch Programming Adventure (http://nostarch.com/scratch http://nostarch.com/scratch -- available now) and Python for Kids (http://nostarch.com/pythonforkids http://nostarch.com/pythonforkids -- available soon). The Scratch book is probably appropriate for ages 8 and up, the Python one for ages 10 and up (depending on the kid, of course). Disclaimer: I work as an editor for No Starch.

SkyMarshal 14y ago

http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html Especially check out the footnote, A Scheme Story: http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html

orangethirty 14y ago

I would absolutely love to be involved in a project like that one. Been wanting to develop one locally, and this might be the push I needed. Good luck with the project, and keep me update on how it progresses. My email is in my profile.