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Two things: 1) I have neither a computer science nor a teaching background. (I'm a self-taught web-dev hack) but I am interested in introducing local kids to p

Two things: 1) I have neither a computer science nor a teaching background. (I'm a self-taught web-dev hack) but I am interested in introducing local kids to programming. I helped run a couple Hour of Code sessions last week at my kids' elementary school, and I think I could get support there to start up some kind of after-school program. But I'm a bit lost as to what a good curriculum would look like. Anyone here have any pointers or suggestions? 2) I believe that Blockly (https://developers.google.com/blockly/ https://developers.google.com/blockly/) was the engine behind the Hour of Code exercise I used last week. It's available as a client-side library to include in your web applications, but I couldn't track down its license. It looks like, if one were to nail down a good curriculum, you could use Blockly to build a learning environment to accompany it.

sankethkatta 12y ago
UC Berkeley's CS10 class teaches with Snap(a variant of Scratch) https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/fa14/ https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/fa14/ You could get a good idea of curriculum there.
- hardmath123 12y ago
  In particular, they use the BJC (Beauty and Joy of Computing) curriculum (http://bjc.berkeley.edu http://bjc.berkeley.edu).
sdg1 12y ago
(Member of the Scratch team here) 1) There's a super useful Scratch Curriculum guide - made by the folks from ScratchEd. http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/scratch-curriculum-guide http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/scratch-curriculu... 2) Blockly seems to be under the Apache license (https://github.com/google/blockly https://github.com/google/blockly)
- hardmath123 12y ago
  (5-year Scratch veteran here.) Even though Blockly (and it's predecessor, "App Inventor") is made by Google (the great and the powerful), I have to say, I would rather be introduced to code by Scratch than by Blockly. Scratch is much simpler-looking, it has a beautiful interface, and (most importantly) it has one of the friendliest communities in case you need help or want to show off a project.

sankethkatta 12y ago

UC Berkeley's CS10 class teaches with Snap(a variant of Scratch) https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/fa14/ https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/fa14/ You could get a good idea of curriculum there.

hardmath123 12y ago
In particular, they use the BJC (Beauty and Joy of Computing) curriculum (http://bjc.berkeley.edu http://bjc.berkeley.edu).

sdg1 12y ago

(Member of the Scratch team here) 1) There's a super useful Scratch Curriculum guide - made by the folks from ScratchEd. http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/scratch-curriculum-guide http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/scratch-curriculu... 2) Blockly seems to be under the Apache license (https://github.com/google/blockly https://github.com/google/blockly)

hardmath123 12y ago
(5-year Scratch veteran here.) Even though Blockly (and it's predecessor, "App Inventor") is made by Google (the great and the powerful), I have to say, I would rather be introduced to code by Scratch than by Blockly. Scratch is much simpler-looking, it has a beautiful interface, and (most importantly) it has one of the friendliest communities in case you need help or want to show off a project.