Programming — Now Starting In Elementary School 162
the agent man writes "The idea of getting kids interested in programming in spite of their common perception of programming to be 'hard and boring' is an ongoing Slashdot discussion. With support of the National Science Foundation, the Scalable Game Design project has explored how to bring computer science education into the curriculum of middle and high schools for some time. The results are overwhelmingly positive, suggesting that game design is highly motivational across gender and ethnicity lines. The project is also finding new ways of tracking programming skills transferring from game design to STEM simulation building. This NPR story highlights an early and unplanned foray into bringing game-design based computer science education even to elementary schools."
Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it won't be "irrelevant", because it's some of the most fundamental elements of programming.
Things I learned in that Logo class:
variables and assignment
IF-THEN-ELSE statements
WHILE loops
FOR loops
GOTO
Functions
With the exception of that last one, what, really, is different in modern programming? I still use every one of those, every day, except the goto.
The syntax is unimportant. The API is unimportant, as long as it's simple, and visual enough for a third-grader to "see" the results of his program. The important thing is teaching the basic programming elements. Hell, the important thing at that age is teaching that a computer is just a machine, that it's not some magic box. I've seen *adults* who can't grasp why a computer is doing what they told it instead of what they want.