Coderdojo Inspires Coding In Kids As Young As Seven 40
An anonymous reader writes "With kids growing up in an increasingly digital world, it's alarming that many of them have no idea how the devices that power their lives actually work. So three cheers for Coderdojo — a worldwide group of volunteers teaching programming and web design to children aged seven and up. From the article: 'Coderdojo's format is open and inclusive. Participants can use the operating system and programming tools of their choice. There is no set curriculum and the only rule is: "Above all: be cool." More rigid approaches, he suggests, can often stifle learners' enthusiasm: "A lot of coding tuition aimed at young people tends to revolve around games," he said. "But that can disengage some young people. Many of them, particularly girls, just aren't interested in gaming. "On the other hand, doing something like developing a web site shows them that they can do things they might not have realized they were able to and combines artistic and design skills with an understanding of why things are built in a certain way."'"
Great idea - and a suggestion (Score:1)
Anyone wanting to start teaching kids how to program can start with a nice free and open project I am involved in called:
http://turtleacademy.com
So if anyone want a simple way to start his kids on programming, just visit this site
Ofer
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not to mention the javascript centering forces the turtle out of view as soon a you try to enter something in the terminal
Remember the day you learned... (Score:3)
20 Goto 10
*Sob* Precious memories I hope all kids will have....
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Absolutely, that was the first thing my mom showed me on the Commodore 64 almost 30 years ago, everything changed that day.
FIve years later I had a simple CarisWorks database for my hockey cards and comic books, five years after that I was in college getting excited about polymorphism and multi-threading.
I think for the right kid getting their hands on this stuff early changes how they think about and use technology and may lead to some unique career options in the future.
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Even more powerful than that was FOR X=...
Suddenly, algebra made sense. This happened to me at the perfect time too, right when they were introducing us to algebra. I wonder if I would have done as well without it. The leap from concrete numbers with values to variables that could be anything, that leap of abstraction was facilitated greatly.
One of the most eye opening things I ever did (Score:4, Insightful)
I talked with the teacher and asked if they had any intention of teaching the kids about VBA and explained what VBA was and how it is present in every Microsoft Office application and lets you do fun things like for instance, calculate the tax, etc. The teacher looked at me with a straight face and said "Well, you need advanced math to program a computer!". I thanked her for her time.
On my review I made note of the conversation and how at the most, one might need maybe one semester of Algebra 1 but if they understood basic mathematical equations they could program.
What I heard is that my comment struck a warning bell in the school. They'd never had someone with an I.T. background review a program before. So it just flew under the radar until I made mention in the official report.
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Yet this myth is so pervasive, that it feels like anyone who isn't the school's top math wiz is outright discouraged from even considering computer programming.
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Well, using hex can be a huge mental barrier for some.
But more importantly... only a teenie tiny fraction of modern programming needs it. So its in the same category of "advanced math"
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you just have to think base 16 instead of base 10.
And you wonder why programmers are considered nerds by all the cool kids?
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I think the fewer characters than base 10 thing is only a secondary benefit at best. The real attraction is that it aligns well with base 2, and takes much fewer characters than base 2. You can look at 0x00080000 and know that the fourth bit of the second word is on, that's a lot harder to do when you're looking at 524288.
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> using hex can be a huge mental barrier for some.
While true, hexidecimal (hex) can also teach constant-bit-decoding / variable-bit-decoding and about permutations / combinations! The _interesting_ bit is how SIMILAR the code is.
As we all know:
Decimal numbers go: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, ... 19, 20, 21, ... 99, 100, 101, ...
Hex numbers go: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11, 12, ... 19, 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, 1F, 20, ... FF, 100, 101, ...
To convert a hex number to decim
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Games (Score:4, Informative)
Either trying to hack online games or dicking around with configs and custom content on PC games, I was learning. Trying to write macros to automate mundane gaming tasks. I was learning.
Also, I know every programmer out there will want to bash my face in for this, but excel is also very good to learn from. And a lot of games stand to gain from doing a bit of heavy analysis, or at least tracking, in excel. You learn how to deal with IF and ELSE statements, arrays, tables, lookup, AND/OR logic, strings concatenation and variables. And the framework for doing so in excel is not nearly as intimidating. Most non-programmers can make handy things in excel, that if you broke all the cell into variables and functions into code, would look a whole like a real program, they just don't know it.
At some point during all of this I got curious about "Real" programming and kept looking at C. And while I never fully learned C to a usable level I learned about pointers and memory allocation/addresses/pointers/cleanup/etc. At some point I wanted to get into linux since it seemed more programming friendly. I choose gentoo by pure coincidence, and from bootstrap+compile kernal I learned even more.
All because of games. But the problem becomes that over time it has become harder and harder to hack games; both web and PC based. So many measures in place to stop people from doing it, and even threats of bans. I feel like this is bad for our future. Like the one thing games stood to give to society is diminished by pettiness.
Games are not the answer.... (Score:2)
IMO games are the key. I know I learned most of what I know because of games.
I disagree, but that's not to say I agree with the philosophy of the Coderdojo guys. The problem with games as motivation is that it is an attempt to motivate by topic rather than process.
Learning is an inherently rewarding process -- it is a pure form of mental stimulation. If the teaching is effective, it generates flow and the process becomes self-motivating... but to achieve this the process needs to have a low cognitive load and each step must be inherently meaningful.
Games, however, are complex beas
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And no o
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I learned coding at 7 (Score:1)
misNamed (Score:2)
Not to take anything away from the efforts of the volunteers, but I think the project's misnamed. According to Wiki a dojo is broadly "a formal training place for any of the Japanese do arts" or specifically " a formal gathering place for students of any Japanese martial arts style such as karate, judo."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dojo [wikipedia.org]
The key word is "formal", which while not contradicting appears to contrast with the project's goal of fostering "open and inclusive" participation. The presence of older me
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Sorry but this is bullcrap (Score:1)
Like my subject says after reading this
"A lot of coding tuition aimed at young people tends to revolve around games," he said. "But that can disengage some young people. Many of them, particularly girls, just aren't interested in gaming."
Girl's not interested in gaming? Ok then try telling that to all the young and old women gamer's I've met in person and talked to on Ventrillo over the year's playing games such as World of Warcraft, Team Fortress Classic, and Counter-Strike 1.6 (and earlier) and Jedi Knigh
One of our largest Dojo meets... (Score:2)
Curriculum?? (Score:2)
I've always wondered how I'd have to do it today. Something like HTML? PHP? Java? Something like Alice or NTX? I've also wondered how I'd best go about it with my own kids.
This article and organization seems to take on the challenge of teaching "7 years olds". The web site even has links on "opening your own dojo", and makes references to different skill levels and languages.
It didn't say anything about curriculu
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It didn't say anything about curriculum though. It's a great idea - and I'd like to do it, but how? Does it really define that? It's a great idea to teach kinder-gardeners calculus, but you'd have to provide some more specifics on how you intend on doing this for it to make sense to me...
7
"Oh no, you don't want a curriculum! A curriculum would stifle creativity!"
So what do I do then?
"Use your judgement as a teacher!"
OK, but I'm not really a teacher yet -- you're supposed to be showing me how to become a teacher.
"Ah, but I am. The first lesson is that there are no rules, only experience."
Ah, I see. So what have I paid you over a grand for if you can't teach me anything?
"My experience."
Right. Your experience. But you won't tell me what your experience is.
"Exactly. Because every teacher
alias (Score:1)