I just found out about Alice and Scratch. I will be implementing those pretty soon. But, I wonder, what would be good material for kids from 1st grade thru 4th/5th?
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I'll admit, I'm not a professional educator. And my info on kid's programming education may be too obsolete, but my mom was as close as they came to a computer educator in the 1980s, and here's some tricks from her book.
When I was 8, she had no problem teaching me logo
I would think that before reading skills are somewhat developed, it would be hard to teach the semantics of any programming language - however simple. And the first "aha!" for programming (to me) would be realizing that if you give really simple commands to the computer, it will do neat stuff for you.
If I had to teach kids that were still working on reading fundamentals, I'd probably focus it on games that are not directly connected to a programming language, but which do involve logic development. Things like:
- Assigning letters to codes and translating from letter to code
- Games where you follow simple rules to move things around, emulating data structures.
- Puzzle games making use of computer science concepts - like shortest path algorithms. Not in analyzing the algorithm, but in developing it in the first place.
I'm afraid I don't know of a pre-built set of material for this sort of stuff. But I think that you might be able to create your own.
The limits would be the cognitive abilities of the kids -- I know that there are certain points where the theories say that kids can't do certain types of abstract concepts. For example, I was just listening to an example that mentioned that pre-schoolers can't handle the idea that something may have more than one name. Not quite knowing where those points of cognitive growth typically occur, I'm not 100% certain of what game would be right for what age group -- it might be trial and error.
bethlakshmi
2009-10-26 15:56:40
In the little bit of work I've actually done with kids (4th, 5th grade) the limit seems to be more their attention span, fact that most aren't motivated by programming in itself, and fact that textual programming languages are almost by definition not fun. The kids like the multimedia abilities of some tools and tend to focus on that, to the detriment of actually learning programming. That's where I thought Toontalk was superior. I used it after trying several kid-focused versions of Logo and Toontalk was much better at helping them naturally learn programming concepts.
Herbert Sitz
2009-10-26 16:28:00
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Scratch is the simplest programming language I have found for kids. You can use it like logo, but it is much nicer.
I think Alice is too hard for kids of age 8 years.
GvS
2009-10-26 15:59:23
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Toontalk is something to look at. I used it successfully with group of fifth graders, and it's been used with much younger kids. Of course, I think Scratch has too. But Toontalk is specifically built to feel more like a game. It's essentially a 3d world that kids can explore and interact with, and in which they create programs by training robots. Highly recommended.
http://www.toontalk.com/ , http://playground.ioe.ac.uk/ABOUT.HTM , http://playground.ioe.ac.uk/games.htm
The Toontalk 3d environment ingeniously operates as a metaphor for sophisticated programming concepts. There are quite a few academic papers linked on Toontalk site about the educational theory behind Toontalk. Here's link to one interesting paper that describes how the Toontalk 3d objects map onto abstract programmming concepts: http://www.toontalk.com/Papers/cgdc.pdf
Herbert Sitz
2009-10-26 16:01:03
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Microsoft has also Small Basic and shipped v0.2 recently.
This version also includes a cool new feature that allows students to easily graduate from Small Basic to Visual Basic with the touch of a button. Check out the full release notes in the Small Basic blog.
Small Basic is a project that's aimed at bringing "fun" back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.
Download and for more information : MS Small Basic v 0.2
Braveyard
2009-10-26 16:04:43
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When I was really small we were taught things that have similarities to programming but aren't quite programming, games with puzzles to solve, tangrams, and even choose-your-own-adventure writing programs. Later we learned LOGO.
rlb.usa
2009-10-26 16:06:55
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I use Alice to teach children ages 11-14. It works well for them, but I would not use it for children much younger than that unless it was a one-on-one situation. I can't speak for Scratch.
One thing I can speak for though, is Lego Mindstorm programming. There is a cost to it, unlike Alice and Scratch, but it is very approachable for 1st through 4th grade. See if the First Lego League has a group near you so you can join up with others to help with costs.
Justin C
2010-01-23 23:59:30