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posted by martyb on Thursday December 03 2015, @11:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the making-introductions dept.

My 9 year old girl has expressed an interest in learning to program. Of course I want something that will give her short term rewards, but still teach solid skills. I know this question gets asked from time to time on various forums but I wanted to get some opinions from the good people of SN.

Christmas is coming... she's (for now) a Windows user... is there something you'd recommend as a gift?

Thanks for your ideas.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by xorsyst on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:02PM

    by xorsyst (1372) on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:02PM (#271322)

    My 9-year old is getting a Kano for Christmas (http://us.kano.me/). It's basically a raspberry pi designed entirely for the kid to use on their own.

    He's already been using Scratch for a year or so, and this will give him something really his.

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  • (Score: 2) by jbernardo on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:24PM

    by jbernardo (300) on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:24PM (#271327)

    I've given my kids a Kano last year (I participated in the kickstarter), and this year upgraded it to the pi2 and have ordered the screen. I am quite happy with it, and my oldest was able to show off her knowledge of scratch at school last month... :)

    I fully recommend the Kano, even if I would prefer it had a full keyboard.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:55PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:55PM (#271336)

      It's only time / money - for the same approximate cost, you can configure a vanilla Raspberry Pi 2 to do everything the Kano does, with the keyboard of your choice.

      Unfortunately, the keyboard I'm typing on costs $90 by itself, if I felt my kids needed this one, then the budget would have to increase a bit - but you can certainly get competent keyboards (wired or wireless) for $20 or so - free if your willing to scrounge.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]