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The other thing is that in order to learn, children need to have fun. But they have fun by really being pushed to explore and create and make new things that are personally meaningful. So you need open-ended environments that allow children to explore and express themselves.
(This Inventor Is Molding Tomorrow's Inventors, IEEE Spectrum)
IEEE Spectrum has a (short) sit-down with Marina Umaschi Bers, co-creator of the ScratchJr programming language and the KIBO robotics kits. Both tools are aimed at teaching kids to code and develop STEAM skills from a very young age. Other examples of such tools are the mTiny robot toy and the Micro:bit computer.
Being able to code is a new literacy, remarks Professor Bers, and like with reading and writing, we need to adapt our learning tools to children's developmental ages. One idea here is that of a "coding playground" where it's not about following step-by-step plans, but about inventing games, pretend play and creating anything children can imagine. She is currently working on a project to bring such a playground outside: integrating motors, sensors and other devices in physical playgrounds, "to bolster computational thinking through play".
Given how fast complicated toys are being thrown aside by young children, in contrast to a simple ball -- or a meccano set, for the engineering types -- I have my doubts.
At least one of the tools mentioned above is aimed at toddlers. So put aside your model steam locomotive, oh fellow 'lentil, and advice me: from what age do you think we should try to steer kids into "coding" or "developing", and which tools should or could be used for this?
Feel free to wax nostalgic about toys of days past, of course, in this, one of your favorite playgrounds: the soylentnews comment editor.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 31 2024, @06:40PM (1 child)
Animation of childish humor was always entertaining when I was a kid.
I vaguely remember writing a Tom and Jerry cartoon scene in BASIC using animated letters, just plotting letters on the screen. You can guess who the "T" and the "J" were I don't recall much else about it beyond stealing a dinosaur bone from a museum including an elaborate chase scene, although that sounds more like a bad Scooby Doo plot. Maybe it was a Scooby Doo animation.
I would imagine this scales pretty well to 2024. "Look kid, just make an animation the best you can of something cool from Bluey" or WTF kids watch now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday October 31 2024, @07:46PM
For a little extra credit on my final I wrote a function that compressed numbers in a text file by converting them to text/ascii. The code only kinda worked (255 being the upper limit.. hehe) but my teacher did appreciate where my thought process was headed.
My professional life benefitted from this quite a bit, but even if it didn't that sort of messing around did give me a sense of how computers actually work. Playing the same game on a SNES and a PC and comparing the ports (Wing Commander comes to mind....) also paid off for me in several ways. That's a little harder to explain but I started noticing things like on the SNES you could only fight one fighter at a time, that's because they were using a bit of the hardware to handle the bit it's underpowered processor couldn't even dream of. Hehe. They made some compromises to play towards its strengths. Kinda important to learn about since I spent way too much time suffering from the megahertz myth!
Sorry for the meandering post. VLM's comment threw me down a wonderful section of memory lane and I do appreciate it.
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