Coding for Kids

[flea]

As Casper and I were talking at bedtime, she described two games she wants to make for the iPad.  The first is a game with a mother bird and a nest at the top of a cliff, and slides and ladders, and eggs moving around, and evil crows trying to get the eggs.  The second is a Where's Waldo type game, with a room full of stuff and you have to find the puppies hidden and click on them.  I told her she should draw up the images for these games and write a description of them, and I'd talk to the computer teacher at her school about what age-appropriate tools there are for making online games.

well, he was in the hall this morning, and recommended:
Kodu http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/
Scratch at MIT http://scratch.mit.edu/

He wanted to use Kodu with his kids this year but couldn't get it to run on the older school computers.  He plans to use Scratch next year.  He said it was frustrating to only have 45 minutes a week with the kids.

I don;t have any actual experience with these yet, but I thought they might be fun for anyone with elementary school aged kids.  They are visual, drag-and-drop, coding, it looks like, so I hope will be manageable for Casper.

Comments

[sedge]

Very cool--thank you!

[fatoudust]

This is so great! I was coding (BASIC, admittedly) at Casper's age, so it's great that she can have access to it. Good luck! I'll be interested in seeing how she does! And good on you for finding the resources. Another parent might have just mmhmmed it.

[forodwaith]

Thank you!

[flea]

I did some programming in what I think must have been Logo (we moved a turtle) in 5th grade (1982). And look, it was widely used in the public schools in Lexington MA, which is where I was living then! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29

And then, a little BASIC in high school and nothing since. Oh well.

[fatoudust]

Yup, yup, I remember that turtle! We did that for sure. I loved it. And then after that they let us have free time on the computers and all we did was play Oregon Trail except the one guy who went on to become a doctor.