Coding for Kids

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:33:19 GMT

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.

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Coding for Kids