Advice on how to help an 11 year old start programming...
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That's like teaching your kid target shooting with a bazooka.
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
I was programming in Basic on the Vic20 when i was 11, and got into it without any coaching from grown-ups. However i think it will take more than just a push in the right direction for most youngsters. I would download a free version of Delphi, and work with the child building a simple app that bounces a ball around the form or something, explaining the basic concepts involved. Then let them explore, answering questions as they come up.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
Lego Mindstorms [^] teachs engineering and logic with "drag and drop programming" while building cool robots :thumbsup:
Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
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That's like teaching your kid target shooting with a bazooka.
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
Ok, people are going to shoot this down, but... a. It's free (he already has it) b. There is an instant gratification with it c. its flexible/different Its the very fact that it doesn't enforce oo style development, or rigid structures that make it good... Too many developers are blinded by OO that it limits their imagination as to whats possible... And besides, learning from a less structured language first, helps one appreciate the benefits of structure when you move to that.... All that said, the interest in robotics/games isn't catered for in this suggestion obviously...
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
I did the research looking for a logo-like experience and came up with this fantastic product: http://scratch.mit.edu/[^]. Perfect for writing simple games. For getting kids interested in engineering in general I'd also strongly recommend http://www.phunland.com/[^]. Have Phun!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
In order of difficulty: Getting used to coding (scripting): HTML, CSS. JavaScript See w3schools.com. (all you need to write them is notepad too - although I would recommmend notepad++ as it color codes many languages) And the actual programming languages Pascal - I learnt on this - it's simple and easy to use but I wouldnt stay on it longer than 6 months. PHP - coding for the web asp.net & c# / visual basic More Difficult: C++ C Java Enough to keep him going for 4 years or so...
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
How about Microsoft Dreamspark, which offers free copies of Visual Studio Pro for all students, plus XNA 3.0 free for a year, and Microsoft Robotics Studio.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
Kid's Corner http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/bb308754.aspx[^] and this http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/[^] This might help?? V.
modified on Friday, June 12, 2009 5:44 AM
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Yea x86 is very hairy :) How about z80? It's pretty clean but still related (like a cousin) to x86 (so the jump isn't that hard when he makes it) And there would probably be a z80 in his graphical calculator when he gets one (TI 83/84 etc have z80) so it has an "obvious use" Or ARM? A bit harder than z80 but his cellphone probably has an ARM processor.. edit: there is a nice homebrew IDE for z80 (geared towards TI's a bit - ships with a TI 83+ emulator/debugger) with syntax highlighting and all called Latenite[^]
I started with a Commodore 64. BASIC initially but soon moved on to 6510 assembly code. It was a good learning experience and good fun but not really relevant to most modern programming (except embedded systems and the like). I've also regressed since then and wouldn't know where to begin with an assembler these days!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
IMO I don't think he should start with any language or technology or anything like that. He should start with the basics of OOAD, learn about compilers (what they do, how it turns high level code into machine code), learn about the stack and how the various levels interact with each other,learn binary (what is a bit, what is a byte, what is an unsigned bit, how does a computer perform subtractions etc.) once a kid has a good understanding of the basics, learning to program will be the next logical step. There are enough code cowboys out there, save the world, teach a kid the basics first! :D
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
hi, I came across this little game and thought it to be very helpful for my nephew. Maybe it'll help your 11 year old. :-D The site also teaches you how to create flash games & logic etc. http://www.kongregate.com/games/Coolio\_Niato/light-bot
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
try this http://scratch.mit.edu/ amazingly good, developed at MIT for teaching kids programming I'm using it with my child.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
For the robotics piece, Lego Mindstorms is very good ... and there are training videos available to make the learning curve smaller. As for gaming, there's Alice (alice.org), Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) and Greenfoot (greenfoot.org).
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
no offense here, IMHO, an 11-year old should concentrate on 11-year-old things like sports, fitness, reading, and playing outdoors with their friends. a child has only a limited amount of time to be a child there is plenty of time later on to start "programming". i am stunned how education professionals are pushing "technology" (i am using the term loosely here) into the classroom without any thought to the negative effects it has on education. for example, when i was in high school we learned chemistry using a slide rule. when i was even younger we learned to use tables to perform trig problems, square roots, and the like -- because these methods were not as easy as using a hand-held calculator (they were not invented yet), we had to learn even more math -- interpolation. my generation was responsible for the creation of many technologies you use today, and we definitely didn't have or even need to learn programming even in high school. everyone learned the fundamentals starting with assembly language, and we are still around writing code in ANY language and on ANY platform. this is not anecdotal. this proves that a solid foundation based upon reading, writing, mathematics, and science is essential and specialization at such a young age is unnecessary and takes valuable time and educational resources away from building the necessary foundation. we can't continue to water-down mathematics, physics, chemistry, and even our own english language in our schools -- and replace education with specialized learning topics that can be mastered much later in life when they are more necessary. i hope i didn't offend anyone here, but i am very passionate about this. where i live, for example, the geometry curriculum has been destroyed. kind regards to all,
David