Advice on how to help an 11 year old start programming...
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Lego Mindstorm?
Todd Smith
I'll cast a vote for the Legos as well. I remember building and programming a robot to play Bot Ball when I was in high school. After that I was hooked. Our whole class had a blast with it. Our task was to build a robot using the provided tub of Legos that was capable of searching for, gathering, and bringing back to "base" ping pong balls. Some were in PVC squares, others were in card board tubes. Bonus points for dunking the balls in a PVC hoop to the side of the arena. The different kits had different parts. You could have ended up with any combination of pneumatic pumps and levers, motors, gears, touch sensors, light sensors, sound sensors, IR sensors and transmitters, wheels, tank treads, etc. There were also various ways we could program them. We could do it using a programming language (I think it was some sort of modified C or C++ derivative) or you could use the GUI program where you dragged and dropped actions onto a time line. It's not a free start up cost, but I'm sure you could find a large lot of Legos for sale online for a decent price. After that all you'd need would be the motors, sensors and connector wires and the brain brick. It would certainly appeal to his creativity and affinity for robotics.
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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!
http://www.alice.org "Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience." the moving 3D should be appealing for an 11 years old boy... Programming is greatly helped with drag&drop and pre-made objects, but it remains a real programming language with statements like 'if', 'loop', etc and it's object oriented. Cool, really. Look at the demo video... I think it's better to begin by learning the concepts rather than rushing into bare metal programming and taking bad habits from the beginning!... Eric
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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!
Do it the old-fashioned way: first the basics in Pascal, then the same stuff plus OOP in C++. And then the real stuff using something like C#. Avoid Basic.
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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!
MIT and Lifelong Kindergarten has put together a cool program entitled, Scratch [^] "Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web." I spent about 10 minutes on Scratch back when it was first released - I thought it was a great tool for teaching kids programming concepts such as Loops, Variables, Conditions, Arrays, etc.
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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
I think that assisting children in what they would like to learn is a very good thing. Learning is always a bonus and wanting to learn is something that is hard to find in a kid these days. I started at programming at the nice ripe age of 9 with a TI 99-4A and "Advanced Basic". I had a book that had a program written in a different version and converted it to the TI version. I got a huge kick out of it, and with the skills I learned from that I feel that I am a better programmer today...20 years later. And I still had plenty of time to go out and play with bikes in big mud puddles, digging the hole to china, haha, and other such kid fun. Back on subject, I think Visual Basic.NET would be a good starter, He can easily start making little apps that had real world uses, gas mileage calculators, recipe holders, movie catalogs, chore scheduler, etc, something to track what coins he has in his piggy bank, etc. I was/am pretty good with math and science, and it has done me very well, and I am attributing it to my very early programming. But thats just my opinion.
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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 would suggest Scratch from MIT: http://scratch.mit.edu/[^] From the about page: -------------------- Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. Scratch is available free of charge: go to Download. Currently available for Mac OSX and Windows (see system requirements) To access Scratch resources in languages from around the world, see Languages. To find more about the ideas underlying Scratch, visit our page for Educators. To learn how to use Scratch, go to Support. To read research papers on Scratch, see Research. To find out who is working on Scratch, see the Credits. To read what people are saying about Scratch, see Quotes. To hear the latest Scratch news stories, visit News. http://info.scratch.mit.edu/About_Scratch[^]
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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 just wanted to thank everyone for their ideas, my 12 year old has been asking me to teach him some programming. I wasn't sure where to start. My oldest daughter taught herself HTML using free HTML tutorials she found on Google. She wanted a cooler home page on neopets of all things. . .go figure! :wtf: From there she just branched out to using web design programs when she convinced me to let her have her own web page. I didn't have to do anything. But my son wants to program, and I am more an IT person who does a bit of programming than a programmer by trade, so I was stumped. Thanks!
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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 would recommend either Processing[^] or Scratch[^]programming languages. Both are free downloads. I've recently finished reading Daniel Shiffman's book "Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction" (http://www.learningprocessing.com[^]). This is an excellent introductory book, not only for the Processing language but also for programming in general. This is the sort of introduction to programming that I wish I'd had. The book is a pleasure to read and is paced well for a beginner. The advantage to using Processing is that the foundation is based upon the Java language, so it is very easy to branch into Java, C++, or C# once you become comfortable with Processing. The Scratch programming language was developed at the MIT Media Lab and is a graphical programming language. Programming with Scratch involves creating a script using command blocks. The command blocks have shapes which snap together and perform functions like loops, getting input from the mouse or keyboard, etc. This is a much simpler language to get started with but will give the student an understanding of how a program is structured.
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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 nice your son is starting to getting interested in this wonderful world of computers, unfortunately programming languages evolve with time as well as needs and technological advances. I personally don't think that getting him an easy start will make him the next Bill Gates. When I started out I wish I knew Math like my fellow students, I knew some... but nothing like most of them, that put me aback for some time, I personally recommend him getting to learn basic math and move on to advance math and if he can then try to use [Mathematica]
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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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Yes - Scratch is great. Free download, good samples, easy tutorial. My 8-yr old daughter followed the instructions in the pdf almost entirely herself and was creating basic programs soon. I think it's very easy for them to create fun animations, and learn some basic concepts - if/then, loops, etc. However they can also create more complicated interactive programs (people have built versions of pac-man, Tetris, etc). Once my daughter started trying to mimic one of the more complicated samples, she was over her head pretty quickly and needed an adult to mentor her through the concepts (events, listeners, etc). But Scratch provided a wonderful environment for her to be exposed to and learn those concepts. Hooray for the brains at MIT!
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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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Lego Mindstorm?
Todd Smith
I agree with Mindstorm. Teaching kids about programming/technology HAS to be play-based. Legos are very play-based (if you like them, of course). I have volunteered with several classes that teach programming to kids and very few seem to grab their attention because they start with teaching "this is a variable, this is how you assign a value, and at the end of the class when you've slogged through all this stuff, you'll get to do something fun with it." Most of the time the end-of-class project was something the kids never wanted to do in the first place. It has to feel like you're playing the whole time you're learning programming. For myself, when I'm having the most fun programming, I feel like I'm playing with a computer, not working on it. If you don't start with PLAY, it feels like WORK, and if it feels like work, then I say go play soccer.
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Python? Smalltalk (thinking of Squeak)? Smalltalk was originally designed (in part) to use in teaching children programming.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
I think Logo or Turtle was the language used to teach children programmimng. That what was used when I was working at LHS at Berkeley during the mid 70's. Smalltalk was more of an instrumentation control language, however it would also could be used for robotics. RC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)[^]
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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!
Wow! Thank you all for your suggestions! I have until Monday to formulate a gameplan for her son and a lot of ideas to suggest. As always, you all really came through for me. - Matt
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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!
HTML, CSS and javascript. cheap as free and runs in any browser. tutorials at http://w3schools.com Basic game: Image object, move it around, give it behavior at some point in the playing field. For more (advanced) ideas, google Chrome Experiments
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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
The OP said the kid wanted to learn programming. So, to assume he is being "pushed" is a little harsh. I picked up my first C book when I was in grade 6 (exactly 11 years old, incidentally) because my friend (also 11) got into programming and got me intruiged. In 3 months I read two 1500 page C books and I was programming 3d games in DOS (in case anyone is wondering, the book was "The Black Art of 3D Programming" by Andre Lamothe, which was an AWESOME book). I was instantly hooked and I haven't looked back since. I'm a bit biased, but I'd say getting into programming early helped immensely in developing my brain in a direction that now enables me to soak in new technologies/languages/etc very easily. I'm not sure I would be as good a developer if I started when I was 18. With that said, I was an odd child. You can't expect a kid to have the same reaction to programming as I did. But if he ends up loving it, then great. And with all that programming, I still had time to do gymnastics, train in Karate and win 3rd place in the World Karate Championships, and socialize with my friends a-plenty. It's not always a bad thing, especially if the child is in fact "pulling" and not being pushed (although a gentle push is generally good for kids). I wouldn't trade my childhood for anything.
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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 wouldn't recommend any of the other solutions that have been suggested. You will have kids running screaming into the night, figuratively speaking. I have taught kids to program, with a lot of success. Start with something simple and free that is graphically oriented. Kids love making stuff happen on the screen. Currently, I'd suggest Microsoft Small Basic, which is designed as a first programming experience for kids. Adults like it, too, and it's free. If that goes well, then Lego Mindstorms is a good next step, at a cost of a couple of hundred bucks. Don't start a kid on it, though. Until they have some idea of what the programming 'game' is all about, it can be very daunting. Hope that helps!
David Veeneman www.veeneman.com