{"id":690,"date":"2013-01-31T10:54:31","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T16:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benincosa.com\/blog\/?p=690"},"modified":"2014-11-19T11:24:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T17:24:32","slug":"teaching-kids-to-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/?p=690","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Kids to Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get asked a lot from different parents about teaching their kids to write computer programs. \u00a0“What is a good way to get started?” , “How did you get into it?”. \u00a0As my oldest child is now 9 I’ve been frequently asking myself the same question. \u00a0I feel it is very important that young people know how to write code. \u00a0I feel that years from now people will look back on those who couldn’t write basic computer programs the same way we look back to those who can’t write a simple letter.<\/p>\n

Much online casino australia of<\/a> my thinking has been confirmed and augmented by a Ted Talk I watched this week by Mitch Resnick<\/a>. \u00a0In his talk, he affirms that just because people can code doesn’t mean we expect them to all be professional computer scientists or developers. \u00a0We don’t expect all people who learn how to write to become novelists or journalists. \u00a0Its just a basic skill that is needed in our day and age.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With his program “Scratch<\/a>” that him and his team has made I think I’ve found the answer I was looking for. \u00a0I got home last night and downloaded it onto our family iMac. \u00a0It sits right in the kitchen and got my 9 year old and 6 year old started on it. \u00a0We started out with a picture of a “sprite”, or in our case, the default picture of a kitten. \u00a0We then created “controls” such as: “When I press the spacebar”. \u00a0Then underneath the control we did things like “change color” or move 10. \u00a0(the 10 is 10 pixels, but kids don’t really know that yet). \u00a0My kids would then keep pressing the space bar. \u00a0That’s when we introduced the “Forever” loop to them. \u00a0Amazing! \u00a0In just a quick 10 min, they understood loops and making things happen.<\/p>\n

I’m hoping to do more with this and my kids. \u00a0I don’t want them to think of computer programming as dry and boring, but rather a creative medium for doing really cool things. \u00a0I am thankful for the people at MIT for making this possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get asked a lot from different parents about teaching their kids to write computer programs. \u00a0“What is a good way to get started?” , “How did you get into it?”. \u00a0As my oldest child is now 9 I’ve been frequently asking myself the same question. \u00a0I feel it is very important that young people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[166,1],"tags":[170,168,167,169],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2765,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/2765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}