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Topic: ...for the kids? (Read 565 times) |
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mrb
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...for the kids?
« on: Feb 3rd, 2003, 10:31pm » |
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Here's something I have been thinking about...
I have been silently reading all of these message boards for some time and I have been wondering if anyone has considered applying the principles of proce55ing to the teaching of programming to children. I teach HTML once a week at a private school in New York City to fourth, fifth and sixth graders. This upcoming semester (starting next week), I will have seven eager fresh minds. I have found HTML sufficient for introducing them to the most basic concepts of programming (i.e. computer language vs. human language, instruction sets, etc.) -- is proce55ing a viable alternative for introducing concepts of interactivity, graphics, etc.? Many of my students have wanted to include applets...should I teach them how to make them? Any thoughts?
Mike
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Glen Murphy
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Re: ...for the kids?
« Reply #1 on: Feb 4th, 2003, 12:03am » |
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I had written this for some primary school kids, but I think I'd made it TOOO simple, as the kids whizzed through it far too quickly, but they progressed further quite well:
http://glenmurphy.com/private/p5doc/tutorial_one/
Currently I'm also using P5 and HTML to introduce programming to my genius younger brother - we have great fun going through the examples and adjusting various variables to make the programs do stupid things. The understanding is easy; it's just hard to motivate him when he has his GameCube and Battlefield 1942.
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REAS
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Re: ...for the kids?
« Reply #2 on: Feb 6th, 2003, 8:30pm » |
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I'm very interested in Processing being used at a tool for children. For issues of communication, this particular website must remain focused on the media arts and design communities. I think it also has potential for teaching Java programming to teenagers.
We are focusing our efforts on completing the software but encourage people to use the software and develop teaching materials for other audiences.
I have no experience teaching programming to children and I think someone other than myself would do a much better job exploring this aspect.
+ Casey
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Koenie
  
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Re: ...for the kids?
« Reply #4 on: Mar 17th, 2003, 12:12pm » |
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I consider myself a kid, or at least a teenager, and I found Processing a good help in my understanding of Java, just by looking at the examples and the code. I've found the software a bit too hard though.
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http://koeniedesign.com
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Aaron_Delani
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Re: ...for the kids?
« Reply #5 on: Apr 12th, 2003, 6:32am » |
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I am 15 years old, nobody taught me to do html so i had to learn by myself by, aside from viewing and analyzing source codes from diffrent websites, borrowing books on html from the library, but until now, i cannot seem to understand java script programming. There are some things a kid learns by himself and some things in which he needs guidance in. I think for children at an early age should learn about things that they could be interested in.
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this_person@msn.com
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benelek
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Re: ...for the kids?
« Reply #6 on: Apr 12th, 2003, 9:03am » |
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i'd agree that kids should be encourage to, and helped to, learn about things they have an interest in.
the strange thing is, i've always enjoyed learning about the different ways a computer can work, and the different kinds of software out there, as well as how to use them. but i've never really had any formal training in any of it, and on those small occasions when i've been in a formal learning situation, it somehow became a whole lot more boring.
it now seems obvious to me that it's not only what you like, but also how you naturally like to approach it, that makes a huge difference in learning. i have no doubt that learning things in multiple ways can be enormously helpful, but knowing the relations of those different ways to your "natural" ways, is important. otherwise you can work quite efficiently for years, but never really understand the significance of what you're doing.
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pokemon#1
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Re: ...for the kids?
« Reply #7 on: Jul 4th, 2003, 5:00am » |
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Hey Mike, were you talking about my class? Well, I guess I never thanked you for telling me about proce55ing in the first place so thanks. In case anybody else is wondering, I am 9 and 3/4 and Mike told me about Proce55ing.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 4th, 2003, 9:46pm by pokemon#1 » |
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whisperstorm
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Re: ...for the kids?
« Reply #8 on: Aug 23rd, 2003, 8:57am » |
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I'm keenly interested in the idea of teaching kids to program. Somehow we need to bridge the gap between fun and engaging games like Mario Sunshine, and things like Microsoft Visual C++.
My kids are 7 and 6, and I've been trying out various things on them like GameMaker (http://www.gamemaker.nl) and Alice 3D ( http://www.alice.org/ ) - which is simply an amazing piece of software.
I want to see if Processing could be used to facilitate something to help kids get excited about creating software.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 23rd, 2003, 8:59am by whisperstorm » |
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