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Processing for Kids (Read 1423 times)
Oolong
Processing for Kids
Dec 3rd, 2006, 2:36pm  
I'm wondering if anyone has tried introducing Processing to children? If so, how young? And how did they find it?

For background: When I was really quite a little kid (in the early eighties) we were introduced to programming in BASIC when we got computers, almost unavoidably - the first thing you'd see would be a screen where you could enter BASIC commands, and if you put numbers on the front of them they would become a program. Our schools never had much of a clue what to do with this, though; by the age of about nine anyone who had a computer at home knew far more about them than any of our teachers.

Since then, programming seems to have largely stopped being something people imagine kids can do; it seems to me that's a mistake, and one that Processing could potentially do much to rectify.

Thoughts, anyone?
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Ira
Re: Processing for Kids
Reply #1 - Dec 3rd, 2006, 8:05pm  
Oolong,
I'm planning to do this at my son's school (6-13 yr olds). I think Processing (and honestly some other environments/languages could probably work as well,) would be effective not only to introduce programming, but also math. I can't imagine a better (and more fun/relevant) way to teach basic algebra, geometry and trig than creating stuff in Processing. A code-based approach of course is also really useful as a medium to cross disciplines–which is I assume what drew most of us to "creative coding"/Processing.

The idea of a "universal learning medium" is probably a good way to present this stuff to non-technical educators. I know at the university where I teach there is still a huge (incredibly unproductive) divide between the traditionalists and the "impure".

"Processing The Middle Way" makes for a nice slogan Wink
Ira
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Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art
http://friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=159059617X

The Essential Guide to Processing for Flash Developers
http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=9781430219798

Center of Creative Computation
Meadows/Lyle
SMU, Dallas
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Oolong
Re: Processing for Kids
Reply #2 - Dec 4th, 2006, 9:14pm  
Wonderful! I would be extremely interested to know how you get on with it.

Maths-teaching is the main reason I'm interested in this, really - although the programming is obviously important too. It's always bugged and depressed me that kids are introduced to variables and functions so late in their schooling, and then usually only as something abstract without obvious applications beyond passing maths tests and possibly in physics.

My writeup on trig closes with a suggestion that people play around with programming trigonometric functions, but I would like to make this exhortation much more concrete - I think I might make it a specific suggestion to try out Processing, with an example program or two...

Good luck with your teaching experiments!

Anyone else
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