Coding for Kids

[Davie_GLA]

Morning all.

I seen an advert on the telly last night touting a project that Barclays are running which aims to get kids into code.

Is there anything out there similar but not affiliated with Barclays?

David.

[Doctor Volt]

Davie_GLA said:

Morning all.

I seen an advert on the telly last night touting a project that Barclays are running which aims to get kids into code.

Is there anything out there similar but not affiliated with Barclays?

David.

Just visited http://barclayscodeplayground.co.uk/ and it looks a very sad effort

Below is a link to a very good Website that contains lots of good code and it starts off with basic and one can delve as much as one wishes to
This Website is a real one and it has a try it yourself button so that one can play with code in many of this Websites tutorials and then click the button to see how their coding has worked out

http://www.w3schools.com/html/

Enjoy

[Davie_GLA]

Doctor Volt said:

Just visited http://barclayscodeplayground.co.uk/ and it looks a very sad effort

Below is a link to a very good Website that contains lots of good code and it starts off with basic and one can delve as much as one wishes to
This Website is a real one and it has a try it yourself button so that one can play with code in many of this Websites tutorials and then click the button to see how their coding has worked out

http://www.w3schools.com/html/

Enjoy

That's great, thank you.

[marctwo]

I just backed this as I think it's a great way of getting kids into coding...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimoroni/flot...

[Doctor Volt]

Adding

This thing about kids needing pictures as a learning aid is a load of bks in my opinion

[hondafanatic]

For all my KS3 kids I get them on the following depending what year they are...

www.code.org
www.codecademy.com
www.codecombat.com

code.org has some brilliant stuff for primary kids...

[hondafanatic]

Doctor Volt said:

Adding

This thing about kids needing pictures as a learning aid is a load of bks in my opinion

That depends on age, ability and experience.

[SlidingSideways]

This looks interesting: https://coderdojo.com
I guess a lot will depend on how good the adults running and attending are though.

[ATG]

w3schools is good for learning HTML and related webpage look and feel stuff, but I really wouldn't recommend using that as a starting point for teaching kids about "coding". HTML and the related technologies are not very well structured at all. They weren't designed cleanly; they've just sort of happened. Better to use a clean well-designed language as a starting point so the kid will learn key concepts rather than just have to memorise a load of hacks and fudges.

When I was a kid there were loads of "home computers" that shipped with various dialects of BASIC; a pretty ropey language, but still a heck of a lot better as a learning tool than HTML or Javascript. If I was teaching a kid, I'd use Python, and probably on a raspberry pi as then we'd be able to easily plug into stuff like lights and motors.

[Doctor Volt]

hondafanatic said:

That depends on age, ability and experience.

In my opinion a string of text can be compaired to a string of colour, OK not true but what the eye sees the brain will take in sooner or later as long as it isnt too complicated to begin with

This is what I find so good about http://www.w3schools.com/html/, the code can be manipulated and the result of that manipulation can be viewed

Teaching using http://www.w3schools.com/html/ it is possible to have a youngish child building an HTML Website within a very short time

[eps]

What age?

Scratch is a bit of a nonsense, but does get them engaged really quickly and can lead to more complicated examples if they are interested.

It's good for KS2, so Years 5-6 and possibly Year 7.. So the last two years of Primary School and the first year of Secondary School, all imo.

Ultimately they need to move away from Scratch and look at a Pi or similar.

[jammy_basturd]

There is a lot that isn't too good about w3schools (though not as bad as it used to be). Start them off on the right foot by using these sites instead.

hondafanatic said:

For all my KS3 kids I get them on the following depending what year they are...

www.code.org
www.codecademy.com
www.codecombat.com

code.org has some brilliant stuff for primary kids...

[option click]

SlidingSideways said:

This looks interesting: https://coderdojo.com
I guess a lot will depend on how good the adults running and attending are though.

A friend of mine is involved with this, and his kids also attend.
If he's anything to go by, there'll be a whole generation of mini Zuckerbergs on the way.

[Doctor Volt]

ATG said:

w3schools is good for learning HTML and related webpage look and feel stuff, but I really wouldn't recommend using that as a starting point for teaching kids about "coding". HTML and the related technologies are not very well structured at all. They weren't designed cleanly; they've just sort of happened. Better to use a clean well-designed language as a starting point so the kid will learn key concepts rather than just have to memorise a load of hacks and fudges.

When I was a kid there were loads of "home computers" that shipped with various dialects of BASIC; a pretty ropey language, but still a heck of a lot better as a learning tool than HTML or Javascript. If I was teaching a kid, I'd use Python, and probably on a raspberry pi as then we'd be able to easily plug into stuff like lights and motors.

I disagree and as the saying goes - The proof is in the eating of the pudding - See below

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>

<body>

<h1>This is a Heading</h1>

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>

</body>

</html>

Above you are viewing the code for a basic Website, when the above code is typed into a basic text editor like Windows Notepad and saved, that Notepad file named for example (test) that has an extension of .txt (test.txt) can be renamed index with an extension of .html (index.html), once that file has been renamed index.html it is know a website

There is nothing complicated about thee above code and it is as clean as my bald head after a shower

HTML has been about for many years and is still the start point for coding a website and is used up to today

Moving on from HTML, CSS and PHP can be learnt and moving onwards and upwards MYSQL Databases then come into play and it is all nice and clean and very interesting

The above index.html Website Example when clicked opens in any browser and the viewer sees

This is a Heading
This is a paragraph.

Its all about opinions but I think children will benefit from learning basic HTML coding and if need be can be kept interested in their work by adding nice pictures to their website

Edited by Doctor Volt on Wednesday 28th January 12:44

Edited by Doctor Volt on Wednesday 28th January 12:51

[SlidingSideways]

HTML is markup (the M in HTML is for markup), not programming. It's just a bunch of tags that tell the browser *how* to display the content. You could just paste text content in and the browser would render it but it wouldn't be pretty.

Concentrate on finding something that teaches basic programming principles and patterns rather than a specific language or toolset.
Once those principles are understood (which is the tricky bit), then they should be able to pick up almost language fairly easily.

[Doctor Volt]

SlidingSideways said:

HTML is markup (the M in HTML is for markup), not programming. It's just a bunch of tags that tell the browser *how* to display the content. You could just paste text content in and the browser would render it but it wouldn't be pretty.

Concentrate on finding something that teaches basic programming principles and patterns rather than a specific language or toolset.
Once those principles are understood (which is the tricky bit), then they should be able to pick up almost language fairly easily.

Good point, I understand your comments but do feel that HTML is a very good starting point and once learnt a youngster could move on to numerous things

[Du1point8]

Have a look at this

https://education.github.com/pack

[hondafanatic]

SlidingSideways said:

HTML is markup (the M in HTML is for markup), not programming. It's just a bunch of tags that tell the browser *how* to display the content. You could just paste text content in and the browser would render it but it wouldn't be pretty.

Concentrate on finding something that teaches basic programming principles and patterns rather than a specific language or toolset.
Once those principles are understood (which is the tricky bit), then they should be able to pick up almost language fairly easily.

Completely agree... the links I showed get them used to the idea of loops, iteration etc. I personally think they are a brilliant intro... and they are a great leveler for kids both in cognitive ability and gender.

But as mentioned above, age is an important factor on what would make a good starting point

(I even got my 71 year old mother to recreate the flappy bird game on code.org)

[SlidingSideways]

Doctor Volt said:

Good point, I understand your comments but do feel that HTML is a very good starting point and once learnt a youngster could move on to numerous things

HTML is a good skill to have, and if you pair it with CSS and the numerous browser interpretations of these then it's far from simple and something you never totally master.

However, it shares no concepts with actual programming. There are no control structures, variables, subroutines etc... all of which are absolutely core to all but the most esoteric of languages. Learning these things is the starting point.

[Doctor Volt]

SlidingSideways said:

This looks interesting: https://coderdojo.com
I guess a lot will depend on how good the adults running and attending are though.

I have visited https://coderdojo.com and it looks really good, I took the below from the Website.

programming for young people and website development using HTML, CSS and PHP. Dojos also work with JavaScript, Python, Ruby and Node.js, work on game development, Minecraft mods and experiment with hardware and robotics such as Raspberry Pis, Arduino boards and Intel Galileos

You have confused me - In one post you are knocking the learning of HTML and in another post you are commenting that a Website that teaches HTML looks interesting

No problem, just an observation, but reading the above at the coderdojo.com Website suggests that they to think that HTML is a good starting point