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Teaching Kids to Code

Teaching Kids to Code
Every era demands--and rewards--different skills. In different times and different places, we have taught our children to grow vegetables, build a house, forge a sword or blow a delicate glass, bake bread, create a soufflé, write a story or shoot hoops. Now we are teaching them to code. We are teaching them to code, however, not so much as an end in itself but because our world has morphed: so many of the things we once did with elements such as fire and iron, or tools such as pencil and paper, are now wrought in code. We are teaching coding to help our kids craft their future. In this collection we share many different perspectives on coding, from a university professor's vantage point (MIT's Mitch Resnick describes why learning to code is like learning to learn) to an entrepreneur's reflections from his cross-country roadtrip to bring coding--and his stuffed dog--to classrooms across the U.S. We should always teach children to bake bread, feed the goats and wield a hammer.

Sokikom Math Game: an MMO Education Through Social Interaction Sokikom math game teaches through social interaction Educational games have come a long way since The Oregon Trail and Math Blaster. Sokikom is a MMO math game that aims to help teachers educate their students by using this interactive and math-based online world. After receiving a $2M startup grant funded by The Institute of Educational Sciences as well as former Intel Chairman and CEO Dr. Similar to many MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that have many different worlds, regions, and countries, Sokikom has different math regions that each correlate to a different subject in math. The games are all progressively difficult and each math type begins with a fun tutorial to introduce students to the game. Educational games are nothing new; many people have learned math and language from retro games or further back. Parents can also benefit greatly from this. via TechCrunch Save $150 on your ticket by using code GBLOG14 at checkout!

Part 4: Introduction to XAML | Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners Source Code: PDF Version: In this lesson, I want to talk about the XAML syntax we wrote in our first pass at the SoundBoard app. Hopefully you could see how the XAML we wrote impacted what we saw in the Phone preview pane. It's relatively easy to figure out the absolute basics of XAML just by looking at it, but I want to point out some of the features and functions that may not be obvious at first glance. At a high level, here's our game plan in this lesson: We'll talk about the purpose and nature of XAML, comparing it to C# We'll talk about the special features of XAML ... little hidden features of the language that may not become obvious by just staring at it My aim is by the end of this lesson you'll have enough knowledge that you can look at the XAML we write in the remainder of this series and be able to take a pretty good guess at what it's doing before I even try to explain it. 1. XAML is a special usage of XML. 2.

Teach Your Kids to Code: 6 Beginner's Resources for Parents Introducing computer programming to your kids can be a challenge, especially for those who aren’t familiar with the nuances of code. Fortunately, in the last few years, a number of apps, software, and guides have been produced that make the often-complex subject of computer coding easy to grasp for young learners. So where to begin? These are a few resources that parents can share with their kids to help them start learning about programming. Programming Tutorials From Made With Code by Google: Google's Made With Code project has a mission of encouraging girls to pursue careers in computer science. Inspiring Articles About Kids Learning to Code Still looking for some ideas? Coding Organizations for Kids For the non-coding parents, it can be difficult to know where to begin.

Interactive Fiction Game Design // Crossposted on my blog with video at The Pew Research Center reports that approximately 97% of teens play video games in their free time. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subject-areas have used programming and game design to teach 21st Century skills, but what can an English class do to leverage the potential of game-based learning? Return to Zork I remember when my family brought home our first computer, a used Commodore 64. After analyzing several essays containing descriptive imagery and composing a short piece of writing about a favorite location in San Francisco, students honed their descriptive writing skills by creating text-based interactive fiction games using PlayFic.com and the Inform 7 programming language. Zork Quest Day 1 Interactive Fiction What is interactive fiction? Extension Play through a few games in the 2012 International Fiction competition and vote on them (you must register with the site to vote). Homework Day 2 Day 3

Binary Game Skip to Content | Skip to Footer Cisco Binary Game The Cisco Binary Game is the best way to learn and practice the binary number system. It is great for classes, students and teachers in science, math, digital electronics, computers, programming, logic and networking. Learn To Code, Code To Learn Is it important for all children to learn how to write? After all, very few children grow up to become journalists, novelists, or professional writers. So why should everyone learn to write? Of course, such questions seem silly. I see coding (computer programming) as an extension of writing. The recent surge of interest in learning to code, reflected in sites like codecademy.com and code.org, has focused especially on job and career opportunities. But I see much deeper and broader reasons for learning to code. Six years ago, my research group at the MIT Media Lab launched the Scratch programming language and online community in an effort to make coding accessible and appealing to everyone. We’ve been amazed with the diversity and creativity of the projects. As an example, let me describe some of the projects created by a young Scratcher who I’ll call BlueSaturn. As she worked on the Christmas card, BlueSaturn realized that what she enjoyed most was creating animated characters.

Action video games boost reading skills Related images(click to enlarge) <I>Current Biology</I>, Franceschini et al. Much to the chagrin of parents who think their kids should spend less time playing video games and more time studying, time spent playing action video games can actually make dyslexic children read better. In fact, 12 hours of video game play did more for reading skills than is normally achieved with a year of spontaneous reading development or demanding traditional reading treatments. The evidence, appearing in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 28, follows from earlier work by the same team linking dyslexia to early problems with visual attention rather than language skills. "Action video games enhance many aspects of visual attention, mainly improving the extraction of information from the environment," said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua and the Scientific Institute Medea of Bosisio Parini in Italy. And, guess what? Source: Cell Press

Algorithm An algorithm is a step-by-step list of directions that need to be followed to solve a problem. The instructions should be simple enough such that each step can be done without thinking about it. Algorithms are often used to describe how a computer might solve a problem. But there are algorithms in the real world too. A recipe can be considered a type of algorithm. Comparing algorithms[change | edit source] There is usually more than one way to solve a problem. In cooking, some recipes are more difficult to do than others, because they take more time to finish or have more things to keep track of. Sorting by colors[change | edit source] This is an example of an algorithm for sorting cards with colors on them into piles of the same color: Sorting by numbers[change | edit source] These are examples of algorithms for sorting a stack of cards with many different numbers, so that the numbers are in order. Players start with a stack of cards that have not been sorted. First pass: ( 5 1 4 2 8 )

7 Apps for Teaching Children Coding Skills It's hard to imagine a single career that doesn't have a need for someone who can code. Everything that "just works" has some type of code that makes it run. Coding (a.k.a. programming) is all around us. That's why all the cool kids are coding . . . or should be. Programming is not just the province of pale twenty-somethings in skinny jeans, hunched over three monitors, swigging Red Bull. Not any more! If you're concerned that that a) elementary school students don't have the ability to code, b) there's no room in the curriculum, and c) you don't possess coding chops to teach programming skills, throw out those worries. In no particular order, we have listed all the coding apps that are appropriate for young learners. GameStar Mechanic Platform: WebCost: $2 per student GameStar Mechanic teaches kids, ages 7-14, to design their own video games. Scratch Platform: WebCost: Free! Tynker Platform: WebCost: Free! Move the Turtle Hopscotch Platform: iPadCost: Free! Daisy the Dinosaur Cargo-Bot

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