Hi Mike,
I've been teaching primary school children (on a voluntary basis) for
over a year now, mostly scratch, now moving on to raspberry pi (probably
still scratch, but controlling lego). We're part of the UK's codeclub
thing:
http://codeclub.org.uk/
Which has recently gone global:
http://codeclubworld.org/
They provide a lot of well thought out lesson plans (but the age range
is more 7-12 so perhaps a bit young for you).
Specific to livecoding - I would say that scratch is live, in that they
are constantly altering a running program (you can edit, start and stop
bits of code independently of each other) and this is an integral and
natural part of the learning process. They are constantly explaining
what they are doing to each other as they work, and this becomes a kind
of narrative which seems important.
The barrier to learning other languages in this age range is the typing
and spelling skills, I find it interesting that the underlying
programming concepts come much easier to them than these more tangential
things.
I'm currently designing a course for teenagers (people interested in
computer music and DJing mostly) to learn programming, and for this I'm
going to be plundering existing livecoding languages much more freely,
and using music as the common ground to introduce programming concepts.
cheers,
dave
On 28/01/14 19:29, Mike Hodnick wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> Are any of you aware of an existing curriculum for teaching children
> (aged 12-13 years old) about live coding? I'm working with a local
> school on teaching some of their students about live coding. These
> students have some basic hands-on programming experience already. We're
> looking to have the students be able to demonstrate what they learn
> (ideas, concepts, hands-on application) as we build up to a final live
> coding performance.
>
> While I've been trying to generate some excitement about live coding
> here in the US and in my city, I never thought it would catch on with
> kids and schools first. I think this ties in perfectly with the ideas
> about live coding's impact on education, as outlined
> here: http://toplap.org/dagstuhl-seminar-report-collaboration-and-learning-through-live-coding/.
> However, I feel like I'm in over my head in this area. I do not have a
> formal background in pedagogy and would like to learn of any reference
> material for getting children exposed to live coding. Does anyone have
> any experience with this?
>
> -Mike
>
Received on Wed Jan 29 2014 - 09:53:52 GMT