I had an interesting experience live coding with children earlier this Summer. I was a resident composer with Toronto's Esprit Orchestra, as part of a program in which they place composers in schools around the city to create new music with the students. In the middle school where I was, we created a piece where the students played their "traditional" instruments, played a six Wiimote multi-channel audio MaxMSP patch that I created, and did some simple work with code (Chuck). I didn't make them code from scratch - instead there was some simple code already "there", as part of the piece, and they had to take turns (in a somewhat dramatic way) modifying the code. They were really in to it - although they liked to play their traditional instruments, and were curious about the Wiimote instrument, it was the live coding that had them "over the top" enthusiastic!
Yours truly,
David
On 2011-09-15, at 3:27 PM, thor wrote:
> On 15 Sep 2011, at 21:54, alex wrote:
>
>> On 15 September 2011 18:50, thor <th.list_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Been quiet here for a while. I'm at ISEA and yesterday night I met
>>> Sander Veenhof who told me about his Softwareblocks project:
>>>
>>> http://www.sndrv.nl/softwareblocks/
>>
>> Wow has he tried any prototypes?
>
> Yes, he's tried it and will send me a video when he's recorded one,
> but he mentioned that lots of people he presented the idea to were
> sceptical that it would be a good idea to teach so young kids programming.
> Any comments? What would be the benefits or potential dangers?
>
>>> Do people know of other programming environments for (young) kids?
>>
>> My 3 year old son enjoys programming these bees at his preschool:
>> http://www.tts-group.co.uk/shops/tts/Products/PD1723538/Bee-Bot-Floor-Robot/?rguid=92b201eb-0c85-4e38-a297-35932cbc56b6
>
> This looks quite nice. For that price, it better not break in the first week like
> much of the plastic stuff nowadays. Have you tried one?
>
>
>
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Dr. David Ogborn, Assistant Professor
Communication Studies & Multimedia
Director, Cybernetic Orchestra & ESP Studio
McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
ogbornd --at-- mcmaster.ca
http://davidogborn.net
http://twitter.com/ogbornd
http://esp.mcmaster.ca (Cybernetic Orchestra)
1-905-525-9140 ext 27603
Received on Fri Sep 16 2011 - 18:04:48 BST