A. Sundararajan's Weblog

Teaching programming to kids

I've been experimenting/playing with programming tools for kids. I've two kids - 8 and 5 year old.

Scratch

Great multimedia rich introduction to programming for kids. My son keeps playing with it! If you are after ease-of-use, this is probably the best choice. Available for download on Mac and Windows. If you have Squeak installed, you can get Scratch running on Linux as well (possibly with some audio problems). It is possible to export your Scratch projects as applets from your website

• Website: http://scratch.mit.edu
• Tutorials:
  • http://learnscratch.org/ has has nice screen-cast tutorials that cover basics very well.
  • http://www.redware.com/scratch/ has nice tutorials and teaching resources that eventually leads kids to develop interesting games
• Examples/Repository: Register @ scratch.mit.edu to download lots of great samples! You can view scratch programs online if you have Java plugin installed.

EToys

EToys is an tool to teach children a multimedia rich authoring environment and visual programming system. If you have OLPC laptop (or emulation environment for OLPC), it comes pre-installed with EToys. Or else you can download EToys for your platform. It is avaliable for Linux, Mac and Windows.

• Website: www.squeakland.org
• Tutorials:
  • Excellent step-by-step video tutorials @ http://freemor.wordpress.com/tag/etoys/
  • http://www.squeakland.org/tutorials/
• Examples: http://www.etoysillinois.org/

StarLogoTNG

Although StarLogoTNG is described as "tool to create and understand simulations of complex systems", it can be used as a tool to teach programming. It supports 3D and it is cross-platform a (Java) tool.

• Website: http://education.mit.edu/drupal/starlogo-tng
• Tutorial:
  • http://education.mit.edu/drupal/starlogo-tng/learn
  • Tutorial video at http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/tutorial-videos/. These videos describe slightly different interface. Menus/buttons have changed a bit in the recent version but it is still very useful.
• Examples: I am looking at Starlogo TNG Treasure Game Curriculum

Alice

This is an environment to teach programming in a 3D environment. This is a cross-platform (Java) tool.

• Website: http://www.alice.org.
• Tutorial:
  • There is a very nice tutorial series of worlds within the tool.
  • http://www.aliceprogramming.net/

Turtle Art

Turtle Art activity is bundled with OLPC. If you don't have OLPC, you can use an emulator environment. For example, you can download VirtualBox and run OLPC inside it following the steps here. I run VirtualBox on Mac, Ubuntu and Windows XP.

• Website: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Turtle_Art
• Tutorial:
  • Student Guide
  • FLOSS manual for TurtleArt
• Examples: http://www.turtleart.org/

Want to work with source code?

So far, we looked at visual programming tools. But, if you think it is better to expose to source code ("they have to look at code at somepoint anyway, let them see syntax errors sooner"), then you may want to try these:

Greenfoot

• Website: http://www.greenfoot.org
• Tutorial:
  • http://www.greenfoot.org/doc/tutorial/tutorial.html
  • Sample chapters of Greenfoot book
  • GreenRoom
• Examples/Repository: http://greenfootgallery.org/

BotsInc

With Bots Inc we can learn how to program robots interactively. Language used to program is Smalltalk (BotsInc is built with Squeak). Since BotsInc is a Squeak image, it possible to slowly graduate to full Smalltalk. It is available on all platforms.

• Website: http://scg.unibe.ch/wiki/botsinc
• Book: http://gforge.inria.fr/projects/botsinc

Alice 3 Beta

Alice 3 beta is hosted at http://kenai.com/projects/alice/. Alice 3 beta seems to have support to emit NetBeans projects. I've played with Alice 3 Beta - but not yet with NetBeans project support.

( Jul 21 2009, 10:46:12 PM IST ) Permalink | | | | |