Is anyone teaching their kids to code?

[Ophelie]

A colleague sent me a link to CodeCombat earlier today. I tried the JS version, and it was very good, though I did have to assure my coworkers that I was, indeed, working

When we teach adults, we generally start with the “why” instead of the “how”: in other words, we start with theory, then show students how to apply it.

I notice that many initiatives that aim to teach kids are much more action-focused: for example, CodeCombat has you code to move your character around before you really understand what “this” does.

Have any of you taught your kids to code? What worked, what didn’t?

(if you’re looking for an open-source project to contribute to, there are a bunch of ways to help build CodeCombat )

[ralphm]

To heck with kids. This is for me! Quite a nice site.

@Ophelie

I notice that many initiatives that aim to teach kids are much more action-focused

Yes, the way adults learn generally isn’t useful for children. The higher-order reasoning that makes the Why information useful doesn’t start to kick in until the early teens. Younger ones learn best in small steps, by seeing how things work and practicing with real examples.

Mind you, we adults can benefit from some action-focused learning as well. I find a lot of coding books too focussed on theory without enough practical demonstrations.