Does anyone know any good resources to teach Java programming to kids.
I know the theory but I don't know how to make it interesting for
children. When they realize they won't be writing the next FPS game
within the first half hour they often lose motivation ;-)
I taught computer summer camp circa 1983 with spectacular results vis
a vis motivation. I am sure I wrote an essay on my techniques, but I
cannot find it.
After interviewing each camper, I discovered they nearly all wanted to
write video games. Astoundingly the 7 to 15 year olds wrote primitive
ones in a week.
I promised them I would not tell them anything that was not needed to
write video games. They would have to trust me.
I never demanded their attention for more than 15 seconds at a time.
I presented everything as a puzzle to be solved, rather than methods
to be memorised. They were NOT supposed to understand. I just gave
hints. They have to figure it out. For example the opening exercise
was to figure out what each of the keys on the keyboard did. They
figured it all out far faster than I could have explained it to them,
and without the tedium.
I leaked information to advanced students. Other students seeing the
benefits of this knowledge would chase me around demanding to be
taught too. Some professional teachers went bug-eyed seeing some ten
year olds DEMANDING to be taught trigonometry.
Pandemonium is normal and should not be discouraged. I relaxed every
normal rule of school I possibly could, including demanding respect.
There were handouts in the form of simple program listings students
could, key, understand and then do theme and variation. They never saw
anything put properly commented structured code, and so it never
occurred to them to write anything else. Visual elements, especially
reusable visual element lead naturally to logical structure.
The idea to start the student did almost nothing, but got a huge
payoff, e.g. a giant flying helicopter. Over time to get more subtle
control they had to master more and more. None of this boring learning
to do arithmetic. That was left to the very end when they were
motivated to demand it. Lots of use of canned random number generation
to clone and randomly position.
I had a dream team of tutors who worked with the kids. Mostly what
they had to do was keep kids who were falling behind the others from
freaking out. The kids expected so much of themselves.
The kids were insanely motivated, pouring over listing every waking
moment.
I had some "experienced" older kids who were resistant to learning
anything. I just let them go. It was so fun when the little kids
quickly surpassed them and their spaghetti methods.
I poured a jug of orange juice over one brat's head. I was legendary
ever after ever though the backers were terrified the kid's parents
would sue.
We had spectacular food. Even the kids commented how good it was.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
When you were a child, if you did your own experiment
to see if it was better to put to cocoa into your cup first
or the hot milk first, then you likely have the programmer gene..