<div dir="ltr">I've never used labview or the newest version off mindstorm, so honestly these programs could be completely relevant I could be completely out of touch.<div><br></div><div>The big point is, making programing accessible is great if it can be used practically and the programer identifies him or herself as having become a programer. The later of which is important in this instance. Not the programing bit, the self identifying bit, the confidence and feeling of empowerment in creation and solving issues. Those are the core reasons I would like to see programing taught more as opposed to programing for jobs sake. Think about training wheels on a bike, watch this kid figure out how to ride without them - > <a href="https://youtu.be/eaIvk1cSyG8">https://youtu.be/eaIvk1cSyG8</a>. It hardly matters if this little guy is going to become a pro cyclist or not. What matters is he has discovered that he is empowered to do something if he believes in himself and works hard. </div><div><br></div><div>The reason any of us want to pass programing on to others, is because we have found that sense of empowerment for ourselves and would like to help others to find it in the same place. As Mentors, Teachers, and or Parents I think we are responsible for helping overcome some of the barriers that the complexity of programing presents. Pointing to the training wheel equivalent here alarms me we may be overlooking the key objective, which is inspiration for a young person. Which in the case of "Thumbs up kid" came from his Dad helping him get to his epiphany. The bike or the programing language or the color of the bike are all ancillary.</div><div><br></div><div>The other big opportunities with code is the trivial cost of failure and relatively unbound access to resources. How relevant would training wheels be if falling down didn't hurt. Of course getting the balance is important but that is why we are in the picture. On the resources side of things before really getting into code I had a poor perspective of what could really be done. Shedding light on possibilities and scale at little cost I think can be an inspiration thing. Codeacademy and Khan start and such a basic level it's hard to see the forest through the trees. Here me right, I think they are great tools, I just personally found them frustrating because of the great amount of time taken mucking through the weeds or things that were already understood. </div><div><br></div><div>I did like this intro to python ebook -> <a href="https://inventwithpython.com/chapters/">https://inventwithpython.com/chapters/</a>. But, again recommendations are just details, could also recommend JavaScript at this point because of the resources available. Really all depends on the ( irrelevant but necessary ) objectives. </div><div><br></div><div>Thumbs up everybody!</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 10:15 AM, Alan Johnson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:alan@datdec.com" target="_blank">alan@datdec.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">My son (age 10) and I are learning Python together on <a href="https://www.codecademy.com/" target="_blank">https://www.codecademy.com/</a> here and there. They have a bunch of languages there with a very similar style to <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/" target="_blank">https://www.khanacademy.org/</a> . We have not finished the course yet, so I don't know if it will get advanced enough for my preferences, but it is great for beginner programmers. He has years of experience with Mindstorm GUI programming, and that is a great intro to basic programing concepts because it has programming instructions that are just like building Legos, but I agree with others that is not very representative of programming in general; it is down right painful to debug among other shortcomings. So I'm hoping get him to switch to <a href="http://bitsandbricks.no/2014/01/19/getting-started-with-python-on-ev3/" target="_blank">Python for Mindstorm</a>. Also, then we can get rid of this last Windows machine in the house. =)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><span class=""><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Kenny Lussier <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:klussier@gmail.com" target="_blank">klussier@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>Hi All,<br><br></div>My daughter has expressed an interest in learning to code. It's a non-specific, very general interest. She doesn't have a specific area of interest that she wants to learn (UI, game development, HPC, etc.), she just want to learn how to code. <br><br></div>What do people think is the best language for a 12yr old to learn? What is most flexible to use for different purposes? What tools are out there to teach a kid to code? Code Academy and the like seem to be a little dry and never yielded wonderful results for most of the adults I know, so other ideas would be welcome.<br><br></div>Thanks,<br></div>Kenny<br><br></div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div></span><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">-- <br><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Alan Johnson</span><br></div><div><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><a href="mailto:alan@datdec.com" target="_blank">alan@datdec.com</a></font><div><span style="font-size:16px;font-variant:small-caps;text-align:center;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><a href="http://xkcd.com/1179/" target="_blank"><font face="verdana, sans-serif">Date Format PSA</font></a></span></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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