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Lego to Linux:
Programming for Kids
Bala Thava
Bala is a software-geek, full time developer at
Microsoft gold partner, passion of photography,
fond of music and cinema.
Kids can now test their creative skills on
websites which helps them to develop
simple games and applications.
Programming helps kids to express their perception
on objects and events surrounding with creativity.
But are we enough realized the need for
programming skill as part of the children education;
according to some people it’s important as the
literacy and calculation skills.
Scratch
This is designed for kids where its help
kids to develop animation, interactive
stories and games by drag-and-drop.
They can draw their own characters too,
add action and sound to them. The work
can be saved and shared with others.
http://scratch.mit.edu/
Hopscotch
It’s an iPad app, which provides with
the right number of keys and controls
for kids to start up, which helps them
to learn it by them self without any
help.
https://www.gethopscotch.com/
Stencyl
If you are looking for only game related
development, with a payment then
Stencyl will be the choice. On the other
side it’s a cross platform application as
build once and play anywhere.
http://www.stencyl.com/
Codecacademy
This is another great resource to learn
programming interactively.
Kahn Academy
This is a non-profit educational
project by educator Salman Khan.
Here you not only learn programming
but also other important subjects.
https://www.khanacademy.org/cs
From ‘Lego’ to ‘Linux’, the base line of concept
in programming is arranging the available blocks
into a required or targeted design. By learning
programming, kids learn to solve problems, get over
the obstacles and collaborate with others, these
are important life skills needed to prove them in any
profession. As MIT professor Mitchel Resnick wrote,
when kids ‘learn to code’, they also ‘code to learn’.
On the other hand, many of us see the code as
the endless lines of computer language. However, I
look at programming as an expression which mixed
up logic, techniques in form of modern art. So
programming should be taught at an early stage
of human life as the minds are not consumed by
specific streams of knowledge - may be in kinder
garden.
So how we can teach programming to kids, there
are number of web sites and projects are available
both paid and free, but here I am listing a number
of websites which helps you to learn from some
code lines to a whole application. Have a try and
find what suits you or your kids.
I conclude this here with, as said by Naveen
Selvadurai, co founder of Foursquare.
- “What ever you do, learn to code”
For more tech stuff and link stay turned with us.
Mitchel Resnick : http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/
Naveen Selvadurai : https://twitter.com/naveen
Khan Academy : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Khan_
(educator)
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