8 programming tools suitable for children

Thanks to the mobile tide, tablets, smartphones, and Smart TVs that are everywhere are filled with our eyes, not just adults, even children like to share the thrilling feeling of "Cutting watermelon" on the tablet and experiencing the great escape of the temple. While playing, have you ever thought about letting your children develop an App of their own?

The author Nat Brown believes that age is not a problem. Children can also learn programming. Learning programming is like playing basketball, playing football, and playing piano.

The content of this article is as follows:

I have a 12-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter. Like all my parents in the world, I also hope that my children will become a great man and a great reader, great mathematicians and scientists do what they are interested in. As a Senior Programmer, I hope they can become a great programmer and develop great applications. I don't want them to become blind "consumers ".

As a technician, I often discuss with my parents, teachers, and friends about programming programs and "screen time" for young children.

Screen Time: Creating vs. Consuming

I think many parents will worry that their children will spend a lot of time on their computers, the premise is to find out whether they are "Creating" or "consuming" computers, tablets, smartphones, and even TVs ".

Most parents choose to set their children's screen time, for example, 15 minutes a day, or even once a week. In this regard, I agree, including playing games, Watching entertainment videos and video games, and setting limits based on different families. (Most of my family members like reading. We don't watch TV. On weekends, we usually play games on xBox + Kinect and iPad. On Friday or Saturday, there will be a "movie night ", we will not spend too much time on the screen .)

However, in real life, we work on computers every day, including creating or adding tables, writing emails, and writing memos. As a result, computers have become essential tools for our work, and familiarity with how to use computers has become essential skills. Not only adults, but also children. Therefore, proper "development and creation" on the computer is also the trend of development. For example, compiling programs, compiling programs, high-quality educational programs, programming, video editing, and slides should all allow children to learn, this is like letting them learn basic skills such as playing basketball, playing football, learning piano, Enjoying art and singing.

In my family, I allow my children to do some other activities on their computers (without other work at school) including:

• Create slides, and use home photos/videos or photos/videos taken by themselves to create slides;
• Use a Network Camera on your computer or other art projects to create static frame videos. iStopMotion is recommended here;
• Draw/make various programming patterns. We recommend that you use Pixelmator or other iPad applications;
• Write stories/messages through applications;
• Use Blender to create 3D models or animations;
• Learning programming tools.

Children can also learn Programming

Nowadays, there are many good tools on the Internet to help children learn computer programming. However, unfortunately, these tools are not a good helper for young children. Therefore, you must find learning tools suitable for children's age to get twice the result with half the effort.

My son is now 12 years old (as mentioned below) and has used almost half of the tools and Scratch since he was 5 years old. Now he uses StencylWorks and XCode to develop iPhone/iPad applications; my 9-year-old daughter has tried a lot, but programming has not aroused her interest (I am trying to help her ).

Below I will share several programming learning tools:

ScratchIt is the best tool for young children to learn from scratch. By clicking and dragging, programming can be completed, so that children or adult Programming beginners can learn basic programming concepts. Because it is visualized, it can easily help children to create graphical applications, which can be viewed based on Web pages. In addition, it also has a huge community for children, share their projects on related websites. For each Scratch project, you can download and view how the Scratch project runs. You can also make changes on this basis. This tool is like a question and answer on GitHub to share open-source projects or on forums, IRC, and StackOverflow.

CargoBotDesigned for iPad;RoboLogicApplicable to iPhone and iPad;MoveTheTurtleIt helps children learn how to program and think about how to complete tasks through logic. Taking programming as a pleasure, let the young children learn more in the middle school.

CodeaI have no experience with Codea, and my children have never used it. Therefore, I will not comment here.

CrunchZillaCodeMonster and CodeMaven. These were developed by a friend of mine and he realized that young children lack these learning tools. These are simple teaching tutorials. We recommend that CodeMonster be suitable for young children. You can use CodeMaven to learn the JavaScript language, so that you can interact with children and teach them step by step.

Khan AcademyContains computer tutorials, such as a simple programming language JavaScript that focuses on painting and is very suitable for young children.

StencylThis is a relatively complex tool. Experienced Scratch users can perform further operations with the help of adults. You can use Stencyl to create a "flash" game play for your website so that the game runs on iPhone/iPad and Android devices, this is also the main reason it attracts children to create an application to share with their friends. Recently, my son began to use Stencyl actively. It took us a lot of time to figure out the tool. This tool covers a large number of user experiences and is simple and practical.

I will encourage my children to use these tools and learn programming knowledge through Scratch, such as loop and variable. These are some of my current ideas and suggestions. I hope that these tiny ways can enlighten you. smart devices are not just for play, but for the purpose of building a development dream for your children. Let's start from this moment! (Compilation/Xia mengzhu)

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