Got kids who seem to think computers are nothing more then an expensive entertainment device, and the occasional source of copy and paste information to get tonights homework done quickly? Back when I was a kid with my little Apple //c there wasn't that much choice gaming so I tended to spend a lot of time programming in BASIC and Assembly Language. Nowadays there isn't quite the incentive for the kids to start programming which makes Scratch a neat starting point.
Scratch is a drag and drop style simple GUI programming environment and is available for both Mac's and PC's. It lets kids animate objects on a screen (much like Logo) using simple programming logic that they link together on a graphical scripting pad. A sample program might be Repeat 10, Move 10, Rotate 180, Move 50. Sounds effects can be added as well as cartoon dialogue boxes and a few other special effects. Scratch can be used to make little movies, simple games or animations and you can import your own photos and draw your own pictures. They'll learn programming topics like procedures, looping, sequences etc without even realising it.
I've only let my kids have one turn each so far but so far the interest seems to be there.
The main problem is going to be keeping there attention span up by encouraging them to work on small and achievable projects. Left alone at it and they'll get bored pretty quickly.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment