I love to program, and I very much hope my kids will love to program, too. I’m starting to teach my seven-year-old the basics of logic, and have been looking for a more modern version of Logo. Last year I posted about Squeak, but I haven’t yet tried introducing either of my kids to it yet.
Now comes a story out of Germany about using Squeak and the Squeak EToys as a teaching tool with a group of high school kids. In just four days, kids with no prior computer science knowledge were able to write their own working games, and, even more importantly, to understand the process. Since we have an OLPC at my house, which comes preloaded with EToys, I’m already thinking ahead to how I’ll use it to teach my kids. I’m just trying to convince myself that it’ll be OK if they don’t love programming as much as I do.
