New ‘Scratch Challenge Workbook’ From DK
Last summer, my campers absolutely enjoyed working from some of DK’s workbooks related to Scratch programming, and now DK has a new Scratch workbook releasing.
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Tag: Scratch
‘Scratch Coding Cards’ Make It Easy to Pick up Programming
What if you’ve never stepped foot in a computer science class, but you want your child to know how to code? It can be difficult to pass along information you don’t have yourself. Luckily, No Starch has published a set of Scratch Coding Cards to help anyone get started with MIT’s coding site.
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Create Start-to-Finish Games With ‘Scratch Programming Playground’
I’ve reviewed a bunch of Scratch books for GeekDad over the years, and these books are always displayed on a table during my summer camps for kids. And for Summer 2017, I’m going to be able to add another powerful Scratch book to the mix–No Starch’s ‘Scratch Programming Playground’ by Al Sweigart.
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Find Your Way with Moana in the Hour of Code
In 2014, kids were Frozen to their computers. In 2015, they were Awakened. This year, prepare to go Wayfinding with Moana in The Hour of Code.
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Beginning Game Programming Camp – Gamification and DK Workbooks
For the last five days, I’ve had ten kids taking my Beginning Game Programming camp here in Atlanta. This is the second summer I’ve taught the camp, and this year I decided to change things up a bit after I got a look at some of the new DK books related to programming.
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Kickstarter Alert: Movin’ With the Mover Kit
The Mover Kit: Wearable tech for kids; with a huge range of possibilities to code, create, and encourage kids to do more. It’s fairly simple in appearance but like any child’s imagination – it’s the potential within which is amazing.
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Kickstarter Alert: My Two Weeks With Codeybot
The Codeybot Kickstarter is coming to an end. I spent two weeks with one and learned these robots aren’t just for laser battles.
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My Kid’s Scratch Project Ended Up in a Book
One of the nicest parts of Scratch is its social component: kids can tell other kids what they liked about their projects.
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Teach Your Kids to Code Apps With Pocket Code
You probably know about Scratch, the graphical programming environment developed at MIT that allows kids to code interactive stories, games, and animations. Researchers at the Graz University of Technology in Austria have been working hard at creating Pocket Code, a Scratch-like environment for the Android platform.
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First Steps in Robotics With mBot
Building our own robots has been a topic in our house for a long time now: the kids are absolutely fascinated with robots and regularly fantasize about building robots for either doing the chores around the house or producing candy and toys.
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Starting From Scratch: Developing Interest
In my experience, it is nearly impossible to teach a child something they’re not interested in learning. Before I begin discussing codes and programming languages, I wanted to get my son interested in the subject at a surface level.
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Tynker: Visual Game Programming Tools For Kids
I’m teaching a bunch of technology camps this summer, and one of the camps I’m most looking forward to is Beginning Game Programming. My goal is to introduce the students to the basic concepts of programming but also to give them hands-on time with as many game development platforms as we can fit into the week.
One of the tools that I’m definitely going to introduce to the students is Tynker. If you’re not familiar with it and have a student who is showing strong interesting in creating his or her own games, you’ll definitely want to check out their website.
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These Robots Will Teach Your Kids to Program
A new pair of robots will teach your kids how to program … and grow more advanced as your kids age.
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Gift Guide: Ideas For Makers and Hackers
Still looking for the perfect gifts for the makers and hackers on your list? It’s not too late! We’ve got suggestions.
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Teaching Kids Code, From Binary to Building Games
Get your kids learning to code with this easy-to-learn book that teaches Scratch and Python programming.
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International Scratch Day: Saturday, May 17!
Do your kids Scratch? Nope, this isn’t a medical question. Scratch is a free programming language developed for kids.
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Tynker: An App to Teach Kids Programming
My son is nine, and very familiar with Scratch, so I’ll start by saying that this app is most helpful for a younger child, perhaps kindergarten age, who hasn’t had experience with drag-and-drop programming yet. While three games came with my app preview — Puppy Adventure, Lost in Space, and Sketch Racer — only the first game comes for free on the downloadable app, with in-app purchases providing more games for the player at around $2 per game.
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The Geek Immigrant's Guide to Learning Coding (aka Learn Like a Kid)
Being a Geek Immigrant mother to two Geek Native children, I set off to learn coding so I could turn around and help my kids learn coding. And I learned some valuable things along the way. Enough to construct this guide in case you are like me and coming to Geekhood in middle age. It will help you learn coding as an adult so that you can turn around and teach coding to kids. It’s for every teacher, every Coderdojo organizer, every parent, every person who wants-to-learn-coding-for-whatever-reason-but-knows-nothing-about-computers.
Continue ReadingSuper Scratch Programming Adventure Is an Awesome Way to Get Kids Into Programming
I started learning programming in eighth grade. It was on my school’s first Apple II and the program that most sticks in my head was a short BASIC routine that had a small square bouncing around and off the edges …
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