There's an exercise I use where we act out different parts of a computer. Someone plays Customer who sets out the goal. Another plays the Programmer with help from a scribe/coder who writes the steps on a flipchart/whiteboard. Programmer tells the Input to do something, a step from the program. They pass this on to the CPU who says thanks. CPU passes info (like a number to added) to Storage/Memory. CPU does the task (like adding three or four numbers by talking to storage. CPU passes the result to Output who tells the programmer the answer. Fun, confusing sometimes, but you get to deconstruct something and understand about giving good instructions, bugs, etc.
I followed the ideas from this post along with the one abover, from your comment Phil. The kids (aged between 9 - 13) were very delighted and they enjoyed the role play.
Thank you for these ideas that worth spreading.
Instructional Developer with many years of IT support. I teach a couple of classes in higher education which fills up any free time that isn't already spent with the family.
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Instructional Developer at Missouri S&T Educational Technology
One thing I did with explaining some programming to my daughter was to have her "control" a robot. I'm the robot and she has to tell me how to go to the kitchen, open the fridge, and get a drink. She quickly figured out that I would only do the exact command that she told me to do. Some of those were, "walk forward", "lift arm", "open door", etc. It was a great experience and both her and her sister got a huge laugh out of "controlling daddy robot".
There's an exercise I use where we act out different parts of a computer. Someone plays Customer who sets out the goal. Another plays the Programmer with help from a scribe/coder who writes the steps on a flipchart/whiteboard. Programmer tells the Input to do something, a step from the program. They pass this on to the CPU who says thanks. CPU passes info (like a number to added) to Storage/Memory. CPU does the task (like adding three or four numbers by talking to storage. CPU passes the result to Output who tells the programmer the answer. Fun, confusing sometimes, but you get to deconstruct something and understand about giving good instructions, bugs, etc.
I followed the ideas from this post along with the one abover, from your comment Phil. The kids (aged between 9 - 13) were very delighted and they enjoyed the role play.
Thank you for these ideas that worth spreading.
One thing I did with explaining some programming to my daughter was to have her "control" a robot. I'm the robot and she has to tell me how to go to the kitchen, open the fridge, and get a drink. She quickly figured out that I would only do the exact command that she told me to do. Some of those were, "walk forward", "lift arm", "open door", etc. It was a great experience and both her and her sister got a huge laugh out of "controlling daddy robot".
This is brilliant! Such a good real world interpretation of programming.