The task: explain what you do at work to a group of 6 years old kids.
Level: high (my own daughter was among the kids).
Many people shared thei...
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I highly recommend using a children-friendly programming language like Scratch (scratch.mit.edu/) to explain programming to kids.
Don't focus on the low level computer science (like how binary and assembly works).
While that's certainly going on in the background, it's not what programming is really "about". Programming is about applying logic to solve problems.
You can demonstrate simple programming concepts in plain language, like so:
You have an example that is perfect for demonstrating usage of variables, lists, loops, conditional logic, and methods!
You can express this programming example on a whiteboard in plain language, or in any number of actual programming languages.
For example, in Python:
Great post Tomek. I shall try this on my 6 yr old, as she thinks my job is basically watching tv... :)
My wife thinks the same of me. Do you think, I could try this on her? 😅
:D Same here.
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.
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.
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.
It is related to the topic so i will share it here :)
More and more there are stories on how we teach others about programming and tech.
It started as a book but have became so much more -> helloruby.com/
Perhaps this proves useful ^_^
Thank you for sharing helloruby.com. I didn't aware about it!!
Just ordered!!
Thank you Tomek. Do you think the act of drawing affected their attention in any way? Would pre-printed images be more helpful or it's just irrelevant?
great post!
I would love to see you and your class in action 😊👍
Great post! I teach Python programming to 6th grade boys, and I will try your idea of drawing pictures and see if it helps.
Hi Tomek, good post. I once volunteered to work as a "computer dad" at the school of my daughter. Very funny to be working with children of about 6-7 years old. I found their openness lovely.
This kind of reminds me of when I explain stuff to my grandma, because she isn't really good with computers. It's fun to explain what you are doing to someone who isn't good with computers :P
That's a nice approach. Will test it on my kids :)
Good post Tomek
Sounds like it was an interesting challenge!
Just small note: