Last night I watched a TED talk given by Mitch Resnick of MIT Media Labs titled "Let's teach kids to code". The basic premise is that children - the "digital natives" - are good at reading online, but they don't always understand the "why" behind what they've read.
In order to help with this challenge, he created a free software program called Scratch that allows you to drag and drop commands to build animation. It took 5 minutes or so to figure out how to make it work, but once you get the hang of it you can quickly create something unique. It requires just enough understanding of programming logic to make it educational.
Here is a screenshot of some of the commands grouped together in a logical order:
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In order to help with this challenge, he created a free software program called Scratch that allows you to drag and drop commands to build animation. It took 5 minutes or so to figure out how to make it work, but once you get the hang of it you can quickly create something unique. It requires just enough understanding of programming logic to make it educational.
Here is a screenshot of some of the commands grouped together in a logical order:
