LiveCode in K-6 school environment
Monte Goulding
monte at sweattechnologies.com
Thu Sep 23 03:35:06 EDT 2010
Hi Scott
>
> It sounds like the age of children you are looking at may be a challenging group if writing code is the goal. I teach 8 and 9 year olds and my experience teaching them HyperCard (and last year, revMedia) is that (no matter how hard I wish it to be different) very few are developmentally ready to program.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking but I didn't want to assume anything given my 4 year old is a wiz on the iPad ;-). The oldest kids will be about 12 I think.
> A simple PowerPoint type interface and/or templates that they can customize is more appropriate with the kiddos I work with. A few of the more gifted 9 year olds can get their head around variables and if-then branching but my experience (and the general consensus of folks I spoke to at a few RevCons) was that 10 or 11 year olds were usually better able to think at that level of abstraction...
OK, I might tell them it's best if it's only year 6 and small groups of keen kids.
> On the other hand, it hasn't stopped me from exposing kids to scripting in order to see who gets a light in their eyes! Let us know what you end up doing. I'm certain I'm not alone in wanting to know what someone of your skill will end up contributing inside a school setting.
Ah, now you've got me blushing ;-)
Cheers
--
Monte Goulding
M E R Goulding Software Development
Bespoke application development for vertical markets
InstallGadget - How to create an installer in 10 seconds
revObjective - Making behavior scripts behave
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