Teaching your kids how to

write computer programs by Marshall Brain

Quick Intro - If you are looking for a quick and easy way to teach your kid a real programming language, without downloading anything or buying anything, try these Python tutorials. Your kid will be writing and modifying code in just a few minutes.

Marshall Brain's quick and easy Python tutorials

Let's say that you have children, and you would like to help them learn computer programming at a youngish age. As the father of four kids, I have tried to approach it from several different angles. What I would like to do here is collect some ideas for parents who are looking for different options.

Let's start with a something important: Every kid is different. Some kids are reading and writing fluently years ahead of other kids. For them, learning to program is probably easier. Some kids have the basic analytical skills a lot earlier than others (Here's a story about a 9-year-old writing full-blown iPhone apps). And so on. You try to expose your kids to programming and it may or may not "take" the first time, simply because of these differences. So you wait a few months and try again, or you might try a different approach. Understand that, the first time you try to introduce your kids to programming, your kids might not "get it" at all. And that's OK.

The second thing to realize is that real analytical skills often don't start appearing until age 11 or 12 or 13 in many kids, so expecting huge breakthroughs prior to that may be unrealistic.

That being said, there are lots of fun things you can try as early as five or six...

Games

Let's start with a few games. Here are three games that my kids have particularly enjoyed. They teach basic problem solving ideas in different ways:

Magic Pen (wait a few seconds to see the word "play", then click the word "Play")

Fantastic Contraption

Auditorium (Drag the circle-with-arrow-in-it around. Enlarge or shrink the outer circle by dragging. Try to aim the stream at the bars. Once the bars fill, click anywhere to go to next level)

Then there is this game, which actually does a very good job of teaching simple programming skills:

Light Bot (click the "Play" button and start with the basics)

I love Light Bot. It will engage kids for a couple of hours, starting at age 7 or 8. Some of the puzzles in LightBot are too hard for kids. There are walkthroughs on YouTube that help.

Prefer games on a tablet or phone? Wired.com recently recommended a robot app here. See also this list.

LOGO

LOGO Programming (click on one of the programs on the right and watch it run, then modify)

LOGO Programming (has a tutorial for LOGO commands and exercises to try)

Python for Kids

Python Turotials

Or type "Python for kids" into Google - there is lots of stuff out there.

Bigger efforts

The good thing about Mindstorms is that it lets kids build some interesting stuff. The problem is that, after a month or two, you may find that you have come to the limits of what it can do. [Yes, there are adults on YouTube showing off some amazing, advanced stuff, but I suspect that these people are geniuses.]

A friend recommended this educational system for programming robot simulations. It is free:

RoboMind

Another big effort like this is Phrogram, formerly known as Kids Programming Language. KPL had the huge advantage that it was free and pretty amazing. It came with dozens of sample programs and could do both simple and complex things (for example, a really good pinball machine was one of the samples). But for some reason they killed KPL off and morphed it into Phrogram. Phrogram is $50, and I haven't tried it, but assuming that it is a similar package it might be worth it.

Here is a free system from MIT called Scratch:

If your kids would like to create games, here is one option to try:

Also there is a free eBook on creating games with Python which states, "written to be understandable by kids as young as 10 to 12 years old, although it is great for anyone of any age who has never programmed before":

One other thing to try is:

MIT App Inventor

MIT App Inventor

If you would like an introduction, you can find lots of introductory videos like these:

Making Web Sites

What about a simple web site, without any programming at all? I would recommend Wordpress. You can get started with it here:

Real programming - Stanford's Java Class

Introduction to Computer Science | Programming Methodology

See also:

CS106A: Programming Methodologies

Our son needed a little encouragement from his parents (i.e. deadlines) to get through the first assignments, but by the time be got to Programming Assignment #4 (writing the code for the game called "Breakout") he was completely engaged and extended that basic game in a number of directions without any prompting from us. I feel like this class taught him the essence of being a "real" programmer.

Stanford has many classes to explore - click for list. Their offerings represent a valuable resource for anyone wanting to learn programming.

Once comfortable with Java, something like this might be interesting to try - a combination of Greenfoot and Java:

Real programming - C and C++ Programming

The C and C++ programming languages are two of the most widely used programming languages in the world. There are free compilers that are readily available and lots of tutorial information can be found for free. Here are two resources that can help get you started:

Learning to write iPhone and iPad apps

Writing apps for the iPhone and iPad is not for newbies, but it is definitely something that middle school and high school students can master if they have a knack for programming. And the audience for these apps is gigantic through the App Store that Apple operates. Here are the steps that you need to take if you want to get started:

What about Android Apps?

That will get stale as time passes, but it is a nice intro.

The BASIC Stamp (and see below for the Arduino)

It combines programming and simple electronics The programming tends to be very simple You can do real things with it, or at least things that seem realer (to my kids anyway) than Mindstorms.

What's a Microcontroller BASIC Stamp Kit

You can also order it here:

BASIC Stamp Activity Kit

The big caveat is that you need to have a computer with a serial port to use it. If you do not have such a computer (most computers made since 2005 don't have a serial port), then you need the USB version of the kit for $160:

BASIC Stamp Discovery Kit - Serial (With USB Adapter and Cable)

And if you are going to do that, I might suggest you consider this robot kit instead, because it is the same price:

Boe-Bot Robot Kit - USB Version

So, already, you can see that the BASIC Stamp is not simple or cheap. We've already had to worry about port types and which kit to get. And if that puts you off, so be it.

But we did buy the kit at Radio Shack, and we did have an older machine with a serial port, and we did get it set up and it did all work and... here is what was amazing about it. My kid could sit down with the book, by himself, and on his own he could wire up little circuits and write little pieces of code and get it all working. The programs and the electronics are easy enough that a 10-year-old can manage it. This is admittedly simple stuff, like wiring up a push button and having it make an LED blink, or making a servo motor turn or making sounds come out of a speaker. But the idea that my kid (who hates reading for the most part) could get this stuff working was impressive. And then he could think of extensions on his own. Trivial extensions, yes, like making two LEDs blink, but extensions.

The nice thing about this approach is that you can buy other pieces at Parallax.com and they are pretty easy to hook up. One of the first things we bought was a PIR module ($10), which is the kind of thing you use in a burglar alarm or an automatic light to sense a warm human body. We also bought a little text LCD panel ($25). And he built a device that could count people as they walked by. If you have a family of six people, how many times do they use the stairs in the house? How many times do they open the refrigerator? With this device you can find out. (The refrigerator was funny - it was opened something like 50 times a day!)

Next thing was a ultrasonic sensor ($30). With that and the LCD display you can build a little ultrasonic tape measure. They have a lot of little sensors like this that you can try. We've used the accelerometer, the thermometer, the RFID tag reader, etc.

His latest adventure is with the GPS module ($90) and the USB memory stick reader/writer ($35), which he used in a science fair project. With the USB memory stick thing, you can plug in a USB memory stick (AKA "thumb drive") and read and write files. So you can create a text file and start dumping in data. Then you can hook up the GPS, let it gather data and save the data into the memory stick. With that you can create bread crumb trails everywhere you go. You can then plug the memory stick into your laptop's USB port, load the data into a spreadsheet and do a scatter graph...

...or you can drop the data into Google maps as described here:

Mapping GPS Coordinates using Google Maps

As it turns out, the Parallax GPS is not the greatest. When we first hooked it up, it would never get a lock on the satellites. After an hour of probing on Google, we found out that you have to mount the GPS about 10 inches away from the Stamp (because of electrical noise generated by the Stamp). It would have been wonderful if this fact had been revealed in the Parallax documentation. But even after you do that, this device can have trouble getting a lock sometimes (ours doesn't work at all in rainy weather, for example). It does work in the car if you put it on the dashboard, but not from the interior. [All of these problems eventually led us to a site called Sparkfun.com, which has a much better selection of GPS modules that are slightly less easy to use.]

It also led us looking for material on the web about the BASIC Stamp. There is a lot of it. For example, there are people building autopilots from BASIC Stamps:

Basic Stamp autopilot tutorial, part 3 (this is the page that taught us not to put the GPS on the Stamp board)

BASIC Stamp UAV code now in beta

The Arduino

Here are some examples of different kits available:

The easiest way to get started with the Arduino is to buy one (for example, buy an Arduino Uno) and start programming. This article is a great introduction to getting the development environment downloaded to your machine and starting to program:

Arduino How To

The first time I tried it, it did not work. There were two settings (the type of Arduino and the com port) that I had to set, and the article provided guidance. We have purchased a number of accessories, including this touch screen, and have had a lot of fun with Arduinos.

The Raspberry Pi

Conclusion

PS - Note to self: Open GPS Tracker, the BigAVR2



You may also enjoy this in-depth interview, "Marshall Brain on Singularity 1on1: We're approaching humanity’s make or break period":

On the coming Singularity and Artificial Intelligence:

A Conversation with Marshall Brain from MIRI on Vimeo.