Teach your Kids to Program these school Holidays

If you know Primary, High School aged kids OR know a teacher who struggles to keep up with Technology. Point them at Kid's Corner.

This site is full of videos, articles, tips & tricks. Many of the videos are have young teens being actors & doing the voiceovers.

For some examples, check out a Kids' Corner Videos

There are some great materials & videos here to help people learn about programming & computers.

Yes, I did cringe when the ~15 yr instructor described VB as “a really old language that has been around since 1991”. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I was on the team planning its Aust launch. I guess COBOL-68, Algol & Ada, aren’t as popular now “as it was back in my day”.

 


Other tools that have proved educational & popular with my family.

  • Phrogram a VB like language with extra classes that makes it easy for 10+ years to create their own animated computer games.
  • Armadillo Run is a physics-based puzzle game. You have to build structures with the purpose of getting an armadillo to a certain point in space. There is a selection of building materials, each with different properties, which can be combined to form almost anything. The realistic physics simulation gives you the freedom to solve each level in many different ways.
  • My son just asked me to add “All the Age of Empire games”. Which I have to agree with, he is great at history. His interest started by playing the AoE games, reading the manual & learning the battle strengths of each civilisation. He then watched any Documentaries on SBS & History Channels. The same can’t be said for his siblings, who also played with 0 benefit.
  • Railroad Tycoon 1, 2 & 3. These games are brilliant for teaching basic commerce (Supply & Demand, Industry Location & Interdependency, Predatory Pricing), Economics (Interest Rates, Labour & Unemployment cycles) & Equities (Fund raising, Stock Splits, Bonds). Difficult to source but worth it if you kids get into it. NB: I’ve heard the latest game in the series “Sid Meier’s Railroads” is disappointing & lost much of the real world realism.

 

Quote for the day: When I started teaching my aspiration was to “Mold young Minds”, some days I’d be content just to “wack young heads”.

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