the agent man - Slashdot User

Submission + - Excite kids to code by focusing less on coding (colorado.edu)

Submitted by the agent man on Saturday December 07, 2013 @03:52PM

the agent man writes: The Hour of Code event taking place December 9-15 has produced a number of tutorials with the goal to excite 10 millions kids to code. It is really interesting to contrast the different pedagogical approaches behind the roughly 30 tutorials. The University of Colorado, Make a 3D Game, Tutorial wants to excite kids to code by focusing less on coding. This pedagogy is based on the idea that coding alone, without non-coding creativity, has a hard time to attract computer science skeptics including a high percentage of girls who think that "programming is hard and boring." Instead, the Make a 3D Game activity has the kids create sharable 3D shapes and 3D worlds in their browsers which then they really want to bring to live — through coding. There is evidence that this strategy works. The article talks about the research exploring how kids get not only excited through game design but that they can later leverage coding skills acquired to make science simulations. Try the activity by yourself or with your kids.

Submission + - Teach Our Kids to Code (wired.com)

Submitted by the agent man on Thursday September 26, 2013 @07:34PM

the agent man writes: WIRED Magazine is exploring how early kids should learn to code. One of the challenges is to find the proper time in schools to teach programming. Are teachers at elementary and middle school levels really able to teach this subject? The article suggests that even very young kids can learn to program and list a couple of early experiments as well as more established ideas including the Scalable Game Design curriculum. However, the article also suggests that programming may have to come at the cost of Foreign language learning and music. Judging by the comments this idea is not so well received.

Submission + - Programing now starting in Elementary Schools (kunc.org)

Submitted by

the agent man

on Friday May 18, 2012 @12:39PM

the agent man writes: "The idea of getting kids interested in programming in spite of their common perception of programming to be "hard and boring" is an ongoing Slashdot discussion. With support of the National Science Foundation the Scalable Game Design project has explored how to bring computer science education into the curriculum of middle and high schools for some time. The results are overwhelmingly positive suggesting that game design is not only highly motivational across gender and ethnicity but even finding new ways of tracking programing skills transferring from game design to STEM simulation building. This NPR story highlights an early and unplanned foray into brining game design based computer science education even to Elementary Schools. A short story includes a nice video of students sharing their experiences."

Submission + - Programming is Heading Back to School (9news.com)

Submitted by

the agent man

on Tuesday June 14, 2011 @05:40PM

the agent man writes: "Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder are exploring what it takes to systematically get programming back to public schools. They have created a game design based curriculum, called Scalable Game Design, using the AgentSheets computational thinking tool. Annual summer institutes http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/202987/222/Teachers-play-video-games-for-science- train middle schools teachers from from around the USA to teach their students computational thinking through game design and computational science simulations.

What is truly unique about this is that it is not an after-school program; it takes place during regular school courses. Entire school districts are participating with measurable impacts, increasing the participation of women in high school CS courses from 2% six years ago to 38-59% now. The project explores new computing education pedagogies with thousands of students in diverse areas including inner city, remote rural and Native American communities. About 45% of our participants so far are female; 56% are non-white students and most of them want to continue. Educators are interested not only in the motivational impact, but also the acquisition of useful 21st Century skills. They would like to be able to ask students “Now that you can make Space Invaders, can you also make a science simulation?” To explore this difficult question of transfer, the researchers devised new mechanisms to compute computational thinking. They analyze every game submitted by students to extract computational thinking patterns and to see if students can transfer these skills to creating science simulations.

More information about Scalable Game Design can be found in their project site: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/"

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