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My nephew (male, 10) has shown an aptitude for maths. I figure there must be something out there that would be more educational that he could get into rather than playing minecraft.
What's the best way to get him into coding/programming in a "fun" way? I'm sure there are resources/tools out there that would do the job but i don't know what.
If it helps his parents aren't hugely IT literate. They know their way round the web/a laptop but not in a programming sense.
Any suggestions great appreciated.
Isn't there a big campaign by Barclay's bank? Google it, I think I've seen adverts
try looking at something like Scratch in the first instance, then if he like that programs like flowel take it a stage further.
Send him to China?
Scratch is great - both my kids started with it.
You can get a Picoboard for not a huge amount that adds all sorts of options for making things happen on the screen.
[url= http://www.raspberrypi.org/ ]Raspberry Pi[/url]
...amongst others.
In fact:
[url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/raspberry-pi-numpty-seeks-help ]http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/raspberry-pi-numpty-seeks-help[/url]
Scratch looks good.
Think when my kids are old enough I'd rather get them an Arduino and build something physical (motors, sensors, that sort of thing) rather than a Pi. Does he like building models/kits?
Lego Mindstorms? Don't know much about it but it looks like a nice programming GUI thing?
seek out a local "Raspberry Jam" RPi club nearby. They introduce scratch projects and then on into Python on the Pi etc.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/jam/
When I was 10, we had a BBC Micro (possibly a prototype) and one of these:
[img] 
[/img]
He's 10. Let him play minecraft, he'll show an interest soon enough.
This is what you want:
Scratch 🙂
Get one of the Minecraft books from Amazon to guide him
Code Academy, free to sign up and it'll mark it for you. Saves you knowing it.
As of Sept 2014 Comp Science will on the School Curriculum so he'll be doing it at school anyway...
+1 Raspberry Pi.
It's the equivalent to my old days of learning on a BBC Micro.
Does the kid want to code or are you wanting to push him into it OP?
If the latter he will never want to do it.
Let him play, maybe even outside on his bike with his mates.
He's 10. He'll get into coding later in life if he wants. If he doesn't want he'll do something else.
If he loves Minecraft he can learn some minecraft coding on the Raspberry Pi.
[url= http://www.raspberrypi.org/?s=minecraft ]http://www.raspberrypi.org/?s=minecraft[/url]
Pi's are great. A couple of weeks ago one of my daughters had some Spanish homework where spanish words had been written with the letters moved one left in the alphabet (a=b, b=c, etc.). They had to decode it.
I grabbed a laptop, connected to one of my 3 Pi's via SSH and wrote a quick program in Python that did the conversion for us. It took us about 5 mins to program and my daughter loved it.... especially when we realised that the pi I'd connected to is actually in another house 120 miles away!
So you did her homework and she didn't have to think about it at all?
How beneficial was that for her?
How beneficial was that for her?
Well she could have written it down on paper but, after I explained how,she wrote the prog.
So she did her Spanish and ICT in one go and wants to write more code - so I'd say it was quite beneficial ..... thanks for asking.
[quick script]
# define variables
a = "b"
b = "c"
c = "d"
....etc
$ print a+b+c
bcd
[/quick script]
I would be gutted for my kids if the future for them was sitting in front of a pc coding.
Coding/programming in a fun way?, He's 10 ffs, tell him to get outside and build dens, fall out of trees, build dams in burns, jump flowerbeds on his bike....
got to agree with somafunk to be honest.
Also you say he has an aptitude for maths, and you want him to do programming. Although there is some correlation between people that are good at coding being good at maths it is not always that strong. If he is good at maths and is interested in computers, then yes programming, but he might be interested in maths and interested in mechanical things, or electronic, or just maths in its self, encourage the interest not how you think he should apply the interest.
I would be gutted for my kids if the future for them was sitting in front of a pc coding.
This^ For my nephew I would rather he wanted a guitar, BMX, camera etc to mess around with than a dull I.T. nerd toy
Fair enough if he is already showing sociopath tendencies and is really interested in how computers work.
He's 10 ffs, tell him to get outside and build dens, fall out of trees, build dams in burns, jump flowerbeds on his bike....
that and learning a bit are not mutually exclusive you know.
Now will you excuse me, I have to go berate the boy for leaving his workstation.
thanks for all the suggestions.
He gets plenty of outdoors stuff in (bmx, dry slope skiing, cubs, youth club, football etc)...just trying to expose him to different things that are/can be educational and/or teach him different skills.
I would be gutted for my kids if the future for them was sitting in front of a pc coding.
the guy sitting a few desks down from me getting £650 a day doesn't look gutted with life 😉
I would be gutted for my kids if the future for them was sitting in front of a pc coding.
hmmm.
Or it enabled them to work a 2 day week/5 day weekend. Ahem.
Gutting.
would be more educational that he could get into rather than playing minecraft.What's the best way to get him into coding/programming in a "fun" way?
Modding minecraft. It's how I taught myself to code (well, getting into modding games etc, never played minecraft).
I would be gutted for my kids if the future for them was sitting in front of a pc coding.
Not all "coding" jobs are sat in front of a PC all the time. I'll admit I have a slightly unusual one, but I'm often field testing in interesting places...(i work in robotics)
Fair enough if the cash is good and allows a 2 day week!
Coding/programming in a fun way?, He's 10 ffs, tell him to get outside and build dens, fall out of trees, build dams in burns, jump flowerbeds on his bike....
I started coding at about that age. Rattling off some Basic on my ZX81.
And I did all those other things too. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Would you berate him for reading books?
I think its a great idea. I used to love coding on the BBC micro and I think we've taken a bit of a backward step in the understanding of the workings of a pc. Obviously you fellas in the industry excluded. One of my stepdaughters is awesome at maths aged 9 and loves writing little scripts to solve problems.
If he loves Minecraft he can learn some minecraft coding on the Raspberry Pi.
I was pretty much going to say this. Doesn't even have to be on an RPi, any computer (not console) will do. Getting them playing Minecraft and then have fun modifying it through learning to code. They'll be the envy of their Minecraft playing mates too.
I would be gutted for my kids if the future for them was sitting in front of a pc coding.
and earning decent money - and getting a buzz from creating stuff that other people use.
Programming is a lot more rewarding than most other things to do with computers - god forbid - he could end up with a job in computer support...
OP,
What does the kid want? He's happy playing Minecraft? Did you ask him if he wants to do coding? If you start coding with him and he has no interest what then?
he's going to sit him back down and TELL HIM HE's CODING!!!
what do you think he's going to do?
Crikey what's wrong with people on this thread.
The OP wants to find resources to offer his kid a chance to have a crack at something new. He's not shipping him off to China to hothouse him FFS.
I would say that you need to find something fun he can create via programming - programming and interest in programming for the hell of it is the nerdy part...
You could try Hack 'n' Slash
Coding/programming in a fun way?, He's 10 ffs, tell him to get outside and build dens, fall out of trees, build dams in burns, jump flowerbeds on his bike....
I did both when I was 10 😉
I do feel a bit sorry for kids nowadays - back then it was really simple, and in fact you pretty much had to learn coding if you wanted to play lots of games, I remember the days when computer magazines came with pages of code you had to type in! And of course if you had a slightly dodgy copy of a game from a mate which would only run if you did a SYS to the correct address*, then you had to learn that stuff too.
Not sure it's so easy for kids now to get into programming.
*I still remember the SYS codes too - Hovver Bovver was 5030, Skramble was 8000. Those brain cells are now locked in, and will never be any good for anything else.
We use Scratch and Lego Mindstorms.
I'm not a coder and managed to follow along just fine.
We've created some great things.
Bencooper, typing in listings from magazines on my C64 was how I got into coding. Inevitably it wouldn't work so had to try and figure out what it was doing and debug it (usually more fun than playing the game). Then I'd get into modifying it. Then writing my own stuff. All pretty simple on a C64. Can't really see kids doing that these days though!
Responses [i]can and should[/i] be read with a modicum of 😉 , And i also started off with a ZX81 & expansion pack, shite tape player and a mountain of magazines with coding errors in the games, i think they printed them faulty on purpose.
Incidentally my four year old completed LightBot recently and enjoyed it:
http://lightbot.com/index.html
It was great watching her learn some fundamentals of coding (very simple lists of instructions with sub-routines).
I think the thrust of these [i]"teach kids to code"[/i] initiatives isn't really to create a generation of professional programmers.
It's more about learning how a computer works, learning to think logically, and empowering them in the increasingly digital world they will grow up in.