4KookieKids Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 My kiddo is finishing up the express course on Code.org soon. We did it because he wanted to code and the recommendation on code.org is that you take it if you're not in a school setting (they even explicitly said that homeschoolers should take it instead of the longer course). I'm just wondering what most people do afterwards? Do you continue with their curriculum and just go through Discoveries and Principals or something else? It's odd to me that these other courses don't have any prerequisites, and then I'm not sure how good of a fit they'll be. Said kiddo has programmed mostly with blocks so far, having done scratch and tynker for a while before doing the express course, but I think could do more coding without blocks, as well, as he's been doing well in his typing lessons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoCal_Bear Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 My son didn't do code.org, but he did Scratch. This is what I wrote on a different thread: What's great about Scratch is that is is very easy to begin to use. However, Scratch is a visual block language. My son was done with Scratch, but I did not think he was quite ready to jump straight into learning Python or Java. I didn't think it was that useful that what he was doing was just playing with other people's projects on Scratch. I just didn't think it was going anywhere useful. I thought while he was getting something out of it, it wasn't quite getting him where I wanted him to go next. He probably could have made the jump, but I wanted to give him something he could work through relatively independently and problem solve himself and STAY motivated and engaged. It's been marvelous in building his confidence and motivation to debug his own code. I can see how this is improving his own critical thinking and problem solving skills. Instead of telling kids this is what to do (as in type in this code and it will do this), Code Monkey shifts it more to be self-discovery/self-teaching on the part of students so they are learning and improving as they experiment with their code. What works, what doesn't work, and learning to be persistant in improving their code.What I did was to do Code Monkey which teaches kids to code in Coffescript (which is quite similar to Javascript, but with friendlier Syntax) through a series of stepped lessons/challenges. I really like the instant feedback and the emphasis on learning to write code within the structure of a fun, rewarding experience. You can only earn 3 stars on a level if your code accomplishes the goal and does it efficiently within a certain number of lines of code. The topics covered: Objects, function calls, arguments, loops, variables, arrays, for loops, function definitions, boolean conditions, until loops, if and if-else conditions, boolean operators, keyboard and mouse events. I really like how it is visual like Scratch where the left side of the screen shows what your code does and the right side is where you code. They do offer a 2 week free trial. It's not super obvious in the FAQ, but when you subscribe you do get access to all the courses. (Coding Adventure, Platform Adventure, Frogger, Game Design, Python Chatbot, Dodo Does Math). Eventually, they will get to the point where they build their own challenge and write their own games.It's pretty inexpensive for the Home subscription, $40 for a year. Code Monkey is recommended for ages 9 and up. You can use it for a younger student with parental help/support. However, I think for CM, parental support/scaffolding would defeat some of the aspects of learning on your own. So, YMMV depending on how you choose to use it. Also, it is really helpful for the student to know how to type. There are tools to help students with inserting code for various functions, but it is super easy to make errors in your code if you do that. If you actually type out the code yourself, you are able to catch your errors as you are typing. It's actually a pretty good lesson in why accuracy is important. https://www.playcodemonkey.com/ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rush Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 I would recommend Alice. It's a good transition to Python, a great fun for kids and it's absolutely free. Or programming with Minecraft with this free e-book https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/Essentials_Minecraft_v1.pdf 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4KookieKids Posted March 22, 2018 Author Share Posted March 22, 2018 I would recommend Alice. It's a good transition to Python, a great fun for kids and it's absolutely free. Or programming with Minecraft with this free e-book https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/Essentials_Minecraft_v1.pdf Ha ha. He's been dying to do minecraft. I just know nothing about it, except that it's some sort of building game, and all his friends are super into it, so he feels like the odd man out. If I could justify letting him do minecraft in that he's learning to code, I might consider it.... lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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