krsmith35

I'm really interested in your high school experience. Did you mostly work solo, or was there a lot of interaction with other kids? Informal tutoring, collaborating on hard problems, etc.

"maybe makes math practice more palatable which would definitely improve math scores" - I have this thought experiment where you drop off ipads in inner city Detroit. They are loaded with games, but the only way to unlock the games is to solve a certain number of math problems each day. My theory is that test scores far surpass the public schools.

This thread is amazing. I started a company with the goal of helping kids learn to code, so I peed a little when I saw that the HN crowd was giving me ideas.

Here are the main things I have figured out (3.5 years, ~6,000 kids in 8 states): - It has to be fun. Lots of people have said this already, but I have tried and failed starting with academic rigor. Hello world was a psychological payoff in the past, but for this generation it's more like a multiplayer video game (easy on scratch) or fake hacking a news website (people have said this above) - It has to be social. Anyone can get online and teach themselves, but most people won't. We hold weekly meetings at public libraries where the librarians facilitate (they don't know how to code) and the kids teach themselves. Someone mentioned Sugata Mitra +1. - It has to be inspiring. I try to help the kids feel part of a movement, like for example getting the governor to talk at a hackathon, and hand out expensive prizes. But not all kids care about that stuff, and the goal is to figure out what they care about and show them how coding can help. Art, business, sports, etc.

To the original post - I know a lot of inner city, rural and tribal libraries that would LOVE to have a shot at those donated laptops.

just sent. thanks!

just email me at my HN username at gmail and I'll send it

I run a nonprofit in Arizona where we introduce 8-13 year olds to coding at 10 libraries and other locations. We start the young ones with code.org for a "quick win" and most of them dig into scratch with relish by the second week. I agree with the original post about seeing the creativity unleashed. It's amazing.

After scratch we have seen some of the kids get excited about js mostly through the khan academy resources (have you tried it)? Also code combat has been a recent favorite.

Our older and more advanced coders are ok with codecademy.

Also we have some that really want to get their work out to the world, so after a while on scratch they teach themselves html and css.

We are very particular about not lecturing, not forcing a learning approach, just facilitating as different learning styles find their way.

Also if anyone is interested we are giving away our "code club kit" including resources for starting a code club. It has been the most rewarding part of my career. Just let me know and I'll send it in email.

Haha - I thought you might enjoy the end. Thanks for taking a look!

Did you try it out? I think you will feel differently when you get to the end :)