Dear Michael, * Michael McMahon [2021-10-26 18:38 +0200]: > I have several years of experience teaching introductory programming > concepts to children aged 6-18 in an after school setting using free > software.
First of all thank you very much for your great feedback. Will try that out in the coming years. Would you be able to include the information below on https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/ProgrammingForChildren ? If so let me know if you need any help with that. > The 5-6 age range (at least with my students) was limited to drag and > drop concepts such as Music Blocks [1], Blockly [2], Scratch 1.4 [3], > and code.org. Music Blocks, Blockly, and the old offline Scratch > version 1.4 are the only popular drag and drop options that are 100% > free software that I am aware of. > > Around the age of 10, I would switch them away from drag and drop > languages to Python or Lua if they were inclined through modifying > simple games and modifying Minetest mods. > > I would primarily recommend Music Blocks as it can even be used offline > through a browser on old hardware. The surrounding Sugar project [4] is > also appropriate for this age group and can be found bundled with > Trisquel [5]. > > Blockly is more of a framework than an easy to point to resource. > Scratch is more focused on vendor lock-in rather than generally teaching > programming in my opinion as there are not resources for moving on from > Scratch within their platform. > > I would also recommend the book Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer > Science and Other Improbable Things by Carlos Bueno from No Starch Press > [6] which targets ages 10 and up. > > [1] https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/ > > [2] https://github.com/google/blockly https://developers.google.com/blockly/ > > [3] https://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4 > > [4] https://www.sugarlabs.org/ > > [5] http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel-images/trisquel-sugar_9.0_amd64.iso > https://cdimage.trisquel.info/trisquel-images/trisquel-sugar_9.0_amd64.iso.sha256 > > [6] https://nostarch.com/laurenipsum Best regards, Matthias -- Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290 Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 |(fsfe.org/support) Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) Weblog k7r.eu/blog.html _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
