Bloxels – Build Your Own Video Games
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If we want to get kids interested in technology, we should be teaching them about technology, not creating abstractions on top technology and then teaching them the abstractions. I learned about computers with Murphy's Laws of Dos and Dos 4 on a monochrome screen. I knew that what I was doing was the same thing that professionals did, and I knew that the knowledge I was acquiring would be applicable in many settings. Later I learned Basic and HTML, and again these were tools used by professionals.
We should stop lying to ourselves that these toys teach technology, and sit down with our kids and teach them how to build Pong with Pygame.
I learned about computers with Murphy's Laws of Dos and Dos 4 on a monochrome screen. I knew that what I was doing was the same thing that professionals did
It's not obvious to kids today that that's what professionals are doing. As an adult I made a simple platformer and showed it to a few nontechnical friends. Their reactions were, 'why can't it do this', or 'are you going to fix the graphics?' ie very un-impressed, and honestly quite dis-spiriting. Imagine a kid creating a simple game today, won't impress her peers, and probably even lead to ridicule and scorn today.
This is perhaps why kids are learning to program later in life than our generation.
I've done a similar thought experiment over the years with (some very patient) non-technical friends, usually using some kind of mobile game on their phone...
They all more or less worked out the high-level concepts (events and listeners, input controls, the game loop, objects/models, persistence, networking, etc) but that was about it..
No one could even start to explain how it worked beyond that..
These guys want to participate- as they did in cowboys and indians, and are unable to do so with just a stick and imagination.
I had this from my boss saying "I thought it was just going to send the email for me" which ultimately led to me learning some php basics that have come in handy ever since. I love non-developers ideas about what could/should be possible based on their own assumptions about technology, not mine. I realize that you had a crappy experience, just wanted to share what I see as the flipside.
It turned out they weren't homework assignments but unsolved problems in mathematics, and he had solved them (and later used them for his thesis).
Yeah, I absolutely agree with this. We underestimate a childs ability to compute. But are surprised to discover they are native to these interfaces. And can readily grok a VSCode write, build, and debug iteration loop.
I don't think 10 is too young to get them started with Gimp, Inkscape and Blender either. Especially if you have a digital pen and tablet interface for painting.
Although, I believe there is something to be said for visual programming. Modern takes on the old Logo and Turtle graphics paradigms.
Seymour: Live Programming for the Classroom
Also, old visual IDEs had a nice, quick programming loop. VB, back in the day, maybe check out Lazarus now.
I found "Teach Your Kids to Code" (https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Kids-Code-Parent-Friendly/...) the other day, and it looks promising, but I'd be interested in other resources as well.
EDIT: I may be wrong about Scratch's usefulness as a teaching tool, it has just been a concern. I'd be glad to hear personal experiences!
Install ComputerCraft mod.
Write lua skripts to control turtles and computers.
???
Your kid now has obtained basic programming skills.
To see one approach you might be interested in looking at the "Computer Science Unplugged" project: http://csunplugged.org/
Imagine teaching a child who needs on average 10 seconds to find a key on the keyboard. That makes 6 keys per minute, 270 keys per 45-minute lesson. But that's an upper bound, because the kids can't spend the whole lesson typing (they also need to be told what to do), and of course they are not going to get everything right on the first try. Also, small kids are going to make a lot of typos everywhere. What kind of a program can you type using less than hundred characters?
This problem magically disappears when you use Scratch. For little kids, it makes a big difference.
What I did find, though, is that by taking something they're really interested in and finding a tech way to enhance their experience has been the key. I am putting my money on just constant, positive exposure to tech and how it can solve their problems or answer their curiosities.
The thing I'm teaching my kids the most right now is hard work. You want to be a youtuber? great, do the work. Write a script, storyboard your project, plan it out. Don't just turn on the camera and start mumbling about minecraft. I have found that it's 100x easier for them to put in more time on something that doesn't feel like school.
I know not everyone cares for Disney but if you and your kids have been to the parks, these two books have been amazing to my kids:
Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making More Magic Real https://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Imagineering-Behind-Dream...
The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic (From the Magic Kingdom) https://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Mansion-Imagineering-Classic-...
Just really fun for them to understand all the work that goes into that magic they love.
I look at my best habits that started early on in my life and wonder how I developed them to begin with.
I remember my friend James would come over to my house and we'd take turns writing stories in Word. Each of us would write a chapter from our character's POV while the other played Super Mario 64.That early interest in writing has served me all my life.
We'd also spend hours taking turns on my computer building custom Heroes of Might and Magic maps/scenarios.
But what gets someone to develop those creation-oriented interests instead of just being an idle consumer? And some of my ambitions, like programming, languished until I was in university and discovered amphetamine.
Seems to be some mix of opportunity + a certain amount of destitution + luck.
I think we all have the innate desire to create. No one looks at an instagram craft and say "I wish I wasn't able to make that". IMO, failure is the biggest obstacle for most people.
If you look at kids in their natural environment without devices, they naturally are creative in their play. I think fostering that creativity without the distraction of television and devices is the key with ample praise for effort. I don't think it really matters whether they are creating on a device or with blocks. If the desire to create is there, they will eventually find a medium they can be successful with.
A thousand times, yes! It would be impossible for me to agree with you more. We are "Entertained to Death" (to steal a title of a book on this very subject). Children need time to sit and think. To be bored and learn that boredom is okay, and what to do about it.
These days, television is actively hostile in its level of interruption and intrusion. And I don't mean just the obnoxious advertisements; the deliberate "shaky" camera angles, the change of viewpoint every 3 seconds, the thumping soundtracks, whooshing graphics crossing the screen, all are designed to stimulate, attract, addict, yet hypnotize and sedate. Not to mention the low-value content for the most part. This is not good for anyone.
Fools are afraid of being alone with themselves. Was it always this way?
I think it plays a part in that many (dare I say most?) adults are simply horrified at the idea of sitting alone, quietly, without a device to distract them with internet/facebook or whatever. The skill/art of just sitting and occupying oneself in our own heads is being lost, but it is essential to happiness (and I think, sanity). This used to be learned by children, but now every kid is handed a dose of electronic crack, lest they fail to be distracted for a single precious moment. Then when it does happen they fall apart. I wonder if asked to choose, whether the average person would choose to skip a meal or go four hours without internet/phone.
and
> People who for some reason find it impossible to think about themselves, and so really be themselves, try to make up for not thinking with doing. They try to pretend that doing is thinking.
-- Laura Riding
> Most of us are unable to sort out reality - we can't distinguish between a thing and a symbol for that thing . This springs from several causes. One cause is that we are isolated from the natural world, where the distinction between a thing and a symbol is more obvious. Another cause is our educational system, which simply reflects the intellectual laziness of the society in which it is embedded. A third cause is resistance on the part of vested interests - if we could think creatively, we would be difficult to govern, and advertisers would have to appeal to reason instead of emotion.
-- Paul Lutus
> I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
-- Carl Sagan
> Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.
-- Hannah Arendt
I think critical thinking are important. Autonomy. So sure, teach your children to customize and program the devices they probably end up using to some capacity either way. But also allow for the fact that "technology", unqualified like that, might be kool-aid, and that following the trajectory of previous generations is not necessarily the best possible direction to go in. Imagine having children that are less alienated than yourself, wouldn't that be cool? People that can hold eye contact longer, that fidget less when they have to wait in line for 3 minutes? Who can bear their own company? Who can let their inner eye stray across their past, their surroundings, their self, at the speed they chose, without any compulsion to ignore or distort things? For as long as they want, instead of not at all? Yes, absolutely cue parodies of spoken word diatribes here, and whatever else. I'm just virtue signalling, and so on.
At any rate, the question isn't "technology or not", the question is what technology and what people use it for, rather than what it uses people for (on the behest of others who are on the run from themselves).
We are makers. Many of us are craftsmen who enjoy the process as much, or even more, than the product, the destination.
Completely different mindset. There is room for both. Each group needs the other, to some degree.
There are no real groups, everyone needs everyone.
To be fair, most of us would have been pretty turned off by any educational computer thingy our parents would have pushed on us. In my experience most programmers have learned on their own, which is part of the charm -- it becomes a quest and kids love to learn stuff that their parents don't know.
If my kid showed interest in game dev I would get her a good computer and hint that she should download Unity and mess around with the examples. At least that feels real.
>> I would get her a good computer and hint that she should download Unity and mess around with the examples
That's funny. I'm going the opposite direction these days. We have a top-notch gaming machine at home (and spend more time on it than I am comfortable admitting) but my young-teen kids are THRILLED with the chance to use my old Apple ][ and make pixel games or text adventure games. When I bring it out, it's a special occasion day!
We made a really simple "adventure" game, with me doing most of the coding and them adding ideas about locations and events and characters. They loved seeing it take shape. Then we encountered a nasty bug where player health points could go negative but the player wouldn't die, and my daughter reasoned out the solution! (Need to test for <=, not just less-than. And need to update the health BEFORE the test-for-dead.) needless to say, their old dad was pleased. And they sat there and played that silly game for and hour. It was like showing a kid a yo-yo or a top for the first time. It was more fun than it should have been and they were rightly proud of what we made.
Letting them play Zork, Choplifter, Kareteka, and Dung Beetles and seeing the disc drive whirr and clack then the screen light up is as amazing to them now as it was to me 40 years ago, at their same age. Somehow it's just as entertaining as Assetto Corsa or PubG, without the million-dollar budgets or 100-person dev teams.
1mhz. 48k of RAM. 280x192 "high resolution" graphics. How could that be fun?
Even more -- WHY? I have a theory. It boots right to a Basic prompt, and off we go creating our own world, or running someone else's. And a lot of games are based on skill. Just like the arcade, the more skill one has, the longer you play. And with these old machines, just as in the 1970s, our imagination is the limit. And not only the limit, the key ingredient, since the fidelity of the graphics is so low it is necessary to use our imagination. Maybe that's why the box art of the golden-age games is so alluring. With promises of spaceships and nebula, dashing swordfighting ship captains with golden epaulets, monsters and robots with similar detail -- when in reality it is indistinguishable from the average Tetris block. Somehow it was fun. And it was enough. As "Thomas Was Alone" has proved.
edit: Ugh. I forgot the main point of this thread -- we bought Bloxels as an impulse purchase last weekend and my kids have enjoyed the ease with which they can create and animate characters and quickly lay out levels. It's a thrill seeing your little blocky character come to life. For us, it was a good purchase and I'm really pleased with the product. I found it at Target, for around $35, by the way.
Now I will say I am pretty bitter that PubG isn't coming for PS4 for awhile.
"Oh, that is a x-mas title. Grandma buys them for full price, the kids hate them and never play them past the second level, so you get away with basically buggy, shitty uninspired work- and can use the bucks to work on the real game."
Takeaway lesson- if entertainment is not a first class citizen, nobody who is not a adult forcing himself to learn, will ever use it.
Did you always use the block based programming language or ever use Lejos?
Anything that is built to 'encourage child engagement' usually comes off as patronizing or boring.
I learned about tech early on because I had natural curiosity and interest in it. My parents never went out of their way to 'encourage' me to learn about tech, and the things they did try to get me interested in never really stuck with me.
The teaching toys are just toys, and will be treated as such.
In other words, I’ll cop to thinking you’re weong about this, and that sometime in the future, you or someone else will return to a thread similar to this one, wishing that someone had flattened out and simplified at least some of the technical aspects of this stuff so that you could move forward without such massive frustration that you would give up even despite substantial (but not invicible) motivation.
I'm glad that worked for you—and will work for plenty of kids. But there's also plenty of kids who want something different out of tech. If we envision only a single road into technology, we're only going to end up with the same sorts of people in technology that we've got now. Technology should have many roads into it, as many roads as there are ways for kids to look at the world.
I find persistence is a big problem with most tech toys. For example, if kids invest a lot of time building and coding an EV3 robot, they never want to take it apart and start over. Once you finally disassemble the project, it takes a while for them to gain interest again. Although Lego Technics and EV3 have a steeper learning curve, they're still great toys and both kids and parents really do learn a lot. However, the simplicity and creative possibilities of basic Lego bricks appeal to kids for many years. Legos, by far, have the highest "return on toy investment" in our house :).
I think on HN a little while ago there was this study posted about how tribe of natives was given a box of tablets (with no prior exposure to them) and within a month were already hacking android.
These silly little abstractions are not needed and, indeed, are patronizing. More turds sticking their hands out for money.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. Without prior experience with Youtube, how would they have a favorite channel?
Lots of things do not make sense when it comes to children.
I was hacking config.sys to get DOOM to run on a RAM-constrained 386, before I even knew how to read. Somehow I was successful...
This could well be the problem — for one of two reasons:
Kids are perhaps less patient these days (no offense). But I remember spending ridiculous amounts of time wiring together circuits on one of those Radio Shack 100-in-1 Electronic Kits. It seemed worth it at the time.
Did we (I) have more patience then? Or was making something "physical" come to life much more rewarding?
Or maybe it's the old leading a horse to water problem....
Or maybe take a really simple existing game, and try adding things to it. Let's add a new enemy? Something useful to the UI?
I mean, you could even take your kid all the way through even submitting a pull request back for it. I'm sure there are like a bijillion Tetris clones up on Github in every language imaginable.
Although maybe start with Arkanoid or Space Invaders. Maybe Pong is too simple.
That said, as a grown-up I quite like these "intro-to-programming" kits for myself. I spent more hours making little toys in Pico-8, eventually leading to a simple raycasting engine.
Scratch is not perfect, but it is at least free, and access to own accounts and community is free.
Also, I think we're giving our kids too much screen time. When I was a kid, the most helpful concept of programming was not a programming language or software, but rather it was just learning the concept of logic and playing with "and" and "or" with electronics and transistors / gates / switches. For that, I think electronics kit (Heathkit) were awesome.
I kinda think this would get old quick like the graph paper did for me.
What I don't see, when visiting their site is now to order less than a 5 pack. It seems you can't just order one board and blocks.
Reminds me of Klik & Play. That product relied on a spreadsheet or prompt-based effect definitions.