Hacker News Reader

Comment by unixhero | Hacker News Reader

I teach kids to code on a volunteer basis. Although Scratch is very good, the kids usually gets lost. Even when we print out the solution for them to follow. When they don't get lost, it seems they are not having as much fun.

My experience is that it is literally 10 times more fun for the kids to learn to code Python with http://www.codecombat.com . The classes gets filled with excitement when I put on the 10 hour version of "Diablo Town Music" and tell them to log into Codecombat. Very rewarding actually :). I register free accounts and bring these to my classes on a printed sheet, that works great. As such I don't need to pay for the classroom edition. I have actually let Cidecbat know about this pricing flaw, but no new models have been introduced that fit my use case has been made available. This is Codecombat does not have a pricing tier that fits my volunteering classes with random participants well.

View on HN

Scratch is a tool with the freedom of creating whatever comes to a kid's mind. The block based programming style in Scratch relieve the kids from fighting the keyboard and it prevents syntax errors so they can focus on programming. You can use Scratch to build own games, stories, movies, music applications and you can connect it easily with hardware like MakeyMakey or even Lego. It's about producing not consuming and Scratch is the perfect tool to do so.

I don't know the platform you mention but it looks like the advanced (because Python) version of games you find on code.org. So I expect a linear progress, where you tackle task after task. This can be fun and also creative but in a limited fashion. You should not withhold Scratch from the kids so they can experience the freedom of building their very own things. Be critical and ask yourself why the kids don't have so much fun and why they get lost.

Maybe you can start with easier exercises, try out other tasks and challenges you never used and let the kids be creative already in the beginning: Teach one or two new blocks, give some rough ideas and let them do whatever they want. No blueprint or solution sheet required in this case. Coding kids have so many ideas - they will make it fun by themselves.

I think there are many ways to do it. I just wanted to point out the difference between Scratch and game based learning platforms. I also teach kids in my spare time and I think we are doing something very important for every single child. So thank you!

My daughter and I play Factorio together. There are a lot of emergent properties in Factorio that are relevant to programming.

Woah, coding gamified like a phone app. This is the correct way to get engagement from kids. Premium quality too.

From what I've seen, the graphical element is what engages the kids. And block-based is easy to gat started - Scratch/Snap/Mindstorms.

Generally learning python is mostly text-based. CodeCombat looks graphical -- how are the graphics done? What needs to be installed? (codecombat.com just stopped loading)

Text is graphical. And block-based in a monospaced font.

As a (former) child who learned to program, what you're saying is true but irrelevant, because text is fun to work with.

Your experience with scratch reflects my own with all the block-based UIs. Some stuff is really easy but when we wanted to do things like functions, arrays and populating variables I couldn't figure it out without searching on the webs. It made sense after I found the correct way to do it, but the visual metaphor gets convoluted beyond pretty simple use cases.

When programming the microbit and I like that you can switch between javascript and blocks to see the cause and effect of making changes though.

For a little more context, with what age groups do you work?

The kids are 9-13. They all liked it, regardless of age. We had like 10 sessions last year. Codecombat is instantly engaging and so gamified, the kids are glued to the computers and want to figure out how to get to the next level. Plus, it's fun for the teachers when it goes so well every time.

My brief review suggests it's popular for the same reasons that many of us loved incredible machine or even lemmings: logical puzzles with challenging but attainable rewards.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com