steve coxon, m.a.ed. center for gifted education ph.d. student at the college of william and mary...

COMPUTER PROGRAMMING FOR KIDS

Steve Coxon, M.A.Ed.Center for Gifted EducationPh.D. student at the College of William and Marycoxonsteve@hotmail.comhttp://stevecoxon.com http://cfge.wm.edu/

My background:

English and biology; started to minor in computer science. Loved the logic, hated the tedium.

Rediscovered the enjoyment of computer programming logic without the tedium while coaching FIRST LEGO League while a fourth grade teacher.

Saw that gifted students in particular (but not only) thrived in the challenging and open-ended environment (low floor, high ceiling).

Today: LEGO WeDo (LEGO robotics for 6-9 year

olds: $140 from http://www.legoeducation.us/ [be sure to get the version that includes software])

Storytelling Alice (Free product of Carnegie Mellon for middle school students at http://alice.org/)

Hypertext short stories (Can be done on almost any computer with word processing software [We’ll use MS Word today])

NOT Today, but recommended: Scratch (Free from MIT at

http://scratch.mit.edu/)

LOGO (This oldie, but goodie is available in many places, but is easy to use immediately on any computer with Internet access at http://www.mathsnet.net/logo/turtlelogo/index.html )

Why use computer programming in the

classroom? Product ownership Problem-solving “Real world”

Shumway, S. (2008). Students designing their own video games. Technology & Children, 12(3), 12-13.

Why use computer programming in the

classroom? Engineering fundamentals Logic

Hixon, R. (2007). Teaching software engineering principles using Robolab and Lego Mindstorms. International Journal of Engineering Education, 23(5), 868-873.

Why use computer programming in the

classroom? Increases motivation to succeed. Focus on open-ended problem

solving

Denner, J., & Werner, L. (2007). Computer programming in middle school: How pairs respond to challenges. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 37(2), 131-150.

Why use computer programming in the

classroom? Science content

Coxon, S. V. (in press). FIRST LEGO League, the sport of the mind. Teaching for High Potential. Waco, TX: Prufrock.

LEGO WeDo

Storytelling Alice

Hypertext Stories

Steve Coxon, M.A.Ed.

Center for Gifted Education

Ph.D. student at the College of William and Mary

coxonsteve@hotmail.comhttp://stevecoxon.com http://cfge.wm.edu/