steve coxon, m.a.ed. center for gifted education ph.d. student at the college of william and mary...
TRANSCRIPT
COMPUTER PROGRAMMING FOR KIDS
Steve Coxon, M.A.Ed.Center for Gifted EducationPh.D. student at the College of William and [email protected]://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
[email protected]://stevecoxon.com http://cfge.wm.edu/