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CodingTrain / Suggestion-Box

A repo to track ideas for topics
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Tutorials aimed at a younger novice audience #417

Open pauljames opened 7 years ago

pauljames commented 7 years ago

These tutorials I would say suit pupils/students 18+, maybe from 16. How about a series of videos for absolute beginners from the age of 11, i.e. have just started high school, and are no longer than five minutes?

In the UK Python (with text output only) is predominantly used to teach pupils, but p5.js would be a better alternative. I am in the process of introducing p5.js to teenagers (age 14/15) with no previous programming experience and would like to be able to use your videos.

Either way - thank you for your great videos.

shiffman commented 7 years ago

I really appreciate this suggestion. My goal has always been to make friendly, fun, and accessible tutorials for total beginners. Somehow things have skewed more and more to advanced. I do have this playlist which is meant for total beginners, but some things are outdated so I might like to make a new one sometime.

https://www.youtube.com/user/shiffman/playlists?shelf_id=14&view=50&sort=dd

What do you think I would need to do to make them more appropriate for a younger audience?

pauljames commented 7 years ago

The ages I am thinking of are 11-16, so:

  1. Five minutes long. This age group brought up on youtube will sit quiet and still for a five minute video, not much more! I can always direct keen or more able pupils to the longer videos.
  2. Really focused on one small bit, e.g. drawing an ellipse, rgb colour, coordinates... which I know is what you have to a degree, but see point 1. Looking at your first few videos in the list they are predominantly 12 minutes long.
  3. Stripped down code examples, no "modes" or spurious code, straight to the point in ten lines! The examples in the "Getting Started with p5.js" book are particularly good and I have based my planning on the book.
  4. The example has to grab them. The "hello world" example of black and white circles following the mouse they loved. Interactive graphics in 9 lines, that they could easily adapt.

I have shown them your "hello" introduction on the website and four minutes of Lauren McCarthy creating code to draw with her nose.

So far, having only taught two lessons to 120 pupils (in groups of 30) I have been really pleased with the pupils' engagement with p5. Any videos or examples of p5 only serves to enrich the process for them and hopefully maintain the engagement.

Thank you.