Programming for kids!

[johanlindfors]

I have delivered several workshops/events in which I've tried to get young kids (age 10-13) to try out programming with different tools and technologies. Would love to share my experiences and also learn what others have done. Lets share demos, challenges, frameworks, sites and other tips and tricks to help the kids that are consumers today become the producers of tomorrow.

[rstropek]

I would love to actively contribute to this topic. I could introduce the CoderDojo-movement (if it is not already known to all of you) and describe the Scratch, Minecraft, Web, Microbit etc. samples that we use in CoderDojos in Austria.

Besides content, I would be particularly interested in the following topics:

• Which organizational tools do you use for programming clubs (e.g. registration, check-in)?
• How do you deal with privacy issues (e.g. storing PII data, photos of kids)?
• How do you deal with legal issues (e.g. supervising kids without parents being present)?
• What do you practically do to increase diversity, in particular the ratio of girls attending your programming clubs?
• How to you approach governmental education institutes?

Greetings, Rainer.

[markusegger]

There is actually a related aspect here. Not sure it is the same "session", but I have often wondered about taking kids in underprivileged areas and doing after-school programs (or perhaps even something more formal) do train them to be developers. Kind of think of it as "how can it be that kids in New Orleans have no future, but at the same time we outsource to India"? (Substitute different locations here, of course).

We had started some preliminary talks with people in the government of Aruba about this, where we thought about creating some sort of program like this (in association with our magazine, we would have called it CODE Academy) in the ABC islands. Other locations that come to mind are the aforementioned New Orleans. Since I live in Hawaii, I am thinking of places like Maui. You could really stretch a non-profit program like this into all kinds of areas, once you got the fundamental setup, content, and formula.