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Thanks for the well developed and inspiring contribution, Laura. I
taught myself HTML and CSS, so I have an idea of where you're coming
from. Encouraging young people to learn computer programming is
essential as it will prepare them for careers in the future as well
as to help them develop problem-solving skills and perseverance.Â
These young people may breathe new life into the field. As you
pointed out, the success of such an enterprise depends greatly on
the student and his or her learning styles. This is crucial as it
is key to their introduction being successful and leading to an
interest in programming. Once they discover that they can write
programs, the next step is to hook their interest with a program
that does something that will draw their attention, like a simple
game. I enjoy working with HTML becuase the results are
instantaneous, which should be a lure for future programmers. You've provided myself and everyone else with valuable advice and ideas. I am very appreciative. I've been thinking recently about expanding my limited computer programming skills. Now might be the right time. Chris Christopher Whittum On 10/06/2015 07:43 AM, LM wrote:
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 5:08 AM, Marc Stephan Nkouly <mcsteann@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:To put it simpler one thing i would have dream of would have been to have materials that could be use even on self pace to acquire some programming knowledge at least enough to get started and be able to contributes to other projects .I'm a self-taught programmer. By the time I took computer classes in school, I already knew how to program. The biggest help for me when I was learning was to (1) look at other programs I had an interest in and (2) to start writing my own. I started with BASIC and I was interested in games (which is something I think most students take an interest in). At the time, I typed the games into the computer from magazines and books. Today, you can just download them from the Internet. While it's more work to type them in by hand, I actually think you lose something when you're learning having the source code readily available and easy to access. Having to type it in gives you a chance to really look at the code and what each line is doing. If I was going to start learning programming today, I wouldn't go with BASIC. I'd go with _javascript_. If you're on a Windows system, you can write a useful program with Microsoft's hypertext applications (hta). No compiler required. If you're on a system other than Windows, there's really not a good equivalent to a hta. I'd go with something like NodeJS, TeaJS or jsc (possibly with Apache) instead. The best way to learn is to find something you're interested in such as a program you really want. You can start by writing a simple program yourself or looking at a program that does something similar to what you want and adding a few customizations or features or you can take a program that you want that works on another operating system and port it to your operating system. Any of those situations gives you an opportunity to smart small and build up. It's really going to depend on the student, but some students learn well if you just give them the tools (like an interpreter or compiler) and let them experiment. Others need a more structured approach. I think the hardest thing is reaching each type of learner, because no one method is going to work best for each student. As to contributing to Open Source projects, if you find a project you use and you think it needs a feature or you discover a bug, see if you can fix it or add code for the feature you want. If you like the changes you've made, write the project and offer to send the patch for it. They may or may not take it. If they don't want it and you think the patch is useful, you can offer your own fork of the code, if you want. It does all depend on the student, but to me, programming is a matter of doing. Pick something you really want a program for and start working on it. You'll find you're researching things such as how could I write this more efficiently/quickly or how do I get a program to do a specific thing or how do I work with a specific type of function that's available as you go along. If other people are interested in the programming project you're working on, you may be able to get some help/advice/suggestions from other programmers along the way if you need it. One of the user groups in our area is teaching programming via webinars. A couple of resource they recommended were: https://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/_javascript_ http://phaser.io/ There are groups for learning programming that one can find at sites like https://www.p2pu.org/en/ or meetup.com if you have a student that learns better in a group situation. ACM also does online webinars on programming related subjects ( http://learning.acm.org/webinar/ ). For students who like to do it themselves, go through samples at sites like this one and try to create something similar: http://www.codecouch.com/dan/ I happen to like the fishtank and it only uses about 20 lines of code. Start small. Start with a goal that's of interest and give it a try (or have your students give it a try). If you get stuck (or a student gets stuck), one can always ask for help on this list or some of the many programming lists and forums out there. Sincerely, Laura http://www.distasis.com ### To unsubscribe from the schoolforge-discuss mailing list: Send an e-mail message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with no subject and a body of "unsubscribe schoolforge-discuss" |