🚀 go-pugleaf

thacher@unx.sas.com (Clarke Thacher) writes:


>My ten year old daughter has been asking me to teach her to program.
>She has had a little exposure to computers at school, but there has
>not been any real programming.   I've gotten a copy of mswLogo,  but
>now I don't know what the next step should be.

>I would like her to be working independently as much as possible, but
>it would be good to have an idea of where to nudge her.

>It would be great if there were an interactive tutorial system that
>could teach the fundimentals.  One of the first systems that I learned
>on, the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, had a "teach" command.  "Teach"
>would let anyone who wanted to sit down at the terminal (a tty33)
>learn BASIC at their own pace without anyone else having to help them.

>I'd like to hear from others who have experience with teaching their
>own children.  I'd also be interested in some discussion about the
>merits of some of the other programming language choices:  BASIC,
>SCHEME, SmallTalk, C, anything else?  By the way,  I'm using a
>pc clone running DOS 5 and windows.


>-- 
>Clarke Thacher        OSRD/HIP Software Developer          SAS Institute, Inc.
>thacher@unx.sas.com         (919) 677-8000    SAS Campus Drive, Cary, NC 27513

I find the best thing is to "challege" him/her. If you nuge then they
think it's work. If you do nothing they do nothing. But if you say
things like "I bet you can't draw a grid on the screen in less than 10
lines" they go crazy. But they catch on after a while. Also acting dumb
works, like saying "I wonder how this works" and let them help you figure it
out.