Kids and programming

Alan Kay alan.kay at squeakland.org
Mon Feb 21 16:17:48 UTC 2005


Hi Jan --

At 03:44 PM 2/20/2005, Jan B. Krejčí wrote:
>On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 20:09:16 +0100, Mikael Kindborg <mikki at ida.liu.se> wrote:
> > Hi Jan. Have you tried eToys with your kids? If it is not
> > translated to Czech they could learn a litte English while
> > using it.
> > Best, Micke
>
>sure, we have tried "Drive a car" long ago, but I find BotInc more
>suitable for both of them, since they need to get the basics of
>algorithmic thinking first and the limits of "chessboard" are good,
>since they're not allowing children to diverge in learning and get
>lost in too complex world of Squeak.

How old are these kids? We've not seen any get lost in the many thousands 
who use etoys (at the suggested ages of 9 and older).


>By the way - even the idea of BotInc is not new for me (here in Czech
>Republic I remember at least three almost identical products, one has
>already existed in 80's), I was truly excited when I realized that the
>language children are using is in fact real Smalltalk, with all the
>power of it. That's really GREAT!
>
>In my opinion eToys will be the next logical step in learning, giving
>more powerful weapons to my children's hands.

If you like the BotInc approach, why not put it into Etoys as a subset?

Cheers,

Alan


>--
>.:jbk:.
>Jan B. Krejci




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