Chris O’Brien recently had a great piece in the Mercury News wherein he referenced a few programs that help teach kids how to program – or perhaps it might be better said programs that help build a love and understanding of programming. As the father of three boys I think frequently about the lack of programming skills taught in schools at a young age. I believe programming should be taught in every elementary school. In Virginia for example, all fourth grade classes learn Virginia history. The fourth grade also seems like a fitting age to teach children how to program.
Some of the programs mentioned by O’Brien:
- Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/
- Roblox: http://www.roblox.com/
- Code Hero: http://primerlabs.com/codehero/
- Stencyl: http://www.stencyl.com/
I’ve got a few big audacious goals I’m trying (and failing) to accomplish. This past week someone emailed me an article with some tips on accomplishing those big audacious goals in our life.
Too often we approach to-do lists as simply tasks that must be checked-off before a prespecified hour, day, or week closes. More appropriately, it is often the tasks we don’t specify on which we should focus. Paul Graham makes this similar point in a great post.
Paul Graham makes a great point