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The US Chess Federation has a massive scholastic chess program, there may be a group in your area that you can get in contact with. Check out http://www.uschess.org/ - in particular the scholastic services page

The US Chess Federation has a massive scholastic chess program, there may be a group in your area that you can get in contact with. Check out http://www.uschess.org/ - in particular the scholastic services page

All right, hands up all of you who read this as "USCF Acknowledges Tests on Human Cloning", and then wondered WTF the United States Chess Federation was doing messing around with cloning? Trying to clone a grandmaster?

At times in my life I've played lots of chess like this, played in clubs every week, lots of weekend tournaments, internet chess every day. You get to know the players who gather at tournaments and clubs. In contrast to the romantic image that some people have that chess makes kids smart, I found that most chess players are of fairly average intelligence, and many focus on chess to the exclusion of other pursuits, like many hackers do. I found that many chess players were more interested than other people, in gambling - betting on football games or bridge or cribbage or whatever, and their satisfaction in tournament play was all about winning money prizes rather than about the aesthetics of the game. Players might be ingenious over the board, but otherwise utterly lacking in insight, knowledge, intelligence, or refinement.

I do think that teaching children to play chess can help sharpen their thinking skills. Then again, the findings of this study don't surprise me at all, but I don't think it's talking about casual chess players.

F.I.D.E stands for Fédération Internationale des Échecs. It is the international governing body over chess. Individual countries like the U.S. Chess Federation. Each governing body has its own rating system. For example, the USCF's rating system .

I agree. Avoid 'cutting edge' and go for timeless, enduring lessons instead. Most 'cutting edge' technologies end up on the cutting room floor of history.

I would recommend a grounding in Algorithms, writing some 2D graphics to illustrate and visualize the problems and solutions.

Functional programming, which has heavily influenced much of programming language design and has been around for 40 years would be good. Toward this end, I recommend the TeachScheme! materials, which are tutorial, freely available and also emphasize timeless Computer Science lessons.

Once some proficiency has been gained in programming, go for 3D POV and other graphics which can help with learning mathematics.

Of course, technologies that are hear-to-stay, like Linux, C/C++ and Java should also be included at some point.

For socialization in an environment where this person can both excel and gain access to a peer group, you could do a lot worse than competitive scholatic chess. There's almost certainly something going on in your area, but you'll do a LOT better in a major metropolitan area with finding peers. You should be able to get some pointers on this here.

If electronics is the direction, then encourage complete programmable embedded projects. Avoid dabbling, go for palpable result oriented projects that have an end. Achievements that you can both be proud of rather than a lot of dead-ends. You might want to look into the FORTH programming language for flexible programming of small embedded systems.

These would be my choices, but of course, I don't know the 9-year old. You do. However, I do want to get back to the avoiding 'cutting edge' technologies. Would you be going cutting edge for this persons development, or for your ego?

If this person is interested in a particular technology, then by all means, investigate it. You would also do well to encourage Science Fiction and readings on Relativity and Cosmology to fire the imagination.

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TML