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Ask Slashdot: How Do I Engage 5th-8th Graders In Computing?

Posted by Soulskill on from the robots-with-lasers dept.

An anonymous reader writes: I volunteer at a inner-city community after school program focused K-8th grade. Right now, due to the volunteer demographic, we spend most of our activity time in arts and crafts and homework. The 5th-8th students are getting restless with those activities. I've been asked to spice it up with some electrical wizardry. What I'd like to do is introduce the students to basic jobs skills through computers. My thoughts are that I could conduct some simple hands-on experiments with circuits, and maybe some bread boards. Ultimately, we're going to take apart a computer and put it back together. How successful this project is will dictate whether or not we will go into programming. However, whatever we do, I want the kids to obtain marketable skills. Anyone know of a curriculum I can follow? What experiences have you had with various educational computing projects?

4 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Marketable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why do the skills have to be marketable? They're middle schoolers, they should be learning the fundamentals or just having fun. Once they're interested in the subject, they can learn how to make money with it later.

    1. Re:Marketable? by bmo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This.

      They are so far away from the professional world that anything they learn that is specific to any kind of software or technology will be completely obsolete once they've left school.

      They should be doing something fun. The best thing that can be done is to point kids in directions that make them want to do it on their own - self-directed study and show them resources where they can find out how to do things. And let them form groups to create projects and don't limit them to just glowing phosphors on a screen. Lego Mindstorms (and its descendants) comes to mind.

      They need to learn that computers are tools for creation and creativity.

      Absolutely do /not/ take out all the fun by teaching only fundamentals or just teaching them how to use Word and Excel, aka "marketable skills."

      --
      BMO

  2. hardware != software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ultimately, we're going to take apart a computer and put it back together. How successful this project is will dictate whether or not we will go into programming.

    Taking apart a computer and putting it back together means nothing in relation to programming.

  3. Advise by burni2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1.) don't be an asian helicopter mother
    - you are not their parents

    - best way to engage most children is when they have fun taking things step by step, with fun and encouragement

    - some kids want a challenge, those are eager, give them a challenge they can handle, be present, wait for the question, don't explain things they want to tackle themselves

    2.)
    show them how they can let their computer + learned skills work for them
    - understand what they are doing in school (don't introduce partial differential equations to a 5th grader except they ask you to do so)
    - explain their current topic on math with the help of excel (no VBA)

    -sine, cosine tables, sine charts etc..

    3.)
    The computer is a tool, make it a place to toy with things

    4.)
    - don't be ProfX
    - use your empathy
    - but actually the best choice would be to empower them to tackle their current tasks, a little surplus of knowledge won't hurt
    - don't present big problems, demonstrate how you can approach a - school-world-problem by breaking it down,

    These are computer/programming skills: to understand a problem, breaking it up into small understandable pieces then describing the whole problem, formulate a solution approach and testing that method.

    With the help of a useful tool called computer+software.