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Ask Slashdot: How Do I Engage 5th-8th Graders In Computing?
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?
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.
5th grade : Minecraft
6th grade : Minecraft
7th grade: porn
8th grade: porn
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.
I'm a band teacher, and I've had experience teaching an electronic music class- not 100% what you're doing, but some principles will apply. If you've got a small group, you'll want each of them to have their own equipment to work with. With a bigger group, you'll probably just have to demonstrate to them.
You'll be shocked at how incapable many of them will be. It will take 5 minutes to get them to all have their breadboard sitting right side up. If you're using a computer program, it'll be ten minutes to get the computers turned on and get the right program open. I'd advise to start with something so easy, you can't even imagine how they could possibly mess it up. After the first project you should have a better idea of what else you might attempt.
I run a computer club at our local elementary school. MIT's Scratch has been an amazing resource for teaching the kids to program. It's fun, it's graphical, and it provides a platform for teaching most major CS concepts. We did tear a computer down, but we only spent one meeting on that. I think much more than that is overkill. The kids really enjoy the programming in scratch.
Don't worry about job skill, you will bore the crap out of them with that.
Focus on exploration, discovery, and fun.
I'd suggest you look at Scratch from MIT. NoStarch Press has a nice comic book style book on Scratch that worked for my kids.
There are also good resources on JavaScript and Python for kids. Khan Academy has JavaScript tutorial that are pretty good as well.
Bad User. No biscuit!
Or better yet, use Minecraft to teach them the basics of logic and programming.
A modpack with ComputerCraft, RedLogic, and possibly a couple of "just for fun" mods like Thermal Expansion or RailCraft would be a solid starting point...if you want to put together something more complex, contact me on IRC (esper.net, #minechem channel) or via Twitter and I'd be more than happy to help you out.
Disclosure: I develop the Minechem mod, and help maintain a couple of different modpacks.
Bits of code, random ramblings: jakimfett.com