
Teaching Computer Programming to Underserved Kids - esmooov
http://www.indiegogo.com/ScriptEd
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nicpottier
Not sure if it is by design, but their website starts echoing some
underscore.js tidbits if you start hammering on the keyboard:
<http://scriptednyc.org/>

Word.

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esmooov
Haha. I'm happy someone saw that. I wish I could say that it had something to
do with my theory of Social Catamorphism, folding our disparate talents into a
better future, or something. Unfortunately, no such theory exists, and I just
picked a piece of code that I enjoy and looks attractive.

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danso
Related: Black Girls Code <http://www.blackgirlscode.com/>

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aaronharnly
Neat! I donated.

This semester I've been volunteering to teach middle-school students how to
"program a game!" with the very wonderful Citizen Schools program[1]. We've
been developing a curriculum that takes elements from the Bootstrap
curriculum[2], using the Khan Academy CS environment[3]. (Yes, we've been
following the back-and-forth with Bret Victor carefully.)

It's been challenging, but very rewarding, and I hope other engineers take
seriously their obligation to apply some of their good fortune and education
for the benefit of others.

[1] <http://www.citizenschools.org/>

[2] <http://www.bootstrapworld.org/>

[3] <http://www.khanacademy.org/cs>

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esmooov
That's really excellent. It's funny, although not entirely surprising, but we
have also been using parts of Khan and Bret Victor. The students seemed to
really enjoy the sandbox of Khan as a starter to what is possible with code.
Repl.it was a big help as well. The hard/fun part is transitioning between the
experimenting and learning with these out-of-the-box tools to experimenting
and learning by actually making your own stuff. I - and I'm sure the other
ScriptEd folks - would love to hear more about your experience
(scriptednyc@gmail.com).

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gloryless
I misread the title as teaching CS to "Undeserving Kids." I thought, that's a
little strange, but I wanna see how these little shits are getting some CS
knowledge. But, the real idea is a good one.

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bjhoops1
Haha I read the exact same thing. Damn kids... don't deserve to learn
recursion.

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EricDeb
One thing that does concern me about these types of programs is trying to
teach kids who are too young, inadvertently causing them to conclude
"programming is too hard" and give up. I consider myself of average
intelligence and I struggled with programming in high school. It was only
because of my obstinate nature and love of computers in general that I kept
pursuing it in college.

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wcarss
I've been working with a group of volunteers from Freshbooks to teach to
middle-school kids at the Yonge Street Mission here in Toronto. We're into our
second class now - we've made some real life games to introduce concepts and
have moved into using MIT's Scratch.

I've been thinking a lot about where to go next - great to hear about extra
resources and that other people are doing similar stuff!

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wetbrain
Anything like this in SF/Bay? I feel like there should be...

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shicky
anything like this in London or Belfast?

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tomblomfield
www.codeclub.org.uk

I signed up a few weeks ago and visited my local primary school for the first
time this afternoon. 9-11 year olds are smaller than I remember.

