Coding for 8th Graders

F

fat12_sl

shitlord
20
0
Hey guys,

I am in my second year of teaching as an 8th grade technology teacher. I majored in film, so, a lot of what I tried to incorporate into my lesson planning last year leaned heavily towards that: video editing with their Ipads, making podcast with garageband, and using Photoshop.

There is this national initiative called Hour of Coding that we did last year where I just had the students go to a webpage that Khan Academy put up. They got to do some simple java type stuff, and a lot of them enjoyed it, even the prissy girls. At the end of the year, they expressed in their evaluations that they wish we could've spent more time doing it.

I, personally, don't know a thing about coding, but I'd like to try and create a 3-4 week unit this year where I can give them the opportunity to go a little deeper with it. Do you guys have any recommendations as to what type of coding or software I might be able to introduce my students to at a very basic level?

Danka!
 
chaos

chaos

Buzzfeed Editor
17,324
4,839
Scratch may be a little young for 8th graders, but it is awesome. I'm itching to get my 6 year old into it.Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share

No Starch Press has a whole line of books aimed at kids for Javascript, Python, Scratch, and Java as well I think. That could be a good starting point.No Starch Press

There are innumerable apps for this. Kodable looks good,Kodable Pro App Review

Codeacademy is good for a very basic intro, it helped me get into Ruby a bit.Learn to code | Codecademy

Google looks like they have a program that is basically what you are looking forAbout CS First | Google CS First
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
<Silver Donator>
14,441
2,223
I am not a coder and someone will probably tell me I'm way out of date but I learned basic in high school 20 years ago and even then people were saying "Basic is useless, no one uses it anymore", which was true, but every language I learned after that was just taking what I learned to do in basic and changing the syntax or adding to it. The basic structures (IF, THEN, ELSE, DO, LOOP, etc) still apply. Along with that these days you would want to do some object oriented stuff like Java and maybe play around with theMIT App Inventor(formerly Google App Inventor) and let them make an android app.

Some real coder will probably come along and tell me I'm old and I don't know what I'm talking about which may very well be true but that is the way I would approach it.
 
moontayle

moontayle

Golden Squire
4,302
165
Just don't teach them Visual Basic. I'm four years removed from that course and I still fucking hate it.

Edit: Khan Academy and Codecademy or Code.org are very good with interactive tutorials and one-stop shop learning. Codecademy also has a lot of different types of languages to go through.
 
T

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
moontayle_sl said:
Just don't teach them Visual Basic. I'm four years removed from that course and I still fucking hate it.

Edit: Khan Academy and Codecademy or Code.org are very good with interactive tutorials and one-stop shop learning. Codecademy also has a lot of different types of languages to go through.
Click to expand...
I started programming in 10th grade using VB. I like the language as a teaching tool. It gives you the GUI and onAction stuff really easily so the programming is a bit more tangible so its like "Oh I click this button and it makes this text appear." It doesn't force the student to learn about types such as int, float, String and all that like if you started with C# (unless you can var type in C#? I'm pretty far removed from it.) Granted it can also lead into some really nasty habits if not curtailed immediately like global variables everywhere. But to teach the fundamentals of logic and looping and all that I like it.
 
Khane

Khane

Got something right about marriage
19,836
13,354
Tenks_sl said:
I started programming in 10th grade using VB. I like the language as a teaching tool. It gives you the GUI and onAction stuff really easily so the programming is a bit more tangible so its like "Oh I click this button and it makes this text appear." It doesn't force the student to learn about types such as int, float, String and all that like if you started with C# (unless you can var type in C#? I'm pretty far removed from it.) Granted it can also lead into some really nasty habits if not curtailed immediately like global variables everywhere. But to teach the fundamentals of logic and looping and all that I like it.
Click to expand...
Can do the same thing with C# and you SHOULD learn about types early on.
 
ShakyJake

ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,631
19,267
Javascript may not be a bad choice. You know, since it's the "language of the web" and all, it's practical to learn (unlike LOGO or something). Plus there are tons of online interpreters so no need to fight with an IDE.
 
ShakyJake

ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,631
19,267
I see where you're coming from, but Javascript as a programming language does not require it to be tied to HTML and CSS. Sure, the browser environment where it's most used, but Javascript functions just fine as a language on it's own that can teach a person programming concepts. They don'thaveto learn HTML and CSS just as the C# language doesn't require the person to also learn WPF or Webforms.

And, by the way, Javascript is now being used server-side (e.g. Node) which does not involve HTML and CSS one bit.
 
Kovaks

Kovaks

Mr. Poopybutthole
2,354
3,142
Yeah node tied to Mongo is pretty simple. I don't have much experiance teaching kids but we tough our Web designers and testers css html Javascript over 4 days and they got it pretty well with no prior programming experiance. We just stuck to the basic strait forward parts and told them that if they wanted more there are things out there. In the end they understood tags and styling with an idea of using a library like bootstrap, and then they got basic Dom manipulation, objects, arrays, basic functions with if and for loops. We lost alot of them when we brought up Ajax though.

Have you tried any of the drag and drop teaching languages like snap... also for kids code combat is fun but maybe for younger kids.CodeCombat - Learn how to code by playing a game
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

Trump's Staff
<Gold Donor>
19,360
-17,424
i think you guys are forgetting that these are eight graders. You have to be graphical and they are not going to know the difference between a string and a decimal and a bit. You should teach them first is the control structures, since those are just english commands.
Hopscotch - Make your own game. Learn to code.
Look at the following commands, and control sequences, the base for a programming nowadays.

yjGdFXBXN52B5FDM9q.gif

Also it is ChickenLord approved
It's WAY more fun to make a game then to play it.- ChickenLord
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.