The Digital Adventures Blog
For parents, educators and students to discuss tech education for kids, best practices for teaching coding & engineering design to kids & emerging technology trends
Featured Posts
Displaying posts in the coding education for kids category clear filter
Boiling a frog - How to best introduce kids to coding
If you want to boil a frog, the conventional wisdom is that you put the frog in cool water and slowly turn up the heat until it reaches the boiling point versus starting with boiling water and putting the frog in; sensing the huge delta between ambient and hot water, the frog will jump out of boiling water every time. The first time I saw a command prompt was in an Introduction to Computer Scie...
20 Minute Project Challenge | Smart, Dumb, Walking Robot
We asked our students to provide 3 descriptive words and then we gave our lead North Shore instructor 20 minutes to build a project encompassing these words. See what happens when you combine smart, dumb and walking with a Lego EV3 Robot in this fun video.
What coding language should my kid start with?
This is a question we get asked a lot. The short answer is that it depends. That’s hardly a satisfying answer, so let’s get into some general guidelines you can use to help navigate the sea of options that are out there. Don’t write off ScratchScratch sometimes gets a bad reputation because it’s often used for introductory programming with very young students. As a result, many Scratch projects...
3 Cool Things Kids Can Build With Code
One of the great things about learning to program computers is the wide variety of applications. From Bluetooth devices in our vehicles to applications on our mobile phones, adults can see the infusion & continuous evolution of technology everywhere. As Digital Natives, kids can sometimes take technology for granted because they haven’t known a time when there wasn’t a smart phone or tablet...
The parallels between sports & coding
One of the most traditional activities of adolescence is for kids to join in and play organized sports. From softball to tennis, there are several options for kids to find a sport they enjoy. As parents, we sign our kids up for sports not just because we have dreams of them maybe one day becoming professional players but also to learn valuable life lessons. While the possibility of professional...
How Learning to Code Can Help Develop a Growth Mindset
In 2014, Carol Dweck published findings based on two decades of research on growth versus fixed mindsets amongst individuals and organizations. Her research found that those who believe their talents can be developed over time have a growth mindset while those who believe their talents are innate gifts and therefore stable across time have a fixed mindset. Individuals with a growth mindset tend...
Our approach to teaching coding to kids
My first exposure to coding was as a freshman in college. I had registered for an Intro to Computer Science course and was excited to learn more about the wonderful world of technology. During our first lab session, we were asked to open a text editor and instructed to type lines of code from the textbook. While I certainly got better at typing, it didn't make me very excited about learning ho...
HELLO WORLD!
This is the start of a wonderful adventure. Thanks for joining us! We will use this space to keep our parents and early learners updated on what's going on with Digital Adventures.