Computer Programming
There are a plethora of kid-friendly programming tools... more than there is time to teach at school. Here are the ones I use with my students:
Scratch
Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.
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Lightbot
Lightbot introduces students to programming concepts by solving puzzles. It is very engaging. Each level teaches a programming concept and starts off easy and gets progressively harder. If you get stuck, there are YouTube solutions posted on many of the puzzles. It is available on iOS devices, Android devices, and on the computer through the Hour of Code.
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Code.Org Hour of Code
This site has a lot of great resources. The students really enjoyed doing the Hour of Code activities. One note of caution: the site was very slow the official Hour of Code week. The students had more fun when we revisited it later.
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Bitsbox Hour of Code
Bitsbox Hour of Code teaches JavaScript through online activities that are primarily tutorial-based, with emphasis on freeform experimentation and discovery.
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Snap
Snap! (formerly BYOB) is a visual, drag-and-drop programming language. It is an extended reimplementation of Scratch (a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab) that allows you to Build Your Own Blocks.
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Alice
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming.
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Hackety Hack
With Hackety Hack, you'll learn the Ruby programming language. Ruby is used for all kinds of programs, including desktop applications and websites.
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Codecademy
We do not do Codecademy during class, but some of the students used it during our afterschool Computer Club and on their own. This site lets you learn to code interactivity, for free. You can learn JavaScript, HTML/CSS, PHP, Python, Ruby, and APIs.
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Made with Code
Made with Code is an initiative by Google to champion creativity, girls, and code, all at once.
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StarLogo TNG
StarLogo TNG is The Next Generation ofStarLogo modeling and simulation software. While this version holds true to the premise of StarLogo as a tool to create and understand simulations of complex systems, it also brings with it several advances - 3D graphics and sound, a blocks-based programming interface, and keyboard input - that make it a great tool for programming educational video games.
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Tynker Hour of Code
Tynker's online courses provide a complete learning system with interactive exercises, guided tutorials,
fun creativity tools, puzzles and more to make programming fun. |
Microsoft Imagine
Imagine Access gives you everything you need to learn to code at no cost for students. No matter your experience level, we’ve got all the right tools to explore, learn, or create, from your very first game or app all the way to your collegiate big-data research project in the cloud.
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Kodu
Kodu lets kids create games on the PC and Xbox via a simple visual programming language.
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Youth Digital
Kids learn to code, program in Java, make Mods for Minecraft®,
animate their own movies, design and print in 3D, develop their own mobile apps, create video games, and more. |
Code Monkey
From first steps in coding to advanced subjects in computer science. We’ve got you covered with intuitive, bite-sized lessons. Taught by cute animals!
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Thimble
Thimble is an online code editor that makes it easy to create and publish your own web pages while learningHTML, CSS & JavaScript.
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eToys
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Code Hunt
Code Hunt is a game! The player, the code hunter, has to discover missing code fragments. The player wins points for each level won with extra bonus for elegant solutions.
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