Path: csiph.com!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder3.hal-mli.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:59:32 -0500 Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:59:35 -0700 From: Patricia Shanahan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:11.0) Gecko/20120327 Thunderbird/11.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Teaching kids to program (in Java) References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 22 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.230.201.141 X-Trace: sv3-uEX/NMNOHI/bofc9RusCZRKBZ5cMLk0P/oHT8FV4HgsM1BmGQYMk6Dd4iT0kmpkDYuJjwkX+uRGlY8/!JV0XxuUxODU4eM98ODFfIjOK4HNyT23UEEmTUtvIvhbbfNCa16r78vK+HjKjF6lAgYeaVruD05Yc!pVTfGLrxnlNccvxmt0ESIjTxFCwUm3Iv9761J2bCHrcuT/0= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 2204 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:13537 On 4/12/2012 1:12 AM, Mark wrote: > Hi, > > Does anyone know any good resources to teach Java programming to kids. > I know the theory but I don't know how to make it interesting for > children. When they realize they won't be writing the next FPS game > within the first half hour they often lose motivation ;-) Sarah Esper, a graduate student I know at UCSD, is doing research on a fun, child-friendly approach to Java programming. She has set up a video game called "CodeSpells" in which the kids write "spells" that are actually Java programs to manipulate the game environment. Constructs like "public static void main" are incantations that must be included in a spell to make it work. Because of Harry Potter, children tend to be comfortable with the idea that a spell may need to include some words they do not understand. Her web page, http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~sesper/CompSciInfo.html, does not have much information now but she plans to add to it over the next few days. Patricia