{"id":12451,"date":"2015-06-30T12:45:30","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T12:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/livecode.com\/?p=12451"},"modified":"2016-03-01T14:24:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T14:24:35","slug":"how-to-teach-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/how-to-teach-coding\/","title":{"rendered":"Richmond Mathewson – Teaching with LiveCode"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always disliked those rather predictable coding courses that start with a \u201cHello, World\u201d exercise: especially as nobody in the real world ever says \u201cHello, World\u201d except, possibly, cult leaders.<\/p>\n

That’s why when I decided to teach children to code, I followed my intuitions based on how I taught myself HyperCard, MetaCard, and LiveCode and\u00a0based on my experience of working with primary school level children.
\n<\/p>\n

I have always disliked those rather predictable coding courses that start with a \u201cHello World\u201d exercise: especially as nobody in the real world ever says \u201cHello World\u201d except, possibly, cult leaders.<\/p>\n

That’s why when I decided to teach children to code, I followed my intuitions based on how I taught myself HyperCard, MetaCard, and LiveCode and based on my experience of working with primary school level children.<\/p>\n

\"RMPhoto\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have felt, for about 25 years, that the education system in Bulgaria, where I live, only serves to kill children’s imaginations and suppress their inherent creativity, while filling their heads with dry ‘facts’ that have little or no utility in the world we live. So I didn\u2019t want to give them \u201cHello World\u201d, but rather a kick in the mental pants to be part of the modern world instead of languishing under the weight of a dead 19th<\/sup> century education system.<\/p>\n

I wanted to use lessons in LiveCode programming to move children from the Convergent Directed Learning model of education (i.e. educational force-feeding) to a Divergent Self-Directed Learning way of operating where children can learn by exploring for themselves<\/a>. LiveCode lends itself to this sort of learning. I know, because that is exactly how I have learnt to program using LiveCode; always having the experiences of learning Fortran IV and PASCAL V in my past as points of comparison.<\/p>\n

To teach the children, I started by making models of simple programming activities such as mathematical operations using beans and cups on the Harkness table I have in my classroom.<\/p>\n

I then showed children how to make prototypes of those models in LiveCode itself.<\/p>\n

\"RMPhoto2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When the children started suggesting improvements and correcting me when they saw me making on-screen errors in coding while I was demonstrating to them, I knew we\u2019d made a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Now I have happy children who can reason their way through problems which their standard education system does not prepare them for.<\/p>\n

I also take great personal satisfaction in seeing children who are incredibly happy at achieving so much so quickly.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also pleased that several other people, both in Bulgaria and abroad, are following along with my course via the Facebook page<\/a> that I set up for it. That is really super.<\/p>\n

The advice I would give to anyone who wants to learn or who is only starting to learn to code is: I didn’t learn to drive a car until I was about 32 because I was scared. I felt like a complete fool after I learnt. Don’t be like me with computer programming: just dive in and get on.<\/a><\/p>\n

What does your app building journey looked like? We’d love to hear your story! Contact us<\/a> and tell us about the challenges you’ve encountered, the perseverance you’ve demonstrated, and the success you’ve achieved. Read more LiveCode Stories here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always disliked those rather predictable coding courses that start with a \u201cHello, World\u201d exercise: especially as nobody in the real world ever says \u201cHello, World\u201d except, possibly, cult leaders. That’s why when I decided to teach children to code, I followed my intuitions based on how I taught myself HyperCard, MetaCard, and LiveCode<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":16698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,110],"tags":[203,202,201],"class_list":["post-12451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-livecode-stories","tag-children","tag-coding","tag-teach"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12451"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16699,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12451\/revisions\/16699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.livecode.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}