Saturday, November 23, 2013

Any Publicity is Good Publicity

I just realized that it's been more than a week since our last proper, documented Lesson.

Since our previous lesson, stuff has happened, though.

We had our 2nd Reaktor Code School on the 12th, with a room (a bit more than) full of kids and parents hacking on Turtle Roy.

Then we've had a couple of interviews with the newspapers. Mila got to demonstrate her proficiency on both Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet. She had a good time talking about computers and stuff with the reporters.

But I think it's time to get back to business today. The question is though, what next?

3 comments:

  1. One of my workmates linked the interview from HBL to me with the words: "you're not alone, and here's one even younger than your daughter!"

    Amazing, nerdy coding? :D

    I started a bit slower, at 4 (last year) she got her own laptop with own user account and own password. The first year she only been exploring the computer, set it up with cables, log in/logg of (passwords). Started to explore pikku kakkonen, buu-klubben and bolibompa: and amazed me on the way to the kindergarden with new info every now and then (earth, planets, space: and I thought she only was playing games...!).

    This autumn she has join my projects as an habitant on servers I use with my students, Minecraft in school? I'm now about to start another Minecraft project for my 15-18 yo students, see if it's possible to learn programming with Minecraft. And yes, she has already decided to participate...

    Thank you for th einspiring blog;)

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  2. Programming with Minecraft sounds interesting. Gotta admit I haven't even tried Minecraft myself, but I've observed many teenagers beeing totally addicted so there's gotta be something there.

    I'm starting to feel there should be a forum for (Finnish?) people who teach coding to kids. A facebook group maybe?

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  3. One good thing about Minecraft is that it seems to attract girls and boys equally. Maybe the peaceful creation work combined with actions does the trick.

    I am myself a soon-to-be female software engineer (still finishing my thesis and visiting job interviews) and stumbled upon programming around age 14, at computer class. I have a fond memory of getting to explain about random number generation to a cute boy who couldn't grasp it so easily. I would have been very happy to have a parent or a relative like you as a kid since I have always felt that I would have liked to start even earlier, especially as launching games from command line and other basic command line operations were piece of cake from when I was six and got my first computer. :P

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