Coding for Kids - How children learn to program

The world is becoming in­creas­ingly di­git­al­ised, and a growing number of pro­fes­sions require pro­fi­ciency in using a computer. The more spe­cial­ised your computer skills are, the easier it is to find em­ploy­ment. Children today are at a great advantage since they can grow up in a more digitally-savvy world and get to learn skills like pro­gram­ming while they are young rather than as an adult. There are many different learning programs and pro­gram­ming languages out there that children will find easy to learn and intuitive to use. Visual aids and engaging projects are used to introduce them step by step to the basics of pro­gram­ming.

Children generally learn quickly and on their own when provided with the right learning method. This has been primarily observed in children learning foreign languages and can be ex­tra­pol­ated to pro­gram­ming. After all, a pro­gram­ming language is, strictly speaking, a foreign language. It has vocab­u­lary and a syntax of varying com­plex­ity that must be followed to ensure that what is written is correctly un­der­stood and produces the desired result – although, in this case, it is intended for computers rather than people. There is no reason not to introduce children to pro­gram­ming at an early age.

There are also some clear ad­vant­ages to children learning the basics of pro­gram­ming when they are young:

• They have a natural thirst for knowledge and learn more quickly.
• It helps them acquire practical soft skills, such as problem-solving, teamwork, and cre­ativ­ity.
• They can in­tu­it­ively trans­ition from visual to text-based pro­gram­ming languages.
• It will provide them with ad­vant­ages later in their pro­fes­sion­al lives (can be applied in all in­dus­tries).

Children learn best when they have a clear goal in mind that is presented in a fun and easy to un­der­stand way. In pro­gram­ming, this can take the form of creating a simple game, a small app or their first website. The important thing is that the child enjoys it and does not feel over­whelmed. The process to achieve this goal should neither be too long nor too com­plic­ated. Tools and learning offers designed for children usually focus on com­pon­ents that can be in­tu­it­ively un­der­stood and directly applied. This allows children to quickly ex­per­i­ence the thrill of their first suc­cess­ful project which motivates them to continue learning.

There is a variety of options out there for children to learn how to program or expand their knowledge including YouTube tutorials, app workshops, kids’ coding camps, and toys such as pro­gram­mable robots.

Online resources spe­cific­ally aimed at children and ad­oles­cents are par­tic­u­larly effective. They provide easy-to-un­der­stand and exciting projects that children can work on at their own pace to learn and in­ter­n­al­ise the basics of pro­gram­ming in a fun and pressure-free en­vir­on­ment.

Visual pro­gram­ming languages are the best to start for both children and adults looking to learn how to program without any prior knowledge or ex­per­i­ence. Their in­form­at­ive graphical present­a­tion and highly sim­pli­fied func­tion­al pro­ced­ures make them easier to un­der­stand and use in­tu­it­ively. This makes it easy to program simple projects, but the scope for design and ap­plic­a­tion is naturally limited.

Once the potential for visual pro­gram­ming has been exhausted and they to want to program more complex projects, it is time to move on to text-based pro­gram­ming.

Visual pro­gram­ming languages work with graph­ic­ally rep­res­en­ted objects or building blocks, each con­tain­ing code (i.e. script) for a specific property, condition, action, etc. By as­sem­bling these building blocks, a program procedure is created. The colours and shapes of the blocks allow them to see the possible com­bin­a­tions. The act of pro­gram­ming is usually ac­com­plished by dragging and dropping the blocks to arrange them in a defined working area. This step checks whether the blocks are arranged logically, and any errors found are graph­ic­ally high­lighted.

This makes pro­gram­ming easy for children to un­der­stand and enables them to quickly see their initial results. At the same time, it helps them un­der­stand how a program’s code is logically struc­tured with a little practice. This knowledge will help them later when they are learning text-based pro­gram­ming languages.

The following are the best visual pro­gram­ming languages for kids:

• Scratch: Scratch is probably the most popular tool for children to learn how to program. The visual pro­gram­ming language and the open-source platform bearing the same name were developed by re­search­ers at MIT for children and ad­oles­cents and feature many fun elements that make it easier to get started and encourage them to keep learning. In addition, there are countless online tutorials that make it easier to get started and offer help for concrete questions and problems. Completed projects can also be published on the platform to share and discuss them with the community.
• Blockly: The Google project Blockly is not primarily designed for children, but it’s easy-to-un­der­stand visual format makes it well-suited for learning the basics of pro­gram­ming for both children and adults. Blockly is a library of graphical blocks, each rep­res­ent­ing a piece of code. They are combined in a visual editor accessed directly in the browser to create small programs and games.
• NEPO: For those looking to venture into pro­gram­ming hardware, the intuitive pro­gram­ming language NEPO is a good choice. It uses the Blockly library, is based on Scratch and can be used for exciting projects such as pro­gram­ming robots on the platform Open Roberta.
• Tynker: The learning platform Tynker (only available in English) focuses on teaching skills. It offers a variety of paid courses in which children can learn how to program using this visual pro­gram­ming language. Its de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment is based on Scratch, can be easily used in a browser or as an app on a tablet and is free to use for its basic functions. Tynker focuses on game de­vel­op­ment and animation. For example, it can be used to create Minecraft mods and content.

In text-based pro­gram­ming languages, all para­met­ers of a program must be expressed in detail as code with the correct pre­defined vocab­u­lary and using the pro­gram­ming language’s syntax. This requires extensive knowledge, a strong ima­gin­a­tion for grasping abstract concepts and great diligence to avoid errors. This may sound com­plic­ated, but there are a variety of options in this area to make text-based pro­gram­ming fun and exciting for kids and teach complex concepts in an age-ap­pro­pri­ate manner.

• Code.org is an online learning platform spe­cial­ised on computer science where you can find a wide variety of content for every skill level. In addition to online tutorials, in­ter­act­ive courses, and offline lessons on a variety of pro­gram­ming languages, users can also create video game en­vir­on­ments (e.g. for Minecraft) and program their own apps. All content is free of charge and available in English.
• The platform CodeAcademy (only available in English) offers free online courses for text-based pro­gram­ming languages, such as Python, JavaS­cript, PHP, Ruby, CSS, and many more. It offers a variety of tutorials to help children and ad­oles­cents with concrete projects, such as pro­gram­ming robots or apps.
• The popular free-to-use learning platform Khan Academy offers video courses on JavaS­cript, CSS, and HTML and specific ap­plic­a­tions such as video games and web design.

All these learning platforms allow children to acquire a good un­der­stand­ing of the most important pro­gram­ming languages and to figure out if they want to become spe­cial­ised in pro­gram­ming and, if so, in which area. If they want to delve deeper into a specific area or perfect their skills in a specific language, there are advanced courses and online tutorials as well as dis­cus­sion platforms and spe­cial­ised forums for each of the most important pro­gram­ming languages.