Aice with a 5th grader

I'm wondering if anyone has had some success with using Alice to teach 4th - 6th graders some basic programming. My 4th grader, youngest daughter, is showing a high aptitude for 6th grade math. She has programmed the Lego NXT a little and seems to not have any problems with that. Wondering if I should wait a little while longer or start her in on Alice. As well - should we start with 2.0 since it seems 3.0 is over the horizon a bit?

My background is IS/IT (web, C, PHP, little Java and more) but mostly as a team lead manager and part time programmer.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Originally Posted by DaddyOh

I'm wondering if anyone has had some success with using Alice to teach 4th - 6th graders some basic programming. My 4th grader, youngest daughter, is showing a high aptitude for 6th grade math. She has programmed the Lego NXT a little and seems to not have any problems with that. Wondering if I should wait a little while longer or start her in on Alice. As well - should we start with 2.0 since it seems 3.0 is over the horizon a bit?

My background is IS/IT (web, C, PHP, little Java and more) but mostly as a team lead manager and part time programmer.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I believe I would start her on Scratch from MIT (Google it) and move to Alice when 3.0 is released. I believe she would find Scratch more engaging at her age, and would also find many kindred souls on the Scratch forum.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free programming tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

Hi,
You can teach Alice to a 7 year old.

I think you should go for it.

There is good information at kids like . info

about teaching children programming with scratch or alice.

Just go to
http://kidslike.info/
and search on alice.
or
go to
http://kidslike.info/scratch_compute...ming_tutorials
for scratch

http://www.kidslike.info/computer_pr...ming_languages

Originally Posted by alicefan

http://www.kidslike.info/computer_pr...ming_languages

Great reference - thanks for posting.

About the only thing I would disagree with is calling Python - which is primarily a scripting language - a "traditional computer language." I would reserve that for C++/Java etc. which are compiled languages in the tradition of Fortran.

Added note: I see Dick Baldwin has also noted that Greenfoot is Java, not Ruby.
http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=1619 . The Ruby reference apparently has been corrected by the owner of the page - at least the current version correctly lists Java as the source for Greenfoot.

Originally Posted by DrJim

Added note: I see Dick Baldwin has also noted that Greenfoot is Java, not Ruby.
http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=1619 . The Ruby reference apparently has been corrected by the owner of the page - at least the current version correctly lists Java as the source for Greenfoot.

That correction was mighty quick! Didn't know I had so much influence Hmmm, wonder if I could have a similar effect on gas prices

Correction: The price of gas is supposed to be $0.39 instead of $3.90

Let's see if that works!

The author of that page with the Ruby/Java error must read these forums.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free Scratch tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocHomeSchool.htm
Free Java/C#, etc. tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

Originally Posted by DickBaldwin

That correction was mighty quick! Didn't know I had so much influence Hmmm, wonder if I could have a similar effect on gas prices

Correction: The price of gas is supposed to be $0.39 instead of $3.90
Let's see if that works!

Just came across this old (Aug. '08) positing looking for Greenfort information. Since gas prices, at least locally, are at least down to $1.90 - would you mind trying the same thing with the stock market?

As far as your influence goes, as you may know your site is the first web reference listed in "Java for Dummies." I'll let you figure out whether that's good or bad - certainly your tutorials are great.