Teaching Kids Programming Discussion

gistfile1.txt

This weekend Ashley Williams (@ag_dubs), Jeff Casimir (@j3) and I had a brief
discussion on Twitter about teaching programming to kids. We thought this would
be a topic that many other people might be interested in too, so I setup this
page in case anyone else wants to join the discussion.

We're not sure where this will lead - as a next step we could setup a Google
group, Discourse site, Basecamp or some other forum for a longer discussion.


Here's the original Twitter conversation:


@pat_shaughnessy
Doing a technical review of an upcoming Ruby book for kids - it's fun reviewing someone else's stuff for a change :)

@projct
@pat_shaughnessy is that hello ruby by any chance, or can you neither confirm or deny? Heh :)

@daz4126
Ruby for kids sounds like a great idea!

@ag_dubs
@pat_shaughnessy v cool! excited to hear more.

@pat_shaughnessy
@projct no, it's not - don't have the priviledge of reviewing that one :)

@pat_shaughnessy
@ag_dubs for sure, I'll definitely talk about it more when it's closer to being done

@j3
@pat_shaughnessy @ag_dubs +1, been wanting to write one for years, curious to see it.

@ag_dubs
@j3 @pat_shaughnessy i think it'd be real cool to get some folks together to talk about different approaches to teaching kids programming

@ag_dubs
@j3 @pat_shaughnessy esp language based vs language agnostic approaches

@j3
@ag_dubs @pat_shaughnessy count me in. We could host in Denver.

@ag_dubs
@j3 @pat_shaughnessy how about something fancy like Berlin? i think Berlin would be nice. Berlin or…. Brooklyn ;)

@pat_shaughnessy
@ag_dubs @j3 count me in too - would love to be involved - Brooklyn's a lot closer to me :)

@j3
@pat_shaughnessy @ag_dubs I need denver so I can kidnap you all to teach at @turingschool.

@ag_dubs
@pat_shaughnessy @j3 kidcodeconf 2014, brooklyn, nyc

@ag_dubs
@j3 @pat_shaughnessy @turingschool the kidnapping is supposed to be a surprise, jeff, you kinda blew it  ;)

@j3
@ag_dubs @pat_shaughnessy I’m losing my criminal edge.

@ag_dubs
@j3 @pat_shaughnessy all i can think of now is a mashup between MJ's "smooth criminal" and LCD's "i'm losing my edge"

@pat_shaughnessy
@j3 @ag_dubs hardly :) - to be serious though, I think a ton of people would be interesting in a conf or meeting about programming & kids

@ag_dubs
@pat_shaughnessy @j3 completely agree. let's move this to an email chain and maybe do something about it.

@j3
@ag_dubs @pat_shaughnessy maybe two days, first day about kids and second about adults.

@ag_dubs
@j3 @pat_shaughnessy "one thing well"

@j3
@ag_dubs @pat_shaughnessy this is not how I roll

@pat_shaughnessy
@j3 @ag_dubs i like the email discussion idea, as a first step - lots of other folks will have opinions & want to be involved

@ag_dubs
@pat_shaughnessy @j3 +1. i'm ashley at bocoup dot com

@pat_shaughnessy
@ag_dubs @j3 cool - I'll tweet something out tomorrow when more people are paying attention, and see who wants to talk about it

@ag_dubs
@pat_shaughnessy @j3 cool… offhand i think @aidanfeldman @vicfriedman @hyper_linda @evhan55

@stevekinney
@pat_shaughnessy @j3 @ag_dubs Count me in! I taught Ruby & JS in NYC high schools for 3 years. hello at (twitter username) dot net.

@ag_dubs
@stevekinney @pat_shaughnessy @j3 oh ya! how could i forget. bad me

@kytrinyx
@ag_dubs @j3 @pat_shaughnessy I would definitely suggest that you rope in @edwardog and @lynnlangit if you do this.

@aidanfeldman
@ag_dubs @pat_shaughnessy @j3 @VicFriedman @hyper_linda @evhan55 ha, funny timing... just helped launch this today: http://www.meetup.com/init-developer/ 

@JEG2
@ag_dubs @j3 @pat_shaughnessy Lots of good info here:  http://rubyrogues.com/141-rr-teaching-kids-with-ron-evans/ …

@JEG2
@kytrinyx @ag_dubs @j3 @pat_shaughnessy @edwardog @lynnlangit And @deadprogram.

@mrb_bk
@pat_shaughnessy @ag_dubs @j3 I have some thoughts on this too, hit me up

@VicFriedman
@ag_dubs @pat_shaughnessy @j3 @aidanfeldman @hyper_linda @evhan55 very interested in this!!