There was a story recently where toasters were bricked because they received the microwave binary update. Can you imagine? You wont be able to make toast if you cant hack our toaster.
Not to mention the new scams, from NFTs to ransomwares, I have gotten to the point of asking my daughter to tell me for each app she installs 'how it makes money from you, especially if its free' .
What big tech has been doing for the last 20 years has successfully disconnected the user from the computer, the next generation was supposed to be the most 'technologically advanced' generation and yet for them technology is worse than magic. It is magic that controls their lives.. that is filled with exploits, bugs and crashes.
We must do all we can to break down the tech barrier and make them literate.
(this is my log of teaching my daughter https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids I have posted it in other comments so it looks weird, but I have gotten some feedback that it is a nice resource for other parents, so I will link to it again)
The whole game was her idea and we started working on it about 5 months ago.
Here's another approach https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids
Even though this is true, it is not impossible to expand their horizon. We still have not figured out the pedagogy or even andragogy of how to teach technology.
Check out my progress with my daughter(10): https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids, We are also making a card game https://punkjazz.org/programming-time/easy.html to play with her and donate to other kids interested in learning.
Spending time with pi zero and arduino and building retropie games, using links2 instead of chrome from time to time, she is making great progress. Make the lights in her room work after few claps, with arduino nano and sound sensor so her code can control the light.
And this is only with 20-30 minutes per day.
You might think that the kids are blind to what is going on, but they do see, they know something is wrong, they know they are being exploited and cheated to buy lootboxes and skins.
She knows a bit of python (here is the log https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids) and wants to talk about programming for her school report and I thought it will be great to print some small programs (is_prime or something similar) to give to the kids to type on their own, but it is practially impossible to give code to another person so they can type it, unless I make a webpage where they have to do it.
Just imagine how much is needed to setup python3 on mac or windows, go to security settings to run unsigned programs, deal with paths, or install brew or whatever, there is no chance anyone can do that unsupervised.
We are now working on making commodore like experience computer for her with pizero2 and good mechanical keyboard and 7" display, with mini linux that just inits into an editor. F2 saves the code, F3 loads from the file, F5 runs the code, it has direct access to /dev/fb0 and it just draws on the screen on top of the editor.
She enjoyed making the 6x3 font, pixel by pixel so much..
https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...
I think modern platforms take, or are on the way to take, absolutely all agency from the user. From phones to game consoles to macbooks to cars, everything is just "get this approved app from the cloud" which gets disabled if you do something wrong or you dont want to update.
Yesterday I made this strategy-like game, and I think it has potential, and I feel I can make it much more interesting, but it eludes me how.
The goal is to have 'hacker' like game, where you see the opponent's code and can react to it.
If anyone has ideas please make pull request at https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids (punk dir) or send me email at [email protected]
I tried it with my daughter(10) and she did not respond to it, of course it was likely my fault. After that I changed the approach to be more tangible, making apps, websites, roblox games, python games etc, and she is getting better and better.
However the games 'human resource machine' and '7 billion humans' as visual programming were incredibly helpful. (tomorrowcorporation.com)
I document the process here: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids
For example, `color = input("what is your favorite color: ") .. print(color)` seems like the variable name is somewhat related to the content. The first time I saw my daughter "get" variables was after some time she just started naming them `kj`, `jdh`, `hdj` when she was going to use them immediately after.
I am writing a log of how the lessons go: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids
I dont think there is uniform process for every child.
In the end I just started spending 30 minutes every day with her and just coding, explaining and making small useful things.
here I am logging the process: