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Articles & Books From Camille McCue
An introduction to coding for kidsCoding know-how is the coolest new tool kids can add to their creativity toolboxes—and all they need to get started is a computer connected to the internet and the lessons in this book. Easy!The book offers fun step-by-step projects to create games, animations, and other digital toys while teaching a bit about coding along the way.
A guide for kids who want to learn coding Coding is quickly becoming an essential academic skill, right up there with reading, writing, and arithmetic. This book is an ideal way for young learners ages 8-13 who want more coding knowledge than you can learn in an hour, a day, or a week. Written by a classroom instructor with over a decade of experience teaching technology skills to kids as young as five, this book teaches the steps and logic needed to write code, solve problems, and create fun games and animations using projects based in Scratch and JavaScript.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
After you and your young coder finish making your app, you can share it with anyone who has an Android device. Just go to your list of Projects (Projects → My Projects), check the box next to the app you want to publish, and click Publish to Gallery. The view from the Projects list to publish your app to the Gallery.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
If your young coder wants to try apps, give the MIT App Inventor a try. To get started with MIT App Inventor, you need a Google account. Then follow these steps to set up your programming environment:
Go to MIT App Inventor and click Create Apps in the top-right corner of the webpage.
Sign in with your Google account.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
It’s easy for kids to make semantic errors when they’re first learning to code. Unlike syntax errors, semantic errors are often more difficult to capture. This is because semantic errors are typically errors in the programming logic, rather than something that you typed incorrectly. Here, you find a couple of examples of semantic errors that you and your young coder might encounter in a few different programming languages.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
When you and your young coder are trying to debug, sometimes no error messages give you insight into the problem. Here, you find a list of strategies for debugging programs where you don’t get an error message, or the error message doesn’t give you enough information.
Turning sections on and off
One of the best ways to debug is to disable sections of code so that you have small sections to test.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
Your coder can provide flexibility to her programs by coding parameters to subprograms. For example, coding a square subprogram allows the program to draw a square of a defined size each time the subprogram is called. But what if you want the square subprogram to draw squares of differing sizes? By adding a parameter to the subprogram you can do just that.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
As your young coder constructs his programs, he uses logic operations to make decisions about which code needs to execute, and under which conditions. The if-then statements he wants to construct may need to consist of more than one condition — they may need compound (multiple) conditions to execute the consequence.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
Kids need to learn how to code all of the basics. Searching through lists is a very important task that you and your coder might want to have your program accomplish.
Linear versus binary searching algorithms
When it comes to lists, linear search is pretty straightforward. Essentially you start at the beginning of the list, and check to see if the first item is the item you’re looking for.
Article / Updated 06-29-2018
After you and your young coder have a handle on the different math operations that are available to you in coding, it can be really fun to find ways to create fun programs that use those operations! One that doesn’t always come to mind is making a cipher! Ciphers are a lot of fun to build because they can offer additional play outside of building the program — you and your coder can write letters to each other using the secret code that only the cipher you built can solve!