Code.org: teaching my daughters to code.
In the future the internet will strangle out many colleges and universities. Turns out it doesn't actually cost $50,000/yr to learn ancient Greek. Yes, you'll miss out on some drinking and sex with other like minded MDMA enhanced furry wearing young people with their hot bods and weird fashion, but you'll also skip the $200k that it costs to go there over a few years. The other thing they don't teach you is that roughly 1 in every 2 kids will fail out. So, they'll take your money for 2 years, but you won't have shit to show for it... except loans. Assloads of loans.
What will stick around?
Demonstratable skills. Comepetence. That's what will matter. Because the internet will kill the barrier between just about anything. You'll have online universities with one on one learning with whoever you want. They'll get here, and they'll be far cheaper than what you pay now.
In the job market what people look for is the ability to work as a team, work ethic, and necessary skills to get a job done. It's possible that this world will keep having a broken economy such that one currency is worth 100x more than many others and that you're forced to use the currency of the geographic region that you live in, but I suspect that will die too.
What I am saying is that in the not too distant future you're not gonna be able to just pay some poor 3rd world kid chump change to do your menial tasks because internet money is gonna change that.
What about repitition?
There are menial tasks that need to get done a million times a day. Someone has to do them. It's gonna be too expensive to hire even 3rd worlders, so you gotta do it yourself or automate it. I think it's gonna be automation. That means programming. So, I'm working on getting my kids to learn to program.
Code.org
Here's a screenshot of an activity my 5 year old is doing. She's arranging those blocks to help get her little angry bird to the piggy. it starts with some really easy stuff, it's designed for readers and non-readers depending which lessons they work on, and it's teaching her some very basics of code.
The blocks actually represent lines of code. As things get more complicated they involve more types of code and the task is more complex. It has loops and you build in some logic, and it gets their brain thinking how to do this in a way that's fun.
Getting them to do it
My wife and I are still debating this, but I want to pay my kids small amounts of money. They enjoy code, but when they are incentivized to code on top of that it's the easiest thing in the world. Wanna do this? YES!!! YAYYY!! WOOHOOO! they say. That's how I want my kids feeling about this learning because I think it's the greatest skill I can make them learn as a father.
Today is a holiday. You can bet your ass we'll be learning to code as a family.
Anything to keep our kids informed and ready for this world , I am in.
I think my kids used it but I will get involved more.
Thanks for sharing.
Rasberry Pi ?? I need to get one.
I will have to check this out. I tried the same with my 7 year old daughter on code kingdoms. It’s a very similar site but using Minecraft mods to teach the coding. It’s aimed at 8 years old and over and she lost interest but this looks great.
The best gift a child can get is good education from the parents. I think the fact that you are encouraging your daughter and giving them the incentive to code is awesome and to do it as a family will be a lot of fun. Things change so fast these days that within the time you finish your studies your degree might already be obsolete.
Learning computer skills and coding I definitely think is the best way to stay ahead of the curve :)
Happy Turkey Day !
Great post.
I've said for years.....
Back in the wild west, the small town arranged for a "school mam" to bring knowledge (books) and teach their kids.
ie kids go to a central place to learn, because that is where the "knowledge" is.
This is no longer true. Knowledge is in your palm.
The central location is a money trap for kids to fund "institutions" & the 'owners' whilst volunteering to be debt slaves.
Autodidactic learning - that's what we do, here on MSP-Waves Radio.
BTW - incentives are definitely a motivator to deliver quality. Steem growth shall prove it.
~globo
Hope you have lot of fun coding. My son is also into coding and all things computer related and he sometimes likes to play teacher and I get to be the student. Why not?
He's mostly into Scratch now and he's getting quite good. Mostly learned online, no cost at all.
Clever children of intelligent parents :) This is logical. It seems that the new generation is very advanced)
This post has received a 14.29 % upvote from @upmyvote thanks to: @aggroed. Send at least 1 SBD to @upmyvote with a post link in the memo field to promote a post! Sorry, we can't upvote comments.
Nowadays 5yo kids can use tablets, can read and write and also do simple math... I’m not even able to imagine what they will do when they are in our age ;-) this is awesome ;-)
Looks really nice. My kids have to do it one day. Those skills are needed in any office work in the future. Good to have it.