Interview with the coordinator of the Code Club project on teaching children 9-11 years old the basics of programming
Good afternoon Ivan
Hello
Please tell us what the Code Club project is, how did it start, who invented it?
The Code Club is a British initiative to teach children 9-11 years old the basics of programming. It originated about three years ago and has been developing rapidly since then - at the beginning in the UK itself, and after some time all over the world. In the UK, there are already more than 2,000 locations, everything is supported there at the state level: there is a base of volunteers, there is a base of locations - everything is very seriously organized. After the transition to 1000 locations, the project began to go international. Around the summer of 2013, the codeclubworld.org website started working — the British are doing it, but their task is more global: to coordinate teaching children how to program around the world, to give every child the opportunity to gain knowledge about the basics of computer science.
Then, in the summer of 2013, the launch of the Code Club project in Ukraine was announced in the fall. The first cities were named in which the opening of the first locations was planned and the contact details of the coordinator were given. So it all began.
What is included in the training program?
The first semesters of the Code Club project talk about program development using visual programming. We teach children to work in the Scratch environment - this is the development of MIT, which was created just under the age of 9-11 years. The next semesters of the Code Club study HTML, CSS and Python.
')
Did you participate in the project from the very beginning?
As soon as I saw an article about the launch of the Code Club with the contacts of the coordinator - I immediately called. The fact is that in my city at that time I had such an improvised computer school. During the summer holidays I made computer courses for children in my home school. When I found out about the launch of the Code Club - I was set on fire with the idea to immediately start using their materials in my circle. I had already had some experience with Scratch by that time - while working at the computer academy STEP in Donetsk, I suggested adding Scratch to the program, but nobody took this proposal seriously.
I contacted the Code Club coordinator and asked for a training program. I was told that the start is scheduled for October, this will be announced at the conference. Nevertheless, I began preparatory work earlier - searching for and selecting the most interested and capable children who would be interested in working on such a project, working on some organizational issues.
Patience to wait for the official start of the project was not enough for me - I spent the first lesson on the Code Club program a week before the conference, where it was all presented. In fact, I was the first volunteer of the Code Club in Ukraine, and my first lesson was in my hometown Dimitrov (Donetsk region). Unfortunately, the lessons in this location lasted only until the winter - in January it was very cold, and the school where we were studying on weekends was not heated during these days. I have a few photos left where the children study at computers right in outerwear, but then we decided not to risk the health of the children and canceled the classes. It was planned to resume them in the summer, but due to known circumstances, the movement between Donetsk and the city of Dimitrov was no longer possible by this time and it was not possible to continue the training of that group.
Then I came to a school in Donetsk next door, met the director, they recommended him to me as very progressive, supporting any initiatives - and this turned out to be true. The school has the status of the Information Technology Lyceum, they had equipment and when I came up with the initiative to open the Code Club circle - I was immediately told “yes”, they took the time in the computer class, and gave the opportunity to tell the children about this course. I did “promotional activities” in computer science lessons, and interested children could then sign up for extracurricular activities. Of the approximately 150 children I told about the course, about 45 have enrolled in classes.
Tell me, what exactly and how do you tell children about this course, what are you trying to interest them in?
I adhere to the principle “The best theory is practice”. Of course, I do the opening remarks. I start by asking the children if they play computer games. It is not surprising that among children of 9-11 years old I get the answer “yes” in 99% of cases. A computer, a set-top box, a phone, a tablet — one way or another, at least once in life, everyone played on one of these things. Then I ask the second question: “Have you ever thought how the games you play are created?”. This may seem surprising, but even at such a young age, children often say that they have thought that the game has “inside” how it works. Well, then I ask the third question: "Do you want to learn how to create your own games?". And when the children say yes, I say, “let's try it.” And the first lesson of the Code Club program is to create a simple, but still quite real Cat-and-Mouse game. We launch Scratch, there is a scene there, there are characters and we assign scripts of behavior and interactions to these objects. In the same lesson we create a counter, with simple examples it explains what an event is, an event handler, what actions can occur in it, etc. This is the first lesson.
Very many children like it - they do something with their own hands, they immediately see the result, it really works, you can play it. Many children immediately have ideas for finalizing the game, they ask if they can draw their characters, I explain to them that, of course, it is possible and we will do this in one of the following lessons.
Who develops the Code Club curriculum?
The curriculum was developed by the British, it has 24 lessons on Scratch, combined in several semesters. We translated all materials into Ukrainian, there is Ukrainian localization Scratch and today we can teach in Ukraine a fully completed Code Club course on Scratch.
We also have translated materials for the following courses (HTML and CSS). Further along the course structure, Python is being studied, but it has not been reached yet in any of the Ukrainian locations of the Code Club, so this is still in the plans.
And children at the age of 9 have enough knowledge of mathematics and geometry to study this course?
All, of course, very individual. Children are completely different. Plus a lot depends on the teacher. I have about 10 years of experience teaching computer science to children and I can even explain to a six-year-old child, for example, what a gyroscope is and how to write a program for a robot that causes it to turn 180 degrees and stop. A child at the age of 6 does not yet know what “180 degrees” is, but this can be visually shown - and he will understand. Sometimes there are children who do not understand everything at once, they do not hold out a bit, and here the role of the teacher becomes especially important. There are no children who are “not worthy” of learning. There are teachers who can find an approach to the child, and those who do not succeed. Yes, it can be difficult for children, but the whole essence of the project is to help them overcome this complexity.
What is the percentage of children who successfully completed their studies?
It is difficult to accurately assess. First of all, our courses are completely free and sometimes it works against us. Free is not perceived as something valuable. A child can come to 2-3 classes, and then the parents send him to the grandmother in the village for the summer, not considering that they are losing something (they did not pay anything for learning). At the same time, in the course of their studies, new children may come - I try to devote a little more time to them to make up for the missing lessons. In general, I would say that more than 50% of children successfully complete their studies.
How much does the state help (or hinder) the project?
We try to contact directly with specific educational institutions - schools, lyceums. Some of them are quite progressive and take us with open arms - this is very pleasing. But still, many are very cautious - they are asking for a program approved by the Ministry of Education from us. School principals ignore all the benefits of the program, in every way trying to avoid responsibility.
Interaction with libraries has shown itself well - they are more interested in the traffic of children, parents, drawing attention to themselves and less demanding on the presence of some kind of official papers. In libraries, we were almost always welcome. Another area is commercial training centers and IT companies. They have premises, computers and specialists with the necessary knowledge and are sometimes ready to teach children for the sake of “plus in karma”. An important moment of motivation is the possibility of educating the children of employees of such companies; this is precisely the driving force behind the creation of a number of Code Club clubs. One of the first companies to introduce it in their company was Infopulse, last spring several groups started in the Zhytomyr branch of this company, this year we begin cooperation with the main office of Infopulse (this interview is part of it), we plan further events.
Everything we talked about concerns the education of children 9-11 years old. What can you say about teaching children younger and older?
For children 5-7 years old, Scratch JR was created, the money for it was collected on Kickstarter, and it was developed by the same people from MIT, who created the original Scratch. There is an adapted interface, several trimmed and revised features, applications for mobile devices. For him, too, there are lessons, examples - you can take and teach children. In Ukraine, no one has done this so far, but I have plans to try in Kiev, let's see what happens. It may be worthwhile to do this not in the format of lessons, but as a form of family leisure. Parents could come with their children, take tablets with them and try to do something together. At the same time our volunteer would be there, who could help with advice in case of difficulties.
As for older children, it may not be so interesting for them to follow our program, and we don’t have a separate program yet. But visual programming itself is not tied to any particular age. We can tell children about the same programming concepts (conditions, cycles, variables, functions), but not by the example of a cat running after the mouse, but by the example of, say, a transformer fight or a game about Iron Man. Children will be interested and at the same time they will also learn something.
Another thing I would like to mention is the project code.org . 2 years ago, the first Godina Code (“Hour Code”) was held in Ukraine. This is also a volunteer project, which gives an opportunity for 1 hour to show the children what can be done with the help of a code. The project features inspirational videos from Zuckerberg, Gates, people from Microsoft and Google, explaining that programming is interesting, exciting, prestigious. A very motivating video was released “What is not taught in most schools”
Interestingly, we believe that we have a weak computer science training program, but in the USA they don’t teach programming in 9 out of 10 schools at all. So, propaganda of programming training is needed both there and here.
The code.org project has educational materials and at some point a set of volunteers was announced to translate them into different languages. I took part in the translation into Russian and Ukrainian. It was difficult, there were not so many volunteers and I single-handedly translated about half of all materials. Since the translation had to be done without context, sometimes after pasting, strange results were obtained. When I and my groups were trained on these materials - many bugs came to light, I had to refine and correct. Now there are already a lot of well-done lessons.
Visual programming is quite different from the usual, "industrial". Does a child who has studied Scratch feel shocked when they see real programs in an “adult” programming language?
Let's just say that a child who has studied Scratch is better prepared to study real programming languages ​​than that child who does not know anything about this at all. When studying Scratch, we explain the general concepts to children: “This is a cycle, it is responsible for repeating certain actions. In Scratch, the loop block looks like this, you can drag it here and use it as follows. In other programming languages ​​there are special words for the cycle that we will not study. ”Thus, having learned about the word for in some programming language, the child can already associate it with the concept of a cycle from his experience in Scratch. The same with conditions, variables, events, etc. If children capture the essence of concepts in Scratch - they can find analogies in other languages.
What exactly are you, as a project coordinator, doing now?
We recruit volunteers, look for locations, invite children. From September, a new wave of training starts - it is planned to start in about 150 clubs throughout Ukraine. Now we have strengthened our work in social networks, focusing more on parents than on children (at 9 years old children may not even know anything about programming at all).
Suppose I, as a typical Habr reader, have a relationship to IT, I can study Scratch and have a desire to participate in the project. What should I do?
Come to our website and fill out a volunteer questionnaire . Even if you can not independently master Scratch, but want to participate as a volunteer, fill out our form. She, by the way, is both a student profile and a profile with a location for launching a club in your city. You can also join our group on Facebook .
Then I collect these puzzles - if there are both a volunteer, a location, and students in the same city - I just bring them together. If there are two components out of three, say, students and a volunteer, I try to find the third component (in this case, the location). There is already a collection of public information, calls, personal acquaintances, the same social networks. I am now collecting a database of libraries, coworking, IT companies and, in general, any places where classes can be held. I hope this will give an opportunity to start new locations very quickly.
Thanks for the interview, Ivan!
And now we will talk to Maria Taran, a volunteer who last year in the Zhytomyr office of Infopulse led Code Club classes for children of the company's employees.
Good afternoon, Maria!
good day
Tell me please, why did you decide to do this?
The answer is obvious: because in our city there is (there was) nothing in this direction - no courses for children in programming, computer literacy, design, robotics. And children need it very well in our time. And it should be at a level to interest, keep interest and develop it in the right direction. As for me, MS Office courses for 10-12-year-olds are a mockery offered by standard institutions like "Young Technique". Well, I have an additional incentive to be interested and work in this direction - my son is 12 :)
How did you find out about the Code Club? How it all began?
Long puzzled how to make a curriculum. I am not a teacher, and doubts overwhelmed me: can I find the right topics, examples, tasks? My colleague Zhenya Maskaeva, who had already heard about the Code Club, came to the rescue. Next - a matter of technology. Registered on the Code Club website, contacted the coordinator, received a plan and materials for conducting the lesson. It is also noteworthy that the Code Club coordinator was constantly interested in the state of affairs in our courses.
Great fellows - Infopulse manual, who allocated time, room and equipment for classes with children. Most likely, infopulsovskim children just very lucky that their parents do not care what their children do, what they learn, how they develop, what they will become in the future.
How did the classes go?
There were classes once a week in the Infopulse training room. It was determined 3 groups of different ages - from 5 to 14 years. For six months - from February to May, we managed to go with them the first part of Scratch. I hope the children received as many positive emotions and knowledge from these activities as I did :)
I am very glad that Infopulse is resuming classes in cooperation with the Code Club. I am happy for the children and for their conscious parents!
Hello
Please tell us what the Code Club project is, how did it start, who invented it?
The Code Club is a British initiative to teach children 9-11 years old the basics of programming. It originated about three years ago and has been developing rapidly since then - at the beginning in the UK itself, and after some time all over the world. In the UK, there are already more than 2,000 locations, everything is supported there at the state level: there is a base of volunteers, there is a base of locations - everything is very seriously organized. After the transition to 1000 locations, the project began to go international. Around the summer of 2013, the codeclubworld.org website started working — the British are doing it, but their task is more global: to coordinate teaching children how to program around the world, to give every child the opportunity to gain knowledge about the basics of computer science.
Then, in the summer of 2013, the launch of the Code Club project in Ukraine was announced in the fall. The first cities were named in which the opening of the first locations was planned and the contact details of the coordinator were given. So it all began.
What is included in the training program?
The first semesters of the Code Club project talk about program development using visual programming. We teach children to work in the Scratch environment - this is the development of MIT, which was created just under the age of 9-11 years. The next semesters of the Code Club study HTML, CSS and Python.
')
Did you participate in the project from the very beginning?
As soon as I saw an article about the launch of the Code Club with the contacts of the coordinator - I immediately called. The fact is that in my city at that time I had such an improvised computer school. During the summer holidays I made computer courses for children in my home school. When I found out about the launch of the Code Club - I was set on fire with the idea to immediately start using their materials in my circle. I had already had some experience with Scratch by that time - while working at the computer academy STEP in Donetsk, I suggested adding Scratch to the program, but nobody took this proposal seriously.
I contacted the Code Club coordinator and asked for a training program. I was told that the start is scheduled for October, this will be announced at the conference. Nevertheless, I began preparatory work earlier - searching for and selecting the most interested and capable children who would be interested in working on such a project, working on some organizational issues.
Patience to wait for the official start of the project was not enough for me - I spent the first lesson on the Code Club program a week before the conference, where it was all presented. In fact, I was the first volunteer of the Code Club in Ukraine, and my first lesson was in my hometown Dimitrov (Donetsk region). Unfortunately, the lessons in this location lasted only until the winter - in January it was very cold, and the school where we were studying on weekends was not heated during these days. I have a few photos left where the children study at computers right in outerwear, but then we decided not to risk the health of the children and canceled the classes. It was planned to resume them in the summer, but due to known circumstances, the movement between Donetsk and the city of Dimitrov was no longer possible by this time and it was not possible to continue the training of that group.
Then I came to a school in Donetsk next door, met the director, they recommended him to me as very progressive, supporting any initiatives - and this turned out to be true. The school has the status of the Information Technology Lyceum, they had equipment and when I came up with the initiative to open the Code Club circle - I was immediately told “yes”, they took the time in the computer class, and gave the opportunity to tell the children about this course. I did “promotional activities” in computer science lessons, and interested children could then sign up for extracurricular activities. Of the approximately 150 children I told about the course, about 45 have enrolled in classes.
Tell me, what exactly and how do you tell children about this course, what are you trying to interest them in?
I adhere to the principle “The best theory is practice”. Of course, I do the opening remarks. I start by asking the children if they play computer games. It is not surprising that among children of 9-11 years old I get the answer “yes” in 99% of cases. A computer, a set-top box, a phone, a tablet — one way or another, at least once in life, everyone played on one of these things. Then I ask the second question: “Have you ever thought how the games you play are created?”. This may seem surprising, but even at such a young age, children often say that they have thought that the game has “inside” how it works. Well, then I ask the third question: "Do you want to learn how to create your own games?". And when the children say yes, I say, “let's try it.” And the first lesson of the Code Club program is to create a simple, but still quite real Cat-and-Mouse game. We launch Scratch, there is a scene there, there are characters and we assign scripts of behavior and interactions to these objects. In the same lesson we create a counter, with simple examples it explains what an event is, an event handler, what actions can occur in it, etc. This is the first lesson.
Very many children like it - they do something with their own hands, they immediately see the result, it really works, you can play it. Many children immediately have ideas for finalizing the game, they ask if they can draw their characters, I explain to them that, of course, it is possible and we will do this in one of the following lessons.
Who develops the Code Club curriculum?
The curriculum was developed by the British, it has 24 lessons on Scratch, combined in several semesters. We translated all materials into Ukrainian, there is Ukrainian localization Scratch and today we can teach in Ukraine a fully completed Code Club course on Scratch.
We also have translated materials for the following courses (HTML and CSS). Further along the course structure, Python is being studied, but it has not been reached yet in any of the Ukrainian locations of the Code Club, so this is still in the plans.
And children at the age of 9 have enough knowledge of mathematics and geometry to study this course?
All, of course, very individual. Children are completely different. Plus a lot depends on the teacher. I have about 10 years of experience teaching computer science to children and I can even explain to a six-year-old child, for example, what a gyroscope is and how to write a program for a robot that causes it to turn 180 degrees and stop. A child at the age of 6 does not yet know what “180 degrees” is, but this can be visually shown - and he will understand. Sometimes there are children who do not understand everything at once, they do not hold out a bit, and here the role of the teacher becomes especially important. There are no children who are “not worthy” of learning. There are teachers who can find an approach to the child, and those who do not succeed. Yes, it can be difficult for children, but the whole essence of the project is to help them overcome this complexity.
What is the percentage of children who successfully completed their studies?
It is difficult to accurately assess. First of all, our courses are completely free and sometimes it works against us. Free is not perceived as something valuable. A child can come to 2-3 classes, and then the parents send him to the grandmother in the village for the summer, not considering that they are losing something (they did not pay anything for learning). At the same time, in the course of their studies, new children may come - I try to devote a little more time to them to make up for the missing lessons. In general, I would say that more than 50% of children successfully complete their studies.
How much does the state help (or hinder) the project?
We try to contact directly with specific educational institutions - schools, lyceums. Some of them are quite progressive and take us with open arms - this is very pleasing. But still, many are very cautious - they are asking for a program approved by the Ministry of Education from us. School principals ignore all the benefits of the program, in every way trying to avoid responsibility.
Interaction with libraries has shown itself well - they are more interested in the traffic of children, parents, drawing attention to themselves and less demanding on the presence of some kind of official papers. In libraries, we were almost always welcome. Another area is commercial training centers and IT companies. They have premises, computers and specialists with the necessary knowledge and are sometimes ready to teach children for the sake of “plus in karma”. An important moment of motivation is the possibility of educating the children of employees of such companies; this is precisely the driving force behind the creation of a number of Code Club clubs. One of the first companies to introduce it in their company was Infopulse, last spring several groups started in the Zhytomyr branch of this company, this year we begin cooperation with the main office of Infopulse (this interview is part of it), we plan further events.
Everything we talked about concerns the education of children 9-11 years old. What can you say about teaching children younger and older?
For children 5-7 years old, Scratch JR was created, the money for it was collected on Kickstarter, and it was developed by the same people from MIT, who created the original Scratch. There is an adapted interface, several trimmed and revised features, applications for mobile devices. For him, too, there are lessons, examples - you can take and teach children. In Ukraine, no one has done this so far, but I have plans to try in Kiev, let's see what happens. It may be worthwhile to do this not in the format of lessons, but as a form of family leisure. Parents could come with their children, take tablets with them and try to do something together. At the same time our volunteer would be there, who could help with advice in case of difficulties.
As for older children, it may not be so interesting for them to follow our program, and we don’t have a separate program yet. But visual programming itself is not tied to any particular age. We can tell children about the same programming concepts (conditions, cycles, variables, functions), but not by the example of a cat running after the mouse, but by the example of, say, a transformer fight or a game about Iron Man. Children will be interested and at the same time they will also learn something.
Another thing I would like to mention is the project code.org . 2 years ago, the first Godina Code (“Hour Code”) was held in Ukraine. This is also a volunteer project, which gives an opportunity for 1 hour to show the children what can be done with the help of a code. The project features inspirational videos from Zuckerberg, Gates, people from Microsoft and Google, explaining that programming is interesting, exciting, prestigious. A very motivating video was released “What is not taught in most schools”
Interestingly, we believe that we have a weak computer science training program, but in the USA they don’t teach programming in 9 out of 10 schools at all. So, propaganda of programming training is needed both there and here.
The code.org project has educational materials and at some point a set of volunteers was announced to translate them into different languages. I took part in the translation into Russian and Ukrainian. It was difficult, there were not so many volunteers and I single-handedly translated about half of all materials. Since the translation had to be done without context, sometimes after pasting, strange results were obtained. When I and my groups were trained on these materials - many bugs came to light, I had to refine and correct. Now there are already a lot of well-done lessons.
Visual programming is quite different from the usual, "industrial". Does a child who has studied Scratch feel shocked when they see real programs in an “adult” programming language?
Let's just say that a child who has studied Scratch is better prepared to study real programming languages ​​than that child who does not know anything about this at all. When studying Scratch, we explain the general concepts to children: “This is a cycle, it is responsible for repeating certain actions. In Scratch, the loop block looks like this, you can drag it here and use it as follows. In other programming languages ​​there are special words for the cycle that we will not study. ”Thus, having learned about the word for in some programming language, the child can already associate it with the concept of a cycle from his experience in Scratch. The same with conditions, variables, events, etc. If children capture the essence of concepts in Scratch - they can find analogies in other languages.
What exactly are you, as a project coordinator, doing now?
We recruit volunteers, look for locations, invite children. From September, a new wave of training starts - it is planned to start in about 150 clubs throughout Ukraine. Now we have strengthened our work in social networks, focusing more on parents than on children (at 9 years old children may not even know anything about programming at all).
Suppose I, as a typical Habr reader, have a relationship to IT, I can study Scratch and have a desire to participate in the project. What should I do?
Come to our website and fill out a volunteer questionnaire . Even if you can not independently master Scratch, but want to participate as a volunteer, fill out our form. She, by the way, is both a student profile and a profile with a location for launching a club in your city. You can also join our group on Facebook .
Then I collect these puzzles - if there are both a volunteer, a location, and students in the same city - I just bring them together. If there are two components out of three, say, students and a volunteer, I try to find the third component (in this case, the location). There is already a collection of public information, calls, personal acquaintances, the same social networks. I am now collecting a database of libraries, coworking, IT companies and, in general, any places where classes can be held. I hope this will give an opportunity to start new locations very quickly.
Thanks for the interview, Ivan!
And now we will talk to Maria Taran, a volunteer who last year in the Zhytomyr office of Infopulse led Code Club classes for children of the company's employees.
Good afternoon, Maria!
good day
Tell me please, why did you decide to do this?
The answer is obvious: because in our city there is (there was) nothing in this direction - no courses for children in programming, computer literacy, design, robotics. And children need it very well in our time. And it should be at a level to interest, keep interest and develop it in the right direction. As for me, MS Office courses for 10-12-year-olds are a mockery offered by standard institutions like "Young Technique". Well, I have an additional incentive to be interested and work in this direction - my son is 12 :)
How did you find out about the Code Club? How it all began?
Long puzzled how to make a curriculum. I am not a teacher, and doubts overwhelmed me: can I find the right topics, examples, tasks? My colleague Zhenya Maskaeva, who had already heard about the Code Club, came to the rescue. Next - a matter of technology. Registered on the Code Club website, contacted the coordinator, received a plan and materials for conducting the lesson. It is also noteworthy that the Code Club coordinator was constantly interested in the state of affairs in our courses.
Great fellows - Infopulse manual, who allocated time, room and equipment for classes with children. Most likely, infopulsovskim children just very lucky that their parents do not care what their children do, what they learn, how they develop, what they will become in the future.
How did the classes go?
There were classes once a week in the Infopulse training room. It was determined 3 groups of different ages - from 5 to 14 years. For six months - from February to May, we managed to go with them the first part of Scratch. I hope the children received as many positive emotions and knowledge from these activities as I did :)
I am very glad that Infopulse is resuming classes in cooperation with the Code Club. I am happy for the children and for their conscious parents!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/262087/
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