Experience of learning programming for children from 8 years online
My name is Polina, and my husband and I have our own online programming school for children. We teach children from 8 to 16 years old all over the world through Skype. I wanted to share my experience and observations in this area.
Previously, we had a regular computer class, children from all over the city came. When we worked in this format revealed a lot of things that we didn’t really like.
1) When there are even 5-6 students in one room, it is very difficult to maintain the quality of education at a high level. Children are often distracted, interfere with each other, indulge. The teacher has to spend a lot of time to calm and set up students to work. It is not at all effective.
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2) All children are very different. They have a different level of training, someone grasps quickly, someone slowly, everyone likes to do different games and projects. In the classroom it is difficult to provide an individual approach. It is impossible to give one task that fits all at once.
Therefore, we gave everyone individual tasks, prepared materials: videos and presentations to make it easier for the teacher. It is necessary to approach each student separately, if you do not have time to quickly answer the question and help - the child begins to indulge in and interfere with the rest.
3) Quite often there were problems with computers. Then children will spill water on the keyboard, then they will remove something, break it, laptops brake, etc. Immediately the noise begins: “Aah, my computer broke!” And the teacher turns into a system administrator. It takes a lot of time and nerves.
4) If you think that such in-person classes teach children to work in a team, then this is not so. Due to the fact that children have a different level, one of the team will do, and the rest will pick one’s nose. Programming is an introverted process, you need to dive into the problem to solve the problem. Develop soft skills and programming at the same time impossible. These are different activities, and they need to be developed separately. You can teach the guys to share a big project among themselves, so that later they can group parts of their code together. But they work on their piece separately.
5) Parents need to bring and take the child. And during the lesson, too, it is not clear where to put myself, you do not always have time to go on business. Many parents were sitting in our corridor for 2 hours, waiting for the lesson to end.
One of the familiar parents, whose son went to a major IT school, told us the following story:
All these problems were spinning in my head. And once the father of one of the schoolgirls approached us and asked: “Do you teach Skype?” The child goes to the grandmother in the village: the fresh air is everything, but there is no load on the brain. ”
Actually, so gradually we began to try and conduct classes on Skype. And we really liked it. Completely abandoned the usual full-time classes.
What are the advantages we have identified:
Of course, not all children will be able to study in this format. There is not pobaldeesh. Need 2 hours to work. But more calm, assiduous guys - delighted. They rejoice when they create their games and programs.
We have been conducting online classes for over a year, more than 100 students are studying all over the world.
We teach guys how to program in Scratch, Python and JavaScript. Plus, there are classes on Photoshop, 3D modeling and information security.
Sometimes we envy ourselves that we didn’t have such a thing in our childhood. For example, we have a student boy Erol, already at the age of 12, he has been digging in client server applications and sockets. Although I started with Scratch, then I switched quickly to Python. If he was engaged in the class, he would not have reached and would not have tried half of this. And so the coach sees and feels that Erol quickly grasps, very hard, he himself likes to dig, and gives more and more difficult tasks.
If now the format of online classes is still new for many, then in 5 years I am sure this will be the norm.
Why we switched to online classes
Previously, we had a regular computer class, children from all over the city came. When we worked in this format revealed a lot of things that we didn’t really like.
1) When there are even 5-6 students in one room, it is very difficult to maintain the quality of education at a high level. Children are often distracted, interfere with each other, indulge. The teacher has to spend a lot of time to calm and set up students to work. It is not at all effective.
')
2) All children are very different. They have a different level of training, someone grasps quickly, someone slowly, everyone likes to do different games and projects. In the classroom it is difficult to provide an individual approach. It is impossible to give one task that fits all at once.
Therefore, we gave everyone individual tasks, prepared materials: videos and presentations to make it easier for the teacher. It is necessary to approach each student separately, if you do not have time to quickly answer the question and help - the child begins to indulge in and interfere with the rest.
3) Quite often there were problems with computers. Then children will spill water on the keyboard, then they will remove something, break it, laptops brake, etc. Immediately the noise begins: “Aah, my computer broke!” And the teacher turns into a system administrator. It takes a lot of time and nerves.
4) If you think that such in-person classes teach children to work in a team, then this is not so. Due to the fact that children have a different level, one of the team will do, and the rest will pick one’s nose. Programming is an introverted process, you need to dive into the problem to solve the problem. Develop soft skills and programming at the same time impossible. These are different activities, and they need to be developed separately. You can teach the guys to share a big project among themselves, so that later they can group parts of their code together. But they work on their piece separately.
5) Parents need to bring and take the child. And during the lesson, too, it is not clear where to put myself, you do not always have time to go on business. Many parents were sitting in our corridor for 2 hours, waiting for the lesson to end.
One of the familiar parents, whose son went to a major IT school, told us the following story:
“My son is 9 years old, he now went to the 3rd grade of the gymnasium and at the same time he is engaged in IT courses for children. Impressions are difficult, rather negative. There is little monitoring of what children do at computers. While the teacher is giving a lecture, some guys manage to rewrite the computer with a Counter-Strike flash drive and bring their classmates to play with them. The child lacks normal communication with peers, because need to make new relationships. He reaches out to the guys, bends under them and, unfortunately, he does not always seek to communicate with exemplary classmates. And so it happened. For example, once his neighbor opened a google image during a lecture on his computer and began to search for photos there, excuse me, shit. And my son laughed loudly at these photos, for which he was eventually punished with a deuce, without finding the real instigator. In addition, unlike the gymnasium, where the guys are mostly good and the social circle consists mainly of peers, the contingent in the courses is very diverse, both in age and in education. As a result of communicating with different guys, the son on the phone has such applications, which should be embarrassing, and which have to be cleaned, explaining why this is disgusting. We addressed the training department, they answered us, they say, the teacher physically can neither see what is on each screen, nor block the computers. There was one more thing: if the son didn’t have time for something, he was embarrassed to immediately clarify the task or ask the teacher for help, and then it was too late. Individual training is obviously more suitable for him. ”
Switch to online
All these problems were spinning in my head. And once the father of one of the schoolgirls approached us and asked: “Do you teach Skype?” The child goes to the grandmother in the village: the fresh air is everything, but there is no load on the brain. ”
Actually, so gradually we began to try and conduct classes on Skype. And we really liked it. Completely abandoned the usual full-time classes.
What are the advantages we have identified:
- The teacher issues an individual task, selecting according to his wishes and abilities. The child is engaged in his pace, no one is distracted.
- The teacher sees the whole class of the student’s screen, can prompt him immediately and help him.
- No problems with discipline. The child feels that he is being watched all the time, so hesitates to even switch to the “left” tab in the browser once again.
- A child can sing under his breath, mutter, argue, and no one will laugh or “plug” him.
- The child does not need to be shy. He can easily ask about everything. May ask to give the task more difficult or easier, or on another topic. Himself choose what to do exactly today.
- Parents do not need to go anywhere, put them at home on a computer and that's it. If you want, you can sit next to each other and watch how the session goes.
- You can study from anywhere in the world and not interrupt classes: on vacation with your parents, moved to another country, with your grandmother in the country. In general, wherever there is internet.
- Or vice versa, you can finish and resume classes at any time. After all, the child is engaged in its program, and he will not have to "catch up" with anything.
Of course, not all children will be able to study in this format. There is not pobaldeesh. Need 2 hours to work. But more calm, assiduous guys - delighted. They rejoice when they create their games and programs.
We have been conducting online classes for over a year, more than 100 students are studying all over the world.
We teach guys how to program in Scratch, Python and JavaScript. Plus, there are classes on Photoshop, 3D modeling and information security.
Sometimes we envy ourselves that we didn’t have such a thing in our childhood. For example, we have a student boy Erol, already at the age of 12, he has been digging in client server applications and sockets. Although I started with Scratch, then I switched quickly to Python. If he was engaged in the class, he would not have reached and would not have tried half of this. And so the coach sees and feels that Erol quickly grasps, very hard, he himself likes to dig, and gives more and more difficult tasks.
If now the format of online classes is still new for many, then in 5 years I am sure this will be the norm.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/337738/
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