Anyone teaching their kids how to code?

1,081 Views | 5 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by Koko Chingo
Koko Chingo
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AG
I want to start teaching my kids AND myself to code micro-controllers such as a Raspberry Pi or Arduino. Has anyone used Scratch? Anyone recommend a good book or website?

Programming is not my strong suit at all. I have done a couple of Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects; but, that was mostly copy/paste the program and make a minor tweaks to the code. Every project I have tackled has had a very strong support system behind it. I have done things from Adafruit and Make Magazine, there is a lot of information and forum help behind those projects.

dallasiteinsa02
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When my wife was a teacher for GT, she taught all the kids and plans on teaching ours. She said it is truly amazing how it changes the way you think about processes and the application of the ability is unreal.
permabull
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ABATTBQ11
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dallasiteinsa02 said:

When my wife was a teacher for GT, she taught all the kids and plans on teaching ours. She said it is truly amazing how it changes the way you think about processes and the application of the ability is unreal.


It's things like this that make me wish my school had a more serious GT program. As it was, it was just a way for kids with parents who worked in the district to get better stuff than everyone else except the actually gifted and talented.

That said, I learned to code later in life and plan on teaching my daughter when she's old enough. At 7 months, she can't even use a keyboard yet. It's been great for me and changed a lot of what I do. I can't wait to start teaching her things.
Prophet00
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Here in CS, the elementary GT programs use Kodable. It's pretty basic, but my kids love it.
dodger02
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In 1991, my dad offered me $100 if I could write a program on a commodore 64 that would give him five lines of six numbers (0-50), none repeating on an individual line, and evenly spaced that is automatically generated and printed to our dot matrix printer every Wednesday and Saturday morning. The only instruction he gave me was a coding manual from the 1970s.

He gave up on winning the lottery after about a month.

I don't remember what I used the $100 on. Probably baseball cards.
Koko Chingo
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Thanks for the suggestions. My kids are 11 and will be in 6th grade next year.

We recently stayed at a hotel that used NFC cards that just had to touch the door sensor to unlock it versus sticking it in a slot. They wanted something like that for their rooms. I said, I think I can do that. In looking around, I found an NFC shield for an Arduino. Instead of me buying something, I think it would be awesome for them to make it themselves.

The shield is from Adafruit and they have a lot of help including the library to get this thing up and running. My kids and I will have to figure out the rest of the code. We will have to pair the RFID tags and then send a 5v high signal out for a few seconds to activate a solenoid.

I have a couple of Arduino Uno's and Raspberry Pi 3' collecting dust. By Monday, I will have all of the hardware needed to make everything. I have some 12v automotive relays laying around. I will make a relay driver using a transistor so I can take the 5v Arduino output to switch a relay that will actuate the solenoid.

I think I am more excited about the project than the kids.

NFC Shield and Solenoid --
https://tx.ag/CHpIxHR

https://tx.ag/cNmWAKY
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