Last Friday, November 22, 2013, the session of the Code Club in which it was proposed that children could make their own computer game or a movie to upload it to the Internet among many other activities linked to programming with Scratch. The goal was for fathers or mothers to accompany their children with ages between 7 and 15 years for more than two hours in which, in addition to having a good time, they learned to program. You had to take your home computer.
In my case I could not attend because I had another commitment that I also had to go to with my daughter. So although we were not, we were lucky that a reading father who did come with his daughter and that has let us copy the chronicle who has uploaded to his blog: José Miguel Rodríguez. José Miguel knows the programming in depth because, according to his biography, it started in the times of the ZX Spectrum and since then he has not only not stopped but also encourages his daughter to try now that there are so many facilities to do so and get performance.
The Code Club initiative is promoted by Nacho Varona and Iván Pedrazas and its objective is to periodically carry out the workshops, learn from the experience to adjust the objectives and organize activities to reach as many schools as possible while children learn and have fun. I leave you with the experience of José Miguel that explains how he went to the Scratch programming workshop for children organized by the Code Club from Spain in Tetuan Valley on Almagro street in Madrid.
He Code Club It is a volunteer organization born in the United Kingdom a few years ago with the motivation of teaching the basics of programming to the little ones because computer programming will be a fun activity from an early age and will increasingly be a necessity for the current young generations. The challenge of the Code Club is not that all children are programmers but, and since interaction with computers is going to be a constant in their lives, it is about knowing the fundamentals of how computers work and what match can be taken from them. They also help to think and solve logical problems getting excellent mental training.
In Spain, the Code Club (@CodeClub_es) has begun its work and sought volunteers to carry out the introductory workshops. The workshop was directed by Ivan Pedrazas (@ipedrazas) with the collaboration of Ignacio Verona (@iverona) and was conducted using the Scratch tool.
With Scratch you can learn almost all the basics of programming, from if control sequences, to loops, environmental checks, objects, events for each object, messages between them, etc. and all in addition to a children's environment that enchants children and that can be customized to, for example, create a Pacman fully functional.
Scratch It is based on dragging blocks of code (so children just have to type anything) that can be embedded to form sequences of code. So, we have for example IF blocks in which other blocks of code can be included. The conditions of the IF are other predetermined events (if the protagonist cat finds a certain color in its path, for example) that children can use to experience very easily. In addition, the Scratch environment can be customized with sounds or images captured on the fly using the camera or microphone of the computer, which can be very fun.
José Miguel explains that children should not be told everything they can do or everything on the screen or they will get bored. Its alot better to let them play alone and do their own experiments. Logically, the help of an adult who can help if the child finds a problem can be decisive.
And another highlight of Scratch is that although there are versions that can be downloaded to the computer to run offline the best is run it directly in the browser, creating an account that will allow us to save our projects and share them so that others can see how they are made and learn new tricks. As a result of the workshop Iván has left us a link in the platform of Scratch in which you can see many of the developments made.
As José Miguel explains it was a excellent experience recommended for almost all ages. José Miguel came with his 12-year-old daughter, although there were 7 or 8-year-old children who perfectly learned everything that was presented in the workshop. And, since it is taken as a game, programming can begin at an earlier age.
We will be very attentive to Code Club and to his initiatives. Seeing the images that have been given to us and made during the workshop it seems that the parents and their children had a great time and with a huge success of the call. We have already spoken with Iván and Ignacio and we have invited them to come over when they want to Peques and Más to explain more details of their project, their objectives and how parents, schools and children respond learning to program .
