Search: Home Bugtraq Vulnerabilities Mailing Lists ... Product Search Reading, rooting, 'rithmetic: Preschoolers learn programming
Robert Lemos SecurityFocus
LAS VEGAS Hackers who teach themselves computer skills are a good model for children learning about computers and creativity, one educator told attendees at the DEF CON hacker convention this weekend. Kevin McCarthy, network consultant and educator In an initiative to teach kids how to create programs and creatively attack computer problems, Kevin McCarthy, a Godfrey, Illinois-based network consultant and part-time teacher, found that the students' natural curiosity made them very quick to grasp concepts when he gave them a choice in picking projects. "The goal of this is to awaken the inherent hacker spirit that is in all children," McCarthy said. McCarthy has taught the course for over two and a half years. McCarthy used Logo, a basic programming language for drawing graphics , to teach kids how to solve problems and build simple games. The language does not have much similarity to any of the modern programming language, so does not prepare the students to transition to more advanced work, he acknowledged. However, the classes do teach the foundations of programming method, and that can help immeasurably in later computer courses, McCarthy said. After a one-hour class, the youngest studentsfive- and six-year-old boys and girlscould use the Logo language to create the most basic program, coding a process to draw a square. After four one-hour classes, the kids could create a program to direct a "turtle," represented by a triangle on the screen, through a simple maze using 15 lines of code to implement the right-hand rule to navigate the maze. | |
|
