I find a lot of coding learning devices that are mostly geared towards children. I am critical for most of these kinds of apps or tools because it does little for anyone that isn’t more than just a beginner. Although they are quite good at teaching programming logic, they are not going to help you learn how to write code itself. For myself and others it is most helpful to be physically typing code to learn about it.
Today I finally checked out something that I have seen pop up in my feeds and searches pretty frequently- Code.org‘s new Star Wars Hour of Code inspired for-kids coding tutorial. I was surprised but I’m pretty impressed by it!
The program available now teaches some Javascript by directing BB8 to complete some objectives. There are videos incorporated that teach about the code you’re using and explains the process of actually running it, just the basics really. In the beginning you are placing blocks in order to run the code, but right away you are encouraged to be typing it into the Workspace on your own! It moved pretty quickly from just moving BB8 to explaining and running Events, and I’m looking forward to the other topics it will introduce later! I am enjoying it as someone with no Javascript experience, anyways.
In other news, I’m officially enrolled in the post-bacc online Computer Science program with Oregon State University. I’m very excited to officially be taking that on!
