I’ve been looking for a way to help my kid learning computer programming. My daughter and I tried out the trial version of “Phrogram” which is listed in the top hits when googling for “kid programming”. It is nice, well-made and powerful by just looking at provided samples. Its look & feel and language look a lot like Visual Basic. But I think it is still considered as intermediate to advanced levels because you have to know syntaxes and actually typing them in. It would be definitely something I’d like her to learn if she grows up a little bit.
This week, I ran into this new open-source programming for kids called “Scratch” by MIT Media Lab. Not only word “open source” interests me, the drag-n-drop feature makes it a lot easier to learn programming. Even though this is not really focusing on computer language learning, it, instead, emphasizes on developing design process skill which I think it is better in a long-term because it can universally apply not only to all programming languages but also other areas related to mathematic and science.
The other nice thing is the ability to upload and share your project on the web site.