Helping Kids With Coding For Dummies

Help for grown-ups new to coding

Getting a jump on learning how coding makes technology work is essential to prepare kids for the future. Unfortunately, many parents, teachers, and mentors didn''t learn the unique logic and language of coding in school. Helping Kids with Coding For Dummies comes to the rescue. It breaks beginning coding into easy-to-understand language so you can help a child with coding homework, supplement an existing coding curriculum, or have fun learning with your favorite kid.

The demand to have younger students learn coding has increased in recent years as the demand for trained coders has far exceeded the supply of coders. Luckily, this fun and accessible book makes it a snap to learn the skills necessary to help youngsters develop into proud, capable coders!

• Help with coding homework or enhance a coding curriculum
• Get familiar with coding logic and how to de-bug programs
• Complete small projects as you learn coding language
• Apply math skills to coding

If you’re a parent, teacher, or mentor eager to help 8 to 14 year olds learn to speak a coding language like a mini pro, this book makes it possible!  

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Getting Started with Coding 5

Chapter 1: Welcome To (Or Back To) Coding 7

Why Kids Are Coding 8

What are they learning? 8

How are they learning? 9

What does it mean down the road? 10

Why You Need to Know Coding 11

Fear and loathing (of coding) 11

You may already know more than you think 12

Where Do You Come In? 13

In the classroom 13

Camp or after-school coach 15

Mentor 16

Working with Young Coders 18

Chapter 2: Understanding the Big Ideas 19

Seeing the Big Picture in Coding 19

Acting Out the Big Picture, Unplugged 20

Dramatizing a noncoding process 21

Walking through some daily tasks 22

Creating an Algorithm 23

Turning a picture into words 23

One possible vacuuming algorithm in code 24

Representing Algorithms 26

Acting it out 27

Drawing a picture 27

Creating a storyboard 28

Building a flowchart 28

Writing pseudocode 30

Commenting the bones 31

Organizing with Sequence, Selection, and Repetition 33

Sequence 34

Selection 35

Repetition 36

Including Randomness in Your Coding 38

Chapter 3: Figuring Out Programming Languages 41

What You Want in a Language 42

Free Languages for Tots and Kids 42

The Foos 42

Think & Learn Code-a-Pillar 43

Daisy the Dinosaur 43

Scratch Jr 44

Free Languages for Youth and Tweens 45

Scratch 45

Hopscotch 47

Kodu 47

Languages for Teens and Older 48

Alice 48

MIT App Inventor 2 49

Python 50

JavaScript 53

Java 55

Other Awesome (Not-So-Free) Languages 58

MicroWorlds EX 58

Tynker 58

GameSalad 58

Part 2: Getting Your Hands on Code 61

Chapter 4: Working with Words 63

Communicating with Text 63

Showing Text Onscreen 64

Using pseudocode 64

Using Scratch 64

Using Python 65

Using HTML 66

Using JavaScript in an app 66

Using Java 68

Words In, Words Out 69

Using Scratch 70

Using Python 71

Using HTML and JavaScript 71

Using JavaScript in an app 72

Combining Text Onscreen 74

Using pseudocode 75

Using Scratch 75

Using Python and other languages 75

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