Hi, I’m Nate, I’m a programmer and programming teacher. This is why I think your kids should learn programming.
I’ve been recently building a class on Outschool and one of the challenges of class building is having content/games that solidifies what information we learned during the class.
One of my favorite methods of reinforcing the information is through games. For example, I am working on a history lesson for handheld game consoles, the information should be fairly interesting in itself, but if I’m just showing pictures and dates, not everyone (even gamers) will absorb that info. Now if I was in a classroom setting we could use a timeline activity to figure out the dates. We could have students break up into teams, and I could hand out images of each gaming console to them and give them a list of dates, and they can try to organize them by those dates.
However, we are in the middle of a pandemic and unfortunately being in a physical classroom isn’t allowed.
I tried researching if there were any games like this, ones where a teacher could upload pictures and dates, then send the game to a student so they can practice. My searching turned up negative, what can you do…
What can you do? BUILD IT!
Let’s turn this back around to the main topic. Learning programming allows you to do these things. If something on the internet doesn’t exist, make it. So I’m currently building a timeline game where you add your dates, add links to images then you can send it off to students. They can play the game, and there will be a timer to keep track of how long they take to finish the timeline, then we can compare times in class to see who had the best time.
I love making stuff. I like building things like toys for my kids and fixing up the house, but one thing I like about programming is that I get that feeling of making something without having to buy hundreds of dollars worth of tools. You just need a computer and some free software to program in. Everyone who has been learning at home has all the tools needed to learn programming.
When we started making games for Traveling Chalkboard, I had 0 experience using the game engine Phaser (This is what we make our game in). I knew JavaScript, but not Phaser itself, which is like someone having all the ingredients for a pastry and knowledge of how to use an oven, but no recipe on how it goes together.
Recipes can be learned and so can programming!
I hope you found this somewhat interesting. I find it so awesome that you can make something like a game out of nothing (and some free time). If you’d like to know more about programming or how to learn programming feel free to ask in the comments below.
If you want to see some of the games I’ve been working on check out Games
If you like the games we are making and would care to buy me a cup of Joe, I’d be much appreciated.
If you want to learn more about that Outschool class I’m building check it out here:
Anyways, thanks for reading!
Nate
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