Teaching Kids to Code – Processing.org

My friend Eric is a technology teacher at a school in the Richmond area and I were discussing the importance of teaching kids to code.  The website code.org goes into it.

I thought I should write up a quick tutorial on ways for kids (or grown ups) to code while:

  • Having fun
  • Creating
  • Learning
  • Sharing their work
  • Building off of each others work

My tutorial utilizes two technologies:

jsfiddle : This web platform allows you to program in javascript and see your results.  You can share and build off existing code.

Processingjs.org : This javascript library allows you to cool stuff like: this, this, or this.  It is a powerful library that has great documentation.

So, here are my basic first instructions:

START:

EDITING:
So, in this example, you can change the line of code:
processing.background(224);
to be:
processing.background(255,0,0);

VIEWING:
Hit RUN, and you will get a red background.

SHARING:
Then, you can use the SHARE button and you can see options to use Twitter or just send a link without any code:

 

So, I think you could learn a whole lot from these two things combined.

Hope this helps!

 

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