Last year, our school’s art teacher asked the students to fill out forms about their teachers which she then compiled into books for each teacher. I laughed as I was reading my book. For the sentence, “For fun, she likes to…” one student completed it with, “go on Kickstarter and get more things for our class.” (She also wrote that on weekends, “she works on her blog.”)
That child really gets me;)
It’s quite true that I’ve helped to fund a few Kickstarter projects that have ended up in my classroom – most notably the 3Doodler and Robot Turtles.
One of my contributions in the last few months went towards a charming children’s book that teaches programming. It’s called, Hello Ruby. (Ruby is a programming language, but also the main character of the book by Linda Liukas.) I haven’t received the book yet, but that’s okay; the author’s updates about the project have already proven my money is well-invested.
The most recent update invites everyone to try out some materials Liukas created for building an imaginary computer. She provides a printout and instructions. Her details of the playtesting that she has done already can be found in the post. This is what she said about what she has learned so far, “One of the big things was realizing that most of the younger kids hadn’t even used a keyboard before. They didn’t necessarily realise an iPad was a computer. Computers were associated with work: little girls imagined using the paper computer as a part of playing house and dad/mom going to work. One of the kids, a young boy, had a great story of how he plays astronaut with his father and how the computer could be a part of that.”
Liukas would love to receive feedback if you try the activity. Be sure to follow the link on her update to let her know what you think or submit pictures of a “Build Your Own Computer” session in action.
