Coding a story — teach your child coding through stories
In this era, with screens and technology everywhere, it is easy to lose track of the time children are spending in front of a screen and it’s easy to fool ourselves thinking that young children are learning while looking at the screen. I won’t deny they are also learning. I am sure there are great apps out there.
However, there are plenty of “educational” activities which tend to keep them busy too long and increase their screen addiction. And when you want your child to learn to code, you tend to think it is self-understood that the child has to use a screen.
When I started coding, in high school, around 20 years ago, I remember the first thing we did was to describe an algorithm by drawing its logical schema. I was noisy talking to a colleague so the teacher asked me to draw it on the blackboard. I gave it some thought and I did it. For this, I got my first grade which was 8 (out of 10). I enjoyed drawing the schema but I was not happy with my grade. More coding exercises followed. I felt a great satisfaction while thinking about solutions and drawing them on my notebooks. I had a few books with exercises that required writing algorithms to solve them. It was my pleasure to create the algorithms and challenge my mind. I was spending nights with these and sometimes when I was going to sleep and I had something in my mind I was dreaming the solution and I was able to solve the problem the next day.
Since 20 years ago, technology has evolved exponentially. I am well aware of that.
But something is the same. The process of thought. I am not discussing artificial intelligence here. I am referring to the source of the intelligence, which is the human mind. We solve problems. With our minds. We take a problem, we break it into pieces, we break the pieces into pieces, we think about every piece, we try and we make mistakes, we get our trials together and we create a solution. In software engineering, in other engineering areas, in other areas, in our lives.
I like to make analogies between intangible and tangible things and to abstract situations. This is the hobby of my mind.
Coding is about algorithms, not about language, not about technology. When your mind is able to create an algorithm, then you create value. And you can write it in whatever language and platform or technology.
In the meantime, I discovered that learning to draw diagrams of algorithms can be done at a more early age. You don’t have to wait until highschool. You just take problems adapted to your level of understanding and you create algorithms for them.
So, for our children I wrote a book. I wrote a book with a story for which children will create the diagram, like a diagram of an algorithm. By doing it, children learn to transpose real events into an algorithm and they develop their analytical thinking.
I launched the book on kickstarter.
This is the project I enjoyed the most in my life until now. I invite you to see the value in it and support by preordering the book it if you like it here:
