It's not your age, it's bad design.
Original:
font: 14px/1.5 Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #777; font-weight: 300;
Suggested:
font: 16px/1.5 Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #212121; font-weight: 400;
See the difference:
Lato Regular is easy to read, Lato Light is not great for body-text.
Sorry for the inconvenience. I'm an embedded developer and know nothing about web design. The jekyll theme was copy-pasted from one of the default styles provided by github.
Next step: Learn some css to make the design acceptable.
> the question should not be “how make a programmer out of a kid?”, but instead “how make the kid a maker?”
https://github.com/dannas/dannas.github.com/blob/master/_pos...
From a social sharing and SEO perspective I think this page (http://dannas.github.io/2016/08/27/review-of-seymor-paperts-...) is better than (https://github.com/dannas/dannas.github.com/blob/master/_pos...) -- but I think one or the other needs to have a canonical tag or at least a NoIndex. I haven't played with GitHub as a blogging platform -- may have to do some more research.
A simple github repo + README.md is quick, flexible and easy to maintain for years in the future. We can leave the style to GitHub guys. :-)
Here is an example:
https://github.com/steam-maker/steam-maker-forum/tree/master...
A "simple" GitHub repo ReadMe isn't going to have any of the right tools for sharing or distributing content, it won't allow you to capture signups, or A/B/n test; doesn't even allow you to put in analytics to see if people are reading your content, you can't build domain authority for your other work... It's pretty much the modern equivalent of stapling your flyer to a telephone pole.
You'd be better off with a properly configured WordPress, or other CMS-based, site.
There have been a bunch of posts today about scanning content, but here's a great pre-launch checklist. Do as many of these as you can, as fast as you can. Ha.
* Web Developer Checklist || http://webdevchecklist.com/
:)
Just as you most probably wouldn't be against a child learning a second language or learning to play music I see no reason why one would be against them learning programming.
Learning to program is like learning a language. The language spoken by most feedback mechanisms in the world, more than any individual national language.
The point is not to turn them into programmers but to make them comfortable and familiar with the construct of computer syntax.
Just like you don't need to learn Chinese you don't need to learn computer programming but just like learning chinese or playing an instrument will affect your thinking so will learning to program even if you don't end up a programmer.
We can't compare this with our own upbringing even though it's tempting just like our parents couldn't compare our upbringing with theirs.
There is an obvious reason to oppose such things: opportunity cost. learning anything takes time, and the curriculum is full. If you want to teach a new topic, you will have to remove something else. This might not be worth it.
(That said, I still support basic programming and basic computational reasoning at school. I propose we take away some of the math away, though I don't know which math exactly.)
The way I see it the bigger bottleneck is not time but motivation. You can fill a whole day with studies that a student isn't interested in and end up getting nowhere, or you can spend an hour on a topic that is able to hold a student's fascination--I would pick the latter any day. Engagement is simply a prerequisite for meaningful learning at scale; without it progress is slow and uneven at best.
Considering the fact that computers have pervaded across domains, we could try integrating computational thinking with these domains. For example, you could teach Chemistry using simulations and modeling. It would deepen learning and, if the curriculum is well-structured, provide students the opportunity to learn computational thinking (within the context).
Integrating computational thinking in the existing curriculum has several benefits: 1. Deepen learning of the subject content: Enables active learning and knowledge construction 2. Learn programming concepts in the context: This is especially beneficial for students who have no prior programming experiences. 3. Not increase additional workload: Computational thinking (or as DiSessa puts it: "computational literacy") is a literacy skill like reading and writing. Here, we are proposing to use computers as a tool to think with.
This requires a lot of effort including providing professional development for teachers, restructuring curriculum, and supporting stakeholders through flexible implementation opportunities.
Up to a certain age, the mental models just aren't there yet to make it worthwhile. It's not that useful trying to teach a child programming when they are only learning to make out different letters or numbers or their concept of time (or any abstract thought for that matter) is very rudimentary.
That leaves you only able to teach them very basic things, which end up looking more like a game than something that you would regard as programming.
By the time a child is say 10, things start to change. At that point though, their personality and the general direction of their interests is going to drive itself.
Better to get them interested in building things, tinkering, abstract thought and games, etc. and help them develop mental models which make it easy to pick up programming later.
Sure it depends on age I never said it wouldn't. Just like they need to be able to handle an instrument to learn to play it children of course needs to be able to have some basic skills to do programming.
Papers writing isn't about infants learning to program it's not even about toddlers. It's about children in school and how they can use programming as a tool for creating, tinkering and thinking by using the computer as a simulator to simulate things that they internalized (like playing ball, running down hill, throwing stones).
It's not about creating production ready code.
My oldest son who is now 7 has been doing something called number stories in math for some years it's not far from computer program construction. Last year he did some basic programming in the way of number solving.
I simply don't understand this weird obsession with keeping kids from being exposed to programming I don't see what it's based on.
I am 28 years old and find it hard to read as well. People who choose small font sizes and low contrast degrade usability a lot. Here is an article about the numerous failure modes of low-contrast designs: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/low-contrast/
I blame the thin font, not the low contrast, for the readability problem.
It's not about not having computers, it's about how you use them.
The following site's been around "forever", and still provides a quick starting point. Note that web design has changed a lot; nonetheless, some of these still beat the majority of pages into a better appearance.
Yeah, I should be all "Read-a-page-ability-in-your-pocket" in my approach, and use some optimized, cloudified, designified nirvana.
Instead, I just leave some bookmarklets parked in my bookmarks bar, one click away.
https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/
E.g. (apologies for the ugliness):
zap colors - background #E4E3CB
javascript:(function(){var%20newSS,%20styles='*%20{%20background:%20#E4E3CB%20!%20important;%20color:%20black%20!important%20}%20:link,%20:link%20*%20{%20color:%20#0000EE%20!important%20}%20:visited,%20:visited%20*%20{%20color:%20#551A8B%20!important%20}';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20{%20document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'");%20}%20else%20{%20newSS=document.createElement('link');%20newSS.rel='stylesheet';%20newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSS);%20}%20})();
Georgia
javascript:(function(){var%20newSSGeorgia,%20styles='*%20{%20font-family:%20Georgia%20!%20important%20}';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20{%20document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'");%20}%20else%20{%20newSSGeorgia=document.createElement('link');%20newSSGeorgia.rel='stylesheet';%20newSSGeorgia.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSSGeorgia);%20}%20})();https://www.readability.com/articles/zgl0rbkx
If you are using Firefox, you can also just remove the styling by going to
view > pagestyle > No stylePlaying XBox is a waste of time in any generation.
And even if it is superficial awareness, those kinds of games exercise the fantasy-making faculties that make history itself interesting to learn about, even later as an adult.
Another example. There was this flop of a game in the early 90s, called SimEarth, that I have very fond memories of. It taught me about the Gaia hypothesis and the carbon cycle and stuff. Gameplay was pretty wacky though.
Agree a modern SimEarth would be awesome.
With respect to using paper and pencil for math there is still no contest between doing math on paper and doing it with your finger on an iPad.
I have the benefit of experiencing life before the impact of computers on society. Heck, my parents wouldn't even let me get toys that required batteries (too expensive to replace). So, I played with toy trucks and I read and I climbed trees and I drew. I drew pictures of locks, of circuits, of mazes, of buildings.
My own children grew up very differently. Playing video games, and their schools insisted on early introduction of laptops, convertible laptop/tablets, and iPads. At an age where I would be drawing complicated diagrams of electrical relays to play tick-tack-toe (which, because I was just a 13 year old kid with no training would have never worked) they played XBox.
I tried to get the schools to use paper and pencil for math lessons instead of iPads, but the forces at work in school systems end up encouraging many distracting technologies being introduced with no discernible benefit.
Furthermore, the development of abstract thinking, necessary for programming, happens over time in children. Is there any evidence that early programming instruction hastens it's development? Real research in education seems pretty weak.