Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson

Computer Science for Middle School

I spent yesterday at a large STEM event in Denver Colorado. Something like 1,500 middle school girls were brought to the Colorado Convention center for workshops and talks about science, technology and engineering. My colleague Hilary Pike conducted several workshops while I manned the booth we had in the exhibit area. While Hilary was working with students I was talking to teachers and parents who had brought the girls to the event. The common question was what resources are there for teaching computer science concepts to middle school students? I have a short list that I shared with people but it seemed like this was something that should be blogged about as well. If nothing else maybe it will help people using Internet search engines to find useful tools.

Kinesthetic learning works well with middle school students if for no other reason that sitting still is not fun or easy for them. So the CS Unplugged materials should be very useful in this environment. I love these activities as they show the concepts without the need for computer hardware, special software or other expensive resources. And kids enjoy them. Since there is a story attached and an activity attached I think that students are more likely to remember what they are learning. As a bonus it really shows that computer science is more than just programming.

For programming a couple of popular tools come to mind. Alice and Scratch are tools that use a drag and drop building block approach to programming. These tools allow students to learn about programming without syntax getting in the way. These tools are colorful and graphical. Alice uses a 3D environment while Scratch is 2D. Scratch is somewhat lighter in weight so tends to work better on older hardware than Alice. Both have versions for both Windows and Mac.

Storytelling Alice was developed especially for middle school. It was built from Alice but is not 100% compatible. The storytelling features though have been tested as being very effective with middle school students and especially with girls. It is Windows only and doesn’t have quite the same support at regular Alice but it seems pretty stable.

If you are “in to” BASIC or other traditional programming languages two resources that are available are Small Basic and a curriculum called “Code Rules” that uses Visual Basic. Small Basic is as simple to use development environment that uses a simplified version of BASIC. I wrote more about it here. Code Rules is a curriculum that was designed for high school students but its approach is very basic (no pun intended) and for some 7th and 8th graders I think it would work very well.  Both are obviously Windows only as they are from Microsoft. But they’re free.

There are more as well. I have heard good things about Squeak for example. And there is a simple programming language for beginners called Leopard that I don’t know that much about but looks interesting. And Phrogram which used to be called Kids Programming language or KPL is being used in a lot of schools. For kids interested in games there is My Game Builder and Popfly about which I have written a lot.

Edit: In the comments I was reminded of FIRST Lego League which is a great robotics program for middle school students.  It introduces a lot more than programming as they always tie the projects into other science areas.

I think that many of the tools I have written about in posts tagged first programming experience would work with middle school students. Not all of them will work in every middle school of course. But most will at least be usable by students who really want to get their feet wet.

Published Thursday, November 06, 2008 12:22 PM by Alfred Thompson