in which my husband writes a blog post

Ok, so I know I've mentioned a couple of times about our boys and their engineering endeavors, but I thought it was interesting what my husband wrote about why it is important to teach kids about programming to help develop their minds. Here is a little peak:

...One of the most rewarding parts is watching [Buddy's] problem-solving abilities develop. Papert talks about how children are often afraid to try things for fear of failure, but Scratch teaches that debugging is a normal part of making things work. Rather than "does it work", the question becomes "how can we make it work?" This was demonstrated the other day (outside the context of Scratch) when he was putting together some Snap Circuits.

Of course the goal is not to produce "little programmers". It's primarily about developing the ability to think systematically, but it extends beyond that into getting them thinking about thinking itself. In some sense once they're in the habit of asking the right epistemological questions, the parent or teacher almost just needs to get out of the way and let them explore. At that point the process of discovering a topic with someone is much more rewarding than telling facts at them.

Read the whole article here, and see his videos of this in practice here.

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