Speaker: Cassandra Chin
@cassandraonjava
For more, see the 2024 DevNexus Blog Table of Contents
General
- Steven Chin’s daughter.
- Worked with coding and YAML in MInecraft
- Starting teaching kids to program at 14 at conferences
- Junior in college
- Creating podcast at internship for younger people (ex college)
Tech diversity
- 20 years of feale tech panels and still need
- Women who try AP Comp Sci in high school ten times more like to major it.
- Black/Latino students seven times more lilkely.
- Need to provide opportunity
- Even at 6 year old, kids think computers are more suited to boys. Fifth grade it tapers down so sweet spot for starting.
Kids and code
- Schools mandate human/world languages, but not coding languages
- Since schools dont always provide, parents need to
- Not all screen time is equal
- Limit youtube
- Minecraft in middle
- Best use is learning to code – ex: Scratch
- Redirect computer use vs taking away
Mistakes for parents to avoid
- Don’t leave your daughters out. Bring to tech event
- Computers at home matter – an actual computer, not a tablet. Lets do more than play mobile games
- Don’t need to be good at math. While Assembly requires math, nobody uses anymore Modern programs use logic, not math
- Kids dislike math the most followed by foreight language. Computers is third highest. Both things above are types of art.
- Don’t start with books like Discrete Math
- Give examples of programmers that they can relate to
- Don’t start with boring parts like what an array is. Better to start with legos
- Don’t do the code for the kids. They won’t learn. Never grab mouse or keyboard. Means content too har
Geniuses
- Anyone can learn to code. Don’t have to be super smart.
- Kids told programmers are genious do worse than kids who think practies will make them better
Books
- Phippys AI Friend – comes with online workshop that takes about an hour. Actually use boo as prop
- Coding for Kids Python
- GIrls who Code
Helping kids
- Relate to your kids hobbies. Ex: discuss who built
- Lego Spike – build robot and do block coding
- Mbot (Make Block). Uses screws instead of legos. Don’t have to use blocks
- Hour of Code. Lots of themes
- Choose age appropriate. Often we choose twoo hard
- Squishy circuits for 3-9 year olds
- Raspberry Pi and Arduino – 9-15 years old
- Groups of two works best. When three kids, the younest will often feel left out
- Take kids to localy run workshops – ex: confernces, girls who code
My take
I like her responses to Todd’s mini interview a the begining while they dealt with AV issues. Great humor. I liked that she made a joke about her dad being there to tell jokes. I also like “I’m not the daughter of Steven Chin; I have a name”. Great content throughout hether new to the topic or not.
The content resonated well. I gave my best friends five year old (daughter) a toy robot for her fifth birthday. I enjoyed seeing her play. I now have a gift idea for next year!
I also liked the demo from her book!