Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Basic Software Concepts

So, I figured I would start teaching the kids basic software principles.  Zoey's a bit young, but I wanted to get her exposed to the ideas as early as possible. I’m trying to make it very fun and hands-on.  I’m teaching concepts and ideas, and trying to get it a fundamental part of how they think and reason. Zoey loves to learn, and she likes being quizzed and trying to answer things, and she's naturally very curious, so she's been a great student so fare. I started the other night with Collections, Stacks, and Queues with both of the kids. For Zoey, I lined up her Duplo people and asked her how many was in the Queue.  She could correctly answer "5".  I made a line of light posts next to the people line, and explained how one line is a "People Line", and the other is a "Light Post Line".  The ideas definitely made sense to her, and she could separate the People Line from the Light Post Line. I used the term "Generic Collections", which she definitely won't get yet, but I wanted her to hear the term. I put a train in front of the people line and explained her that it was a Queue, and whoever got in line first got to go on the train first, the FIFO (first-in, first-out) concept.  Zoey kept putting her favorite stuffed tiger at the front of the line, which drove her brother nuts because he understands the concept of a line and he would yell out "Zoey!  Tiger is cutting! That's not fair!!!" We went on to stacks.  I took their plastic IKEA chairs, and stacked them up 3 high.  Zoey did listen as I explained to both of them, but she just liked knocking over the chairs.  I also took some Duplos (same sized blocks, different colors) and stacked them up, with a green one at the bottom.  I explained to her that to get to the bottom one, we had to "pop" all the Duplos off that were above it on the stack.  

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