Hi, My name is Alvaro and I started teaching my son Andrés programming using a board game we created.
To answer this question asked on Reddit, I told how we started:
Abstraction is difficult, so we watched the movie Tron (the old one), which materializes some programming concepts into 3D. It was my idea to catch my son's interest this way after my initial attempts to explain programming concepts didn’t quite work out 😅. Then we replicated some of these concepts using LEGO® bricks and played with them making machine/robot noises. You can read more on how we started here.
The first game we made used very simple blocks made out of cardboard. My son had to throw a dice and assign the value to a variable. Then he had to use the '==' relational operator to match the number in the variable. You can watch a video replicating the activity.
After this successful attempt we started playing with assignments, function calls, conditions, loops etc. This is how, little by little we shaped the board game.
Once we knew the game was useful for us, we tried it with some friend's kids. We noticed that all the parents who were software engineers were surprised to see how quickly their children could learn programming concepts.
We tried the board game with kids as young as 4 years old and adults up to 75 years old, most of them without any prior knowledge of programming. It worked, people found it useful and enjoyable.
Our approach seemed to have much better results than other digital solutions, especially for young children.
We decided to share all the games and activities on a website and social media: People should be able to download the materials we used in the games and recreate them at their homes for free.
Codidactic was born 🎉.
Other activities, games and digital puzzles not only for children but also for adolescents have been included in the board game as well as on this website, aiming to address the challenge that some adults face in understanding basic programming concepts.
A print-on-demand version is available for those who want to buy the board game in high quality. Given the time and effort put into it, I believe it offers great value.
Little by little, all the content will be available on this site.
Thank you for visiting, and we hope you enjoy!
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