CodeToLearn

Kids know games better than they know a lot of things. Outdoor games, board games, and video games. Video games have moved from fringe media in the past, to deeply embedded cultural artifacts of the present day. Students have well developed schema for the complex, rule-based systems that games present and are eager to make their own games. This is a huge opportunity to engage young people in computational thinking projects that can strengthen their skills in Math, Science, Literacy and even Language.

A number of new hands-on programming tools are spring up all over crowd funding sites like Kickstarter. They are aimed at helping even the youngest learners develop logic and instructional skills.

• Robot Turtles: The Game for Little Programmers

• Primo: A Toy That Teaches Programming Logic to Children Age 4 to 7

• Bee Bot: A Programmable Robot for Young Children

• Kano: It's a Computer and You Make It Yourself

Computer Science and programming activities are a very hot topic in education right now. High profile leaders in Education, Business, Government, and even celebrities are also helping to draw attention to the need for more young programmers and engineers. Here are some other tools available for students to learn coding.

• The Hour of Code

• Code.org

• Code Academy

• Khan Academy: CS Lessons

• Google CS4HS

• Code by Math

• Code Avengers