Modest money asks what procrastination really costs.
We’re thinking of teaching DC1 programming this summer, but how?
Last day to purchase books for donations for this school. From guyslitwire.
College misery is also irritated by the search for meaning, only this time enforced at work.
Donna Freedman celebrates another anniversary. She really is famous on the internet!
Mutant Super Model with advice about divorce and separation. Her google question answers are better than ours.
Delagar with a 19th century history lesson.
Yawning animals from the fw.
The punchline on this docrat comic... if only it worked that way!
Historiann asks what your best title ever is. Rear admiral?
James Chartrand. We’re going to do this too one of these days. (We’ll explain in a future post.)
academicats are awesome.
We were in this week’s carnival of personal finance.
I found something awesome in a comment on some far-flung internet corner: “When I encounter passive voice in essays, after I point out/correct the first instance, I add “by zombies” to the rest–always a hoot.” I will write BY ZOMBIES. Yes I will.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
May 4, 2013 at 7:55 am
Wow, that post has so many great options!
As a kidlet, I loved when our class did LOGO with the drawing “turtle” robot, but I never really had ownership of projects. I think getting a good combination of “follow instructions, produce program” and “play around and do new things” is really important to progress your skills and stay interested.
If DC1 is already super into legos, I’ve seen MANY kids get into the mindstorms. Personally, I think the BASIC stamp (the electric board combined with the programming) looked the most intriguing to me. Our local children’s science museum has snap-circuits that are really fun, and the idea of combining that with programming strikes me as a great starting point that is pretty much independent of abstract reasoning skills. Playing with circuits is something I didn’t get to until undergrad physics class, and it was WAY more fun than I would have imagined.
That said, some of the games recommended in that post also sound good. Roo likes a game on the library computers that involves telling an ant on a grid where to get jellybeans. I think it’s a fairly ok game for spatial reasoning skills, and it looks like a more simple version of LightBot. I will have to look into LightBot for Roo.
May 4, 2013 at 9:13 am
We tried hir on logo last summer, but it looks like kids programming has come a long way since logo! We’ll have to look into snap circuits– that sounds like something DH would really be interested in.
May 4, 2013 at 8:30 am
My MIL loves your suggestion of Rear Admiral, as that’s the rank at which her father retired from the (Royal) Canadian Navy. Thanks for the link.
May 4, 2013 at 1:41 pm
That is awesome.
May 5, 2013 at 9:58 pm
The Raspberry Pi ( http://www.raspberrypi.org/ ) was originally designed for this purpose; as a inexpensive was for kids to mess around and learn about computers/programming. It launch to massive success in the general computer-enthusist market so I’m sure there’d be courses available online for free (or close to it).
May 6, 2013 at 9:44 am
Holy wow your collection has awesome links. I’m adding delagar to my feed right now. The Yawning Animals is me today thanks to a stupid lady crashing into a palm tree outside my house last night. I LOVE Academic cats. The James Chartrand is unsettling.
My Google answers are so not better than yours, they’re just different. Yours make people laugh :)
May 6, 2013 at 9:45 am
Haha, thanks for the compliments. :) In terms of quality answers, yours are high up there.
May 6, 2013 at 10:27 am
P.S. Re: teaching the kid programming. Your kid is a smart cookie. I’d get hir on CodeAcademy. I’m going to be doing this with my son this summer as well. It’s just so nice and smooth to navigate. Start hir with the HTML5 set I would think. Most people start programming with HTML and they don’t even realize it.
May 6, 2013 at 10:51 am
Very neat.
I think we might be starting with Scratch though because we were at one of DC1’s best friend’s parties this past weekend and the father wants to do a little mini-Scratch academy for DC1 and DC1’s best friend and whoever else wants to join. (DC1’s older brother started Scratch last summer.)
May 6, 2013 at 6:11 pm
I was scanning through comments for a mention of scratch – my son is 7, and loves it. He likes to make a (simple) video game and then keep bumping the speed til Daddy fails at it, especially.
We have a lot of Snapcircuits, too – the basic pack is great because he can sit down & build the “projects” alone, and also mess with things & see if they work. Grandma gave him the remote control car kit and that’s a little bit too hard to do on his own still.
May 6, 2013 at 6:23 pm
very neat
May 8, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Just this Monday I started my DC working in App Inventor. If DC can make it through all of the tutorials for that and is willing to do more, I’m planning on following up with Python.
1) both are free, with high-quality instructional materials on the Internets
2) I’m a little tired of the 24/7 Minecraft chatter
3) It’s time for the kid to learn a marketable skill! (said only partly tongue-in-cheek.)