How to explain programming to a six-year-old child?

Task: Explain your work to a group of six-year-olds.

Difficulty: High (my own daughter is among them).

Many people shared their thoughts on this task-you can find many very interesting examples on stack overflow (such as this /5U0UvO). The starting point of many ideas is to show how stupid computers are, such as the need to tell computers what to do and how to do it. These ideas are really interesting, but I doubt whether children can really understand any programming knowledge after class.

How to make a successful speech, my opinion is:

Attract children with questions and pictures. I used a lot of drawing paper at the scene (using hanging cardboard), drawing while talking-by the way, this is a good way to keep the children active (they had a good time and joked that the scarecrow and pig written by the programmer were not like this, and the scene was full of jokes). I forgot to take a photo of the scene, but I just need to draw it again, and you will see what I mean.

Explain on the basis of children's existing knowledge (YouTube, notebook, tablet, DVD). Now every child watches cartoons on YouTube, plays games on the tablet and watches his parents work in front of their notebooks. They know that movies are stored on CDs or DVDs, and smartphones and tablets are similar things (when it comes to games and movies).

I started with a basic question, "Who knows what a programmer does?" Now that the children have discussed this problem yesterday, it is not surprising that they have some ideas at the moment. Then I told the children my own definition: "Programmers are people who write computer programs, and they will tell the computer what to do in a specific language." Programmers also know a lot about computers. "

Then I drew a programmer at work.

The next step is to discuss computers. All the children started talking about their parents' laptops (it's really cute for children to mention the same thing over and over again). After discussing for a while, I interrupted them and pointed out that there are many computers everywhere-such as smart phones and watches, and some in cars and elevators. In a few words, I drew everything I mentioned and discussed, where computers were used in various situations.

I also asked the children how they thought the weather forecast came out (a clever child replied, "The satellite knows what the weather will be like the next day"), and then told them that the computer calculated the forecast based on the data collected by thousands of measuring devices.

Then I turned to computer programs. I tell children that computers can do many things because programs will guide them to do some things.

I say Youtube because children are familiar with YouTube. I started by drawing a UI that children are familiar with.

I asked the children how many movies there were on YouTube. Many children were confused, but several shouted "millions" or "infinity". I asked them if it was possible to put all the movies on one CD, and then drew a lot of CDs. I asked, "What if you told YouTube to watch an episode of Peggy Piggy? How did it find the right CD?" The children were silent, so I drew a database and quickly described its functions.

The idea I want to convey to children is that what they see is only the tip of the iceberg, and programmers are responsible for more than that. I explained how programmers handle the following different things:

Protect movies and guard against bad guys ("If someone wants to change the database, you can't see Peggy Piggy, only what will happen during the football match"-terrible silence)

Backup ("What happens if the disk fails? You can't see the episode where Peggy's father tries to hang a picture "-another terrible silence).

So YouTube runs on different devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops).

air an advertisement

Count the number of people watching each movie.

Show how many likes similar movies have, and so on.

This is a good time to remind children that programming is a team work. The program is large in scale, involving different fields of knowledge, and requires many people to participate in programming. At this point, I updated the first picture and added another programmer, so that two programmers sat together.

The next topic is how computers work-of course, this is rough. I can only tell them:

The mouse and keyboard are used to give people commands to the computer.

Display is answered by the computer.

Every computer has a processor (which can be regarded as the brain of the computer).

Computers use disks to store information.

I mainly explained the processor and told the children that it uses an interesting language, which only contains 0 and 1. I pretended to speak in only a and b languages, and the children had a good time with me. Then I explained that programmers create programming languages to talk to processors more conveniently.

Then I explained an example of the simplest programming language (with some pseudo code). I want to tell my children more, but I think they are distracted, so I haven't had time to talk about circular sentences yet.

Before the end of the course, I drew the symbols discussed before again. While painting, I asked, "What is this?" "How much do you remember about this?" Questions like this. This link is very useful.

Other comments, what to do and what not to do, tips and tricks:

More interesting than I thought! I took this matter seriously and made careful preparations, which paid off. Children are very interested, and I think they can remember some knowledge in the process.

Drawing pictures during lectures is a correct way. It can catch children's attention. I can point to a picture to remind them of what was discussed a few minutes ago.

Be prepared for children to repeat. When I asked them if they knew any languages, a guy raised his hand and said, "I know a little English." His partner repeated the same words, and then one by one, others in the group joined one by one (some of them joined at the same time). Everyone spoke the same English again. If they talk about their favorite topics, such as comics, the situation will become more chaotic.

No matter what you do, some children will get bored. Their concentration time is only relatively short.

Write carefully on the blackboard-for example, they will object to your writing 1 a bit like 7.

I don't think it is necessary to correct some children's problems during the lecture-for example, as long as children can understand that YouTube saves cartoons on DVD, when it is necessary to watch a movie, the computer will choose the appropriate disc to play, which I think is very good. I want them to understand what search and database are, not technical details. I think this is the right way.

The lecture time is 25 minutes, and it can't be longer. Author: Tomek Kaczanowski Translation: Fang Proofreading: Ding Nanya This article was transferred from the School of Data, and it needs authorization to reprint.