Ron Houtman
A list of great ways to help students both learn about and write computer code.
Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.
Learn and teach Java, one of the most popular languages in the world - also see http://greenroom.greenfoot.org/ for teacher resources.
From IPRE Wiki The Calico Project is a framework for learning, doing, and playing with computation. At its core is an integrated editor, interactive console, and social interaction framework for exploring computer science through modern, dynamic languages. It is designed to be a simple, yet powerful, integrated development environment (IDE) for students, teachers, researchers---and regular humans, too!
Gamestar Mechanic uses fun, game-based quests and courses to help you learn game design and make your own video games!
Kodu lets kids create games on the PC and XBox via a simple visual programming language. Kodu can be used to teach creativity, problem solving, storytelling, as well as programming. Anyone can use Kodu to make a game, young children as well as adults with no design or programming skills.
Snap! is a drag and drop programming environment developed by Jens Mönig and Brian Harvey. Snap! is a descendant of Scratch and adds a number of key features like creating custom blocks, recursion, and running in a browser. We have developed a utility, the BirdBrain Robot Server, that allows Finch and Hummingbird to be controlled from within Snap!.
Learn programming with a multiplayer live coding strategy game. You're a wizard, and your spells are JavaScript. Free, open source HTML5 game!
All of our documentation and software written so far applies specifically to the Scribbler and uses Python. There are community efforts to adapt the material to C++ and Scheme as well as other robots. See Introduction to Computer Science via Robots and the Myro Reference Manual.
From kindergarten to calculus, Khan Academy is here to help. Sharpen your skills with over 100,000 interactive exercises. Over 100,000 interactive exercises. You may have heard about our videos, but did you know that Khan Academy has fun interactive math exercises that cover skills ranging from counting to calculus, grade by grade?
Learn to code interactively, for free.
CodeHS tutors are here to help when you get stuck.
Create apps everywhere - on all your devices! Keyboard optional. Share your programs with other people. Download the free app for Windows Phone, try the Web App in your browser! Explore all the programs on www.touchdevelop.com.
Summer of Code with Tynker This summer, kids had a blast at Tynker camps! They learned programming, but more importantly, they learned that coding is fun! Held in San Francisco at the Children's Creativity Museum and at schools in Palo Alto, these week-long camps were a great way for beginners to start coding.
Make iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android, Flash, Windows & Mac games without code using Stencyl.
For the past 13 years, Ron has worked at the Kent Intermediate School District and Kent Career Technical Center both teaching in the classroom and supporting educator professional development.
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