John Resig: Redefining the Introduction to Computer Science at Khan Academy
I sat my 5-year-old daughter down in front of the first drawing tutorial today (Introduction to Drawing). I let her watch the video, then asked her some questions to test her comprehension. Before I could too many questions out she blurted "I want to build a house," and off we went.I learned a few things:1. We seriously need to work on her typing skills. We practice typing once a week but I think I need to increase that.2. I need to go out and buy a smaller mouse to fit her hand.3. She immediately understood functions and parameters, which, honestly, was all I really wanted her to get out of this.4. The sliders are critical. She has never seen a coordinate system, but the sliders allow her to play around with location without completely understanding what the numbers represent.5. At this age, she was engaged because she could draw things (she had a house worked out in about 15 minutes, which was also the limit of her attention span). I'm not always a fan of gaming things up to make them more palatable, but it definitely worked here.