The rise of children’s programming has sparked widespread discussion among educators, with many experts questioning: what is the true significance of children’s programming?
These doubts are normal, and reflect the calm and objective attitude we should have when facing any social hot topic. In reality, true artificial intelligence programming is based on the development of traditional sciences such as computer programming, physics, electronics, and even chemistry, which is far beyond what a child can fully grasp at just a few years old.
In today’s society, the speed of technological development can be described as geometric. The growth of information, the speed of information dissemination, the speed of information processing, and the extent of information application are all improving at an astonishing rate.
Information technology has profoundly impacted society as a whole, and humanity has entered the era of global informationization. With the continuous deepening of artificial intelligence research, its role in various fields is becoming increasingly prominent, including manufacturing, services, healthcare, finance, and education.
The application of information technology not only improves productivity but also brings new challenges. The world-renowned management consulting firm McKinsey predicted that by 2030, artificial intelligence would lead to 11.8 million job transformations, causing 50% of jobs to disappear, resulting in 800 million people unemployed worldwide.
Li Kaifu, chairman and CEO of Innovation Works, also predicted that jobs such as translation, news reporting, assistants, and accounting will be fully or partially replaced by artificial intelligence within the next ten years.
With the arrival of the artificial intelligence era, accompanied by the explosion of big data,programming is likely to become a fundamental skill required in various industries. We must acknowledge that programming and programming thinking have become crucial for children’s growth. Learning programming at a young age allows children to understand the components of an information society earlier, becoming an important part of their soft skills.
Although programming education usually relies on programming languages, children’s programming is by no means equivalent to just coding.
Target Audience: The target audience for children’s programming education is mainly children under 17 years old, covering preschool, elementary, and secondary education age groups. Children’s programming education needs to match the age characteristics, knowledge structure, and life experiences of children,following specific cognitive rules and learning characteristics of certain age stages, avoiding the rigid application of adult professional programming skills training content.
Teaching Content:
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The best age for programming enlightenment is 4-6 years.
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This stage can guide children through programming-related games, with the main goal of stimulating interest, exercising hands-on abilities, and cognitive logical order, correctly guiding children in using electronic devices.
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Children’s logical thinking begins to form, allowing them to learn simple programming knowledge and become familiar with programming thinking, including abstraction, classification, decomposition, etc.
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Through programming thinking, children can exercise their life organization skills and choose suitable tools and platforms for systematic learning to realize their ideas.
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Scratch is a great tool that implements programming through block-shaped modules, allowing users to write storybooks, animations, or games simply by dragging modules with the mouse, without needing to recognize English words or use a keyboard.
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If you want your child to truly master a programming language, even a graphical programming language like Scratch, they need to have mature logical understanding abilities.
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Parents can introduce hardware programming (like Arduino) or code programming (recommended Python, and for children interested in participating in competitions, they can learn C++) when the child is in the fifth or sixth grade of elementary school, based on their interests.
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At this time, interest and perseverance are equally important, and timely encouragement and guidance from teachers and parents are crucial.
According to Piaget’s theory of children’s cognitive development stages, ages 7-12 are the concrete operational stage, where children acquire systematic logical thinking abilities. Early exposure to programming canhelp children lay a solid foundation and have the opportunity to develop skills that will benefit them for life.
A program on CCTV once attracted attention when an 8-year-old boy, Zhao Yizhou, independently designed an artificial intelligence recognition system that accurately read the expressions of pet dogs to determine their emotions. He started learning programming at age 6 and won third place in a national creativity competition six months later. To date, Zhao Yizhou has completed over 500 programming projects.
In China, as early as 2014, Zhejiang Province took the lead in including programming in the information technology college entrance examination. In 2017, China first incorporated programming education into government decision-making. Provinces and municipalities such as Zhejiang, Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Chongqing have introduced programming education into primary and secondary school classrooms or college entrance examination subjects, gradually transforming programming from a hobby into a formal subject education.
Abroad, children learn programming even earlier than subjects like politics, history, geography, physics, and chemistry. Therefore, children who learn programming from a young age will possess stronger core competitiveness in the future.
As parents, we should have a forward-looking vision. Programming can not onlyhelp children develop good learning habits but also enhance their initiative, focus, and time management skills. Many parents have reported that after learning programming, their children’s initiative in learning has increased, they no longer indulge in games, and they understand how to plan their time better.
The importance of programming education is self-evident; it can not onlyhelp children adapt to future society but also cultivate their innovative abilities.
Programming is by no means a compulsory course for everyone; the notion that “not understanding programming is being illiterate” is entirely unfounded. If we continue to distort and mythologize children’s programming, which was originally intended to cultivate interest and stimulate imagination, this course will not only not last but will also backfire. Learning children’s programming cultivates an interest and stimulates a way of thinking, which is beneficial in itself.
I hope this content can help you comprehensively understand the significance and value of children’s programming. If you wish to obtain more related information and practical advice, please follow our official WeChat public account, and we will continue to provide you with authoritative information and professional guidance.
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