Kim Delgado asked me the other day what I used to help my daughter learn how to code. What better way to use the VDM30in30 challenge than to write a post on just that. I am fortunate enough to live in an area that has a school program that uses the Hour of Code system. That is a great help and if nothing else gets the kids interested in coding. But if I wanted to reinforce it, so I used Tynker initially. Tynker has a free program that let’s kids build characters and levels for a 2D game that they build out. It’s a pretty fun way to get them goofing with If\Then commands and causal\effect relationships.

But then I am not someone who just sits back so I had to press it to see what the kids could do. After they both (daughter and son) built out games, we moved onto a couple of puzzle games, where you have to maneuver a monster through obstacles to get pieces of candy, this is another app on Tynker. I then stumbled upon a Lifehacker article on helping kids learn to code. Ipad games like Daisy the Dinosaur and Hopscotch are great tools to keep them interested, but seemed a little too little kidish for my 10 year old. Scratch is a learning program developed by MIT and is designed for 8-16 year olds. This was the one that my daughter really enjoyed.

Ok these are great but I needed to step it up this was all visual programming language which is cool, but what about the more abstract code bases. So we began to look at basic HTML and some Python. I had them build a simple Hello World page, and showed them how to put together a text based Python game.

What’s next? Well honestly I was hoping I could get some help on that, I am looking for a way to have my guest wifi network password changed weekly, and a puzzle, test or project requirement to learn the password. I have seen the chore for wifi pw pictures online, but what I really want to see is something that can make it a more fun way to learn and earn the online privilege. Anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

The ever fun @Cloud_Opinion on twitter posited a question the other day of whether folks were of the twitter or slack generation. If you haven’t heard of slack you are living under a stone and I feel bad for you kid. That doesn’t even matter right now. Cause here is the thing they are not mutually exclusive in fact I find that Slack and Twitter pose different uses. I responded with that very notion, that Slack is more localized and Twitter was far more global. What I meant wasn’t in who could access a slack channel vs follow a twitter account.

@cloud_opinion yes but I meant from focus perspective slack groups are more focused vs the openness of Twitter

— Mike Colson (@Mike_Colson) November 11, 2015

What I meant actually has a far more reaching meaning, now I don’t normally write about politics on here but I think this notion is important. You see when we look at the way we communicate today it’s not vastly different than how people communicated throughout the years back to the days of Alexander the Great building roads and schools. People find and form tribes, when they wanted to reach out to areas beyond their immediate community they would write and send scrolls. As Alexander created a network of roads merchants, emissaries, scholars and artists spread out across the lands bringing with them their own cultures. Wherever these travelers settled they shared their culture and embraced the culture of their new community this led to a meshing of belief systems and ideologies. Conquering armies, and enslaved peoples continued to spread and steal culture and time marched on as we became the countries, religions, and groups we all are today.

While nations have moved from isolationism to globalization we like to think that we as people have also globalized. We think that we are more open in our reach and views. But the truth of the matter is we tend to matriculate back to people with the same views as us. We form these tribes or communities of interests. Slack is a great example of that, a group is created and channels added so like minded people can share their opinions or collaborate. That’s awesome and well worth the time and effort put into it. Twitter isn’t that far off but it also allows for us to have open access to people of many backgrounds and points of view.

While forming a tribe and having shared interests is great, we need to be open to the travelers in the world. To see the culture, ideas, and art of others and to merge it with our own ideas. When we don’t do this we establish the framework for narrow minded thinking. If we haven’t learned anything from the past 50 years it’s that fanaticism is bred from narrow minded viewpoints and is fueled by the ignorance of cause and effect relationships of outside forces.  I am not saying Slack is a petri dish of close mindedness, what I am saying is we need multiple forms of communication and the awareness that we must seek out that which is different from our own views.

I could probably go on for a long time on this subject, because I feel so passionately about it. Do you feel you belong to enough open forms of communication to not narrow your view point? Do you find that others are too closed minded in your communication channels?