Programming has become a highly desired skill in many professional settings. Programming jobs are expected to experience even more growth than they already have in the next few decades. Programmers also typically earn a high salary, even directly out of college.
Even if your child has no interest in becoming a professional programmer however, programming is still a supremely useful skill in science, business, engineering, and in everyday life. Anything you do with a computer or phone can likely be improved once you know how to program.
Several countries, such as Britain, have made programming a mandatory subject in elementary and high school. In the US, programming classes are available in most high schools and may become a required subject in the future too.
Our experiment is focused on learning how reading ability affects children learning to program. We'll ask you to fill out a questionnaire about your child's background and have them take a short reading test to determine their ability. After completing those they will have access to our programming lessons, which should take roughly two hour-long sessions. After they finish we'll ask your child to take one last questionnaire on their feelings about the study and then give them a certificate they can print out to show their accomplishment.
There is very little research on how to effectively teach programming to children with learning disabilities. We know, for example, that a dyslexic student needs different resources when they learn to read. With programming though, we don't know if that same dyslexic student needs something besides the standard lessons. By looking at how reading ability affects programming ability we hope to gain some insight into the unique difficulties learning-disabled children have when learning to program. Ideally this will inform the creation of better programming curricula for special needs students and allow them to experience the same benefits of programming as other students.
The programming lessons use a popular approach for beginners called blocks-based programming. Instead of typing a program out on a keyboard students drag blocks together to create programs. With this system it's impossible to create a program the computer won't be able to run so it's much more forgiving than programming languages professionals use.
The programming lessons are divided up into two groups. We expect each group will take your child about one hour to finish. Each lesson includes a description of the goal for the lesson, a set of blocks to use, and a little world where your child can see their program acted out. When they have met the goal for the lesson they can move on to the next one.
If you're interested in participating you'll first need to sign our consent form.
Consent Form