Do you remember the excitement you felt as a child when you wrote your first simple program?
I do.
I started with a hangman style game on my Commodore 64 that was written in BASIC. Then it was on to application that helped me memorize french verbs, next a variation of Pacman followed and the last program written on my Commodore 64 was a Bulletin Board System that used Assembly Language for speed and Basic for ease of customization. The next stop for me was programming a Fidonet node on my Amiga. All from my the basement of my parents home. (Yup, I was true geek :-))
You know an entire generation of the computer industry was born out of the natural curiosity of kids and the availability of the PC during the 80’s. This week my team launched a beta of a website that we hope will help capture the excitement of learning about computers for the next generation of programmers.
We call the website Bitman’s Place.
The goal is to teach the next generation of programmers the fundamentals of computer science while tapping their natural curiosity and attraction to technology. We do so through a series of fun, interactive, step by step lessons delivered online that can be done individually or together with parents or teachers.
Children aged 8 to 13 who want to learn how computers work and how to start programming are the audience for the site. As the lessons progress, we will use Visual Studio 2005 Express Products to walk children through creating their first programs. Before that though the lessons use already existing applications on the user machine like Notepad, WordPad, Paint etc.
So what can you do on the site?
You can use the site to get familiar with concepts from computing technology, build a technical vocabulary and get familiar with professional tools for programming. A parent and child can spend quality time together on the site playing games or reading and discussing technical articles. The site could be useful to teachers and summer camp courses that would like to get kids familiar with computers and inspire their imagination about future computing technologies.
Why build this site?
The main goal for the site is to inspire new generation of computer programmers that will build the next generation of computer applications – the applications that we will use in near and distant future.
If you have a child or know someone who does I'd appreciate it if you took some time to try out Bitman's Place and send us your feedback via the website.
Here's a special link that will allow you to log into the site.
(Note: Once we're past our testing period we'll open up the site by removing the requirement to sign on)
For now we're in test mode and would appreciate your feedback on what works well and what doesn't. Please let us know what you think.
There too many folks to list and thank for all their efforts in building this site. I'd would like to call out Ivan, Bryn and David for all their hard work and dedication in pulling this site together. It has been a labor of love for them.
Enjoy!