Programming is something that is learned in the cradle

It is a fact, we live in a time when babies learn how to use the phone or tablet before even start talking. So it is normal to think that these children can acquire fluency in languages ​​that previous generations to sound like a daunting task.

Thinking about that, the founders of Hopscotch created an app where an eight year old can learn to program. “It teaches kids the fundamental components of programming languages, like branching logic, if/then statements, and variables,” said cofounder Jocelyn Leavitt for Readwrite blog. “The ideas kids are going to learn using Hopscotch can be used later in other languages like Ruby or Python.”

Other mission of the project is to get girls into programming early. Leavitt and  Samantha John, the founders of Hopscotch, believe that exposing girls to technology early will be more likely in the near future, more girls to be interested in professions related technology.

“My daughter always thought computer programming was for boys, but she could not put down Hopscotch, and said building a game seemed fun to her too.” -Michael, father of Erin, age 12

Like the idea? The application is free and you can download it here

 

———– UPDATED INFORMATION ———–

Speaking about programming as a teaching tool, just after publishing this post I found a very interesting news about a project at MIT called Scratch Jr. It is aimed at children aged between 8 and 13 years and since 2007 has been used to create over 2.2 million animations, games, music, videos and stories. See the full story on Spotlight.