Festival2012/Submit/Programming for the fun of it
Programming for the fun of it (with Waterbear)
* Dethe Elza, Mozilla Foundation * Learning Lab
What will you make, learn or do?
People who have never programmed a computer will become casual programmers using Javascript, by using Waterbear, a drag-and-drop visual environment for programming.
How does that work?
Waterbear is entirely web-based, all you need is a browser that can access the website.
There will be a short introduction to Waterbear and demonstration of how to drag blocks together to create a simple animation. Everyone will then have some lightweight challenge problems that they can choose to solve, or if they have ideas about something they would like to code, they can branch out on their own. Dethe will be available to provide tips and help out if anyone is stuck.
How will this work with 5, 15, 50 participants?
With 5 participants Dethe can offer more support and help and we will probably get further into the challenges. For 15 participants, with some helpers who are more experienced with programming (which needn't be very experienced) this format can still work well. For a group of 50, we can work out the challenges as a group, interactively, with some participants coming up to drag the blocks, and others giving advice to collectively build the solution.
How long within the session before someone else can teach this?
Children as young as six can write code like this after minimal exposure, so after 20 minutes everyone will have the basic concepts down.
What do will participants take away, after the festival?
Participants will have programming de-mystified and be more willing to take control of their own computing more. For some, they may go on to use Waterbear to write animation, games, or mash-ups. Others may look at the code that Waterbear creates from the blocks they drag and use that as a jumping-off point to learn Javascript natively. A lot of it depends on how engaged the participants become, but the main goal is to show that you don't have to be a CS major, programmer, or "computer person" to enjoy writing a program.