Kate,
If you want to consider something other than Perl, there's a program
under development at MIT named Scratch:
http://scratch.mit.edu/
It uses animations, games, and interactive art to teach basic programming.
While it is aimed at small children, it was also used in an Intro CS
course in Harvard Summer School this past summer with very good reviews.
A second option would be a little screen robot programming
application available in a few versions; the primary developer is Dr.
Joseph Bergin at Pace Univ.:
http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/
Look down the page for "Karel J. Robot and Karel++" - one version is Java
and the other is C++. We use a variant of this in our intro courses, and
our students tell us their children learn it with them at home as they
work on their homework, and enjoy running and playing with their programs.
Both of these are very visual and do a good job of teaching
elementary programming concepts (control structures, objects, variables,
etc.) in a fun way.
HTH, Jan
On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Chris Devers wrote:
> On Dec 1, 2006, at 10:30 AM, Kate Wood wrote:
>
>> So... say you were going to teach a child (or several children) of
>> about ten, reasonable technical aptitude, to program using Perl. How
>> would you go about it? I'm doing some lessons for my daughter and her
>> friends for the spring,and need some further input. They're not quite
>> of an age where handing them the camel book and saying "go for it" is
>> realistic, but they're pretty self-motivated.
>
> As much as I like Perl, is it really a good first language for
> anyone, and kids in particular?
>
> I seem to remember that there was some good "Python for kids"
> tutorials out there, as well as Scheme/Logo. Maybe I'm biased because
> my first exposure to programming was turtle graphics in Logo at about
> the age you're describing, and I know there are some good modern
> implementations of turtle / Logo / Scheme for Windows, OSX, Linux,
> etc. that would be good for kids to learn on.
>
> Perl as a first language though seems like a risky idea though,
> almost along the lines of that old (Knuth?) line about people who
> learned on Basic being irrepairably damaged programmers :-)
>
>
> --
> Chris Devers
>
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