For Programming enthusiasts it’s considered the most important possible thing you could learn in the field of ICT. The earliest users of Steam Engines were of necessary Engineers. The earliest users of the motor car were Mechanics, mostly because the earliest vehicles with an internal combustion engine were incredibly unreliable. The PC was pretty much invented by hobbists, the first personal computers were sold as kits or schematics to be assembled by the super keen. The first programs on these machines was shared as raw print-outs of computer code so all of the early users of personal computers had to be programmers, and thus understand concepts like Registers, Assembler and all that good stuff.
As the PC has matured we’ve been abstracted away from the raw hardware and most people don’t know how to debug a program, just as most car drivers don’t know how to change a Clutch plate. But the art of programming isn’t dead yet. In the UK we make a huge number of computer games and it’s a really cool part of the IT Industry.
So I’m going to start using the program (Microsoft Kodu) in lessons with Year 5 Onwards. If Year 5 like it, we’ll take it out for a spin with Years 3 & 4, who in my experiance struggle with MIT’s Scratch.
It comes with a tutorial, so I am very tempted to stick the children in front of that and then give them a really open brief and see what they can do.