Learn cool things about: JavaScript

Crunchzilla Code Monster was designed for kids (by Greg Linden, who wanted his kids to learn programming). It is sort of like a barebones WYSIWYG editor with one pane for code and the other pane for looking at what the code does. The Code Monster on top is a friendly ogre who leads everyone along from one lesson to the other. There are 59 lessons in all. You have to keep clicking the speech bubble to move from one to the next. The lessons start easy and are interactive. Variables and parameters are introduced and the colorful objects like boxes and trees are created with JavaScript code. Errors are also caught and explained. Code Monster saves what lesson you are on, so you can stop any time and come back later. As long as you come back on the same browser on the same machine, you’ll get back to your lesson.

What a child might like: JavaScript on the left yes, but simple graphics are created on the right as if by ‘magic’.  A kid learning programming just has to play with the code to see instant colorful results on the right.

Alice is a free and open source 3D programming environment designed to teach students object-oriented and event-driven programming. With Alice, students drag and drop graphic tiles in order to animate an object and create a program. A variant of Alice, Storytelling Alice was developed by Caitlin Kelleher as part of her doctoral work in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. By emphasizing animations and social interactions, this approach was found to greatly increase the level of student interest in programming.

Hello, I am Logo, and I can help you make some awesome things happen :) First let me show you around and explain: The box on the right is my drawing box. In the center of the drawing box is a triangle called a Turtle. You can control the Turtle using Logo commands. With those commands you can use the turtle to draw beautiful shapes. You type in the Logo commands in the box below the drawing box. That one is called a command box. To start typing in orders please click the mouse inside the command box. To repeat previous commands we will use the up / down arrow keys on the keyboard. The first command you will  learn will move the turtle forward. This command is simply called forwardfollowed by a number. The number indicates how far the turtle moves forward. Let's try it:

Learn cool things about: Visual interactivity without learning programming syntax.

You cannot argue with 3,000,000 documented projects. Scratch has a worldwide community to boast of and therein lies the richness of learning. With Scratch, you can create interactive stories, animations, and even games. Here, let me direct you to a previous in-depth look into Scratch and just why kids might love it.

What a child might like: The scope to imagine things without learning about complicated programming concepts. Just drag and drop the sprites.

Codecademy gets you coding as soon as you open the page and is a fun, social introduction to programming for kids. Aimed at higher level students, courses focus on generic programming skills and JavaScript development. Codecademy is different to other courses in it’s very interactive approach to programming. Students work through an integrated terminal that gives feedback as they code. The social element is grown through earning badges and sharing progress with friends.

Play with waterbaear:  http://waterbearlang.com/garden.html?plugin=javascript|canvas|sprite

Waterbear is a toolkit for creating drag-and-drop programming languages, with some example languages you can play around with and learn from. The goal is to make it easy to wrap other existing languages with Waterbear blocks to create draggable, snappable syntaxes for them.

Waterbear is a toolkit for making programming more accessible and fun. Having a visual language means you don't have to focus on learning a syntax to start programming. Waterbear is good for kids, artists, and anyone who would like to make their computer do something new without having to become a "programmer" (although it could lead to that).

Inside of ToonTalk's animated world you will build and run all sorts of computer programs. While learning how to program you will face challenging puzzles, express your creativity, learn new ways to solve problems, and have loads of fun!

With Ruby, and the gosu gem you can do it. It is fairly easy to get going. And if you follow our screencasts, you can have a game going in minutes!

If you want to make your child learn a specific programming language, Ruby is a good choice. It is an object oriented language and a majority of web apps (e.g. Amazon and Twitter) are also coded with it. It is a simple language because the syntax is comparatively intuitive and has fewer command calls. It works on all operating systems and is free. There is also a huge community out there teaching and learning the language. The screencast tutorials, games, and examples at Ruby for Kids should be a firm stepping stone for adults and kids alike.

What a child might like How you can use Ruby to develop web games.

Hackety Hack is an open source application that teaches the basics of programming in the popular Ruby language. Hackety Hack offers an interactive tutorial that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. While both Scratch and Alice use a graphical programming language with “blocks,” Hackety Hack teaches the basics of Ruby syntax. The tutorial and the text editor are well-integrated, so there isn’t any flipping back-and-forth to move between the How-To guide and the actual coding. Hackety Hack gives students a solid foundation in the language so they can quickly and easily start building their own apps in Ruby.

To program the robot a new programming language 'ROBO' has been developed. It is a concise language with a small set of rules which require no foreknowledge. This way students can start with RoboMind right away. Although ROBO is a concise language it still leaves plenty of room to make interesting programs. The programming principles used thereby lay at the heart of most other programming languages.

The entire RoboMind development environment iscompletely free for personal use. For using RoboMind in an educational setting, such as at school, or in a commercial setting a license is required, however. These licenses can be obtained through theRoboMind Store.

Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdevelopers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages. Seefeatures for an extensive overview, take a look at the screenshots, or download it right away. Bluefish is anopen source development project, released under the GNU GPL licence.

Has to be downloaded.  Build Games.  Play Games.  Share Games

Great Resource:  Game Platforms, Programming Games Tutorials, Image and sound editing sites to use.