Coding for Kids
Our 2020 Summer Code Jam is well under way, and we’re so excited to talk to some of our winners so far to learn more about them, their awesome projects, and their experiences with Tynker!
Next up, Alex is one of the winners of our Week 1 Challenge (“Create Your Own Avatar!”) We were very impressed with the dragon avatar he made with awesome animations! Alex is just 7 years old, with a great sense of humor and a love for Tae Kwon Do, tennis and running. A red belt in Tae Kwon Do, Alex has been practicing for 2 years and he’s been playing tennis for 3 years!
Alex hails from Illinois and has aspirations of becoming a material engineer when he grows up. In school, he loves math because of his teacher (who he describes as strict, but funny) and he also loves science because of the fun experiments!
How did you get introduced to Tynker and how long have you been coding? I have been coding for two years and I got introduced to it because my mom was looking for a different coding website and she found Tynker, then I got caught on the code monsters one!
How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? What are your favorite Tynker courses or tutorials? I did the courses: Goblins Quest, Turing’s Tower, Glitch Manor and Code Monsters first!
How have your coding skills improved since you started using Tynker? Before, I knew nothing about coding but now I know I am brave enough to submit my projects into a competition! And I’m trying JavaScript!
How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? Happy, because I thought there were a bunch of other projects, way better than mine, so I’m surprised it was really that good!
What is your favorite project you’ve made so far and what do you like about it? My week 2 submission, it just took a very long time and it was a bit hard to debug, but in the end it was very satisfying when it was all finished!
Where do you get the idea for your favorite project and how long did it take you to make? I got this idea from adventure books where they search for magical ideas and I just decided to translate that into code! And it took me about five days.
How do you get inspiration for your projects? Books and those games that you have on Tynker, so if I see these sometimes I will take that project and then add a little touch to it!
Why do you like to code? It’s pretty fun and the internet is the main hub for everybody, so most of the time when I’m coding JavaScript or Python it’s fun to know that I am now dissecting the computer’s brain and I now know how to use it!
Do you have a favorite code block? I would say my favorite code block would be the broadcast block, and when I receive block!
What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? Usually I debug the project while I’m working on it, because I want it to be smooth before I start on the next part, so usually if I’m happy with it I just publish!
What are you planning to make next? Whatever the next Code Jam project has to offer! There’s these books that’s like choose your own adventure, like choose your own path, that’s kind of what I’m making!
What’s the best thing about Tynker? It’s easy to learn and also the courses like HTML and CSS web development, that is very cool and it’s easy to learn a lot of things and it’s fun to look at someone’s project that was just published, and then you can see what other people were thinking, and then put that in your own projects!
Do you think other kids should try coding? Why’s that? Yeah, I mean it’s really fun and there’s a lot of courses that you can do, so I think it would be cool if people did start coding! It’s really fun!
What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker? I would say start with Goblin’s Quest, Turing’s Tower, or Glitch Manor. All of those things are teaching you the on/start, walk/forever and stuff like that, so they would be good to know before you move on!
Code Jam Questions
- How did you come up with your code jam idea? It was really random because I didn’t know what I really wanted to be my avatar and animate, then I decided on a dragon. I decided to start drawing a dragon and I actually have in my projects page, a failed attempt at drawing the dragon, so, once I actually perfected the drawing technique, I was able to copy it and then make the animation. My entire idea was based off of: I need a dragon!
- Have you done a Tynker Code Jam before? No, this is like my first time to actually try!
- How long did it take you to complete the project? I would say it took me three days, two days to actually finish the drawing and then a third day to actually animate everything!
- Did you have any interesting challenges that you had to figure out – like how to move legs or add the right music? I’m guessing the hard part was knowing which animations to add in and which ones to leave out.
- How did you feel when it was over – how excited were you, did you share it with friends or family? I shared it with my brother, my mom and dad! I’m not that sad that week one ended, but it’s pretty nice to have submitted that project!
- How did you feel when your parents told you that you won? Happy! Before they announce winners or send an email or anything, they put this ribbon on the project. At first I didn’t know anything about it, then when I realized I won I was like, yay!
- Are you going to do other Tynker Code Jam Challenges/weeks? Yes! I’ve already done week 2 and week 3!
- What do you want to do with your prize money? Buy things!
- Do you like to code and will you keep learning more about coding? Yeah, I haven’t finished the JavaScript or Python courses, and there’s a bunch of other courses that I didn’t pay attention to, so I just went all the way to the end where they say, ‘create your own game,’ and I had nothing to do!
Lyudmila, Alex’s mom, joined the conversation to speak about how she feels about Alex learning to code. “I am very happy for him and very proud that he won this week 1 challenge, Lyudmila said, “So I am very excited!”
Lyudmila supports Alex by making sure that he has the time during the day to learn new skills on Tynker! She observes Alex’s challenges and him trying to debug projects, but seeing him persevere is something that she sees coding helps him with.
As far as the benefits, Lyudmila says: “Logical reasoning, I would think, is developed and a very important part of learning how to code!” She also believes that Alex learning how to code now will definitely help him in his future endeavors and career!
We want to thank Alex and Lyudmila for taking the time to speak with us about their experience with Tynker! We are definitely looking forward to more projects from Alex — happy coding!
