Coding for Kids
Meet Adel, a seventh grader from Canada and our newest Featured Maker! Outside of school, Adel has a lot of hobbies — he composes his own electronic music and plays the piano and guitar. In school, though, Adel is all about computer class.
His fondness for mastering his computer and STEM skills through Tynker has been a large factor in leading 12-year-old Adel to an extremely impressive goal for his future career. He aspires to use coding to help other people by programming medical machinery. Before Adel starts saving lives, we sat down and talked with him about his experiences with Tynker.
How did you get introduced to Tynker and how long have you been coding? [I was introduced] in our school, when I chose the computer program class they taught us Tynker and let us make games. I only published one game in Tynker and that game was a school project. So, I did that school project, I liked it and I said to myself, “Hey, why not publish it?” so I just published it… and now I’ve been coding for about three years!
How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? In our school, they gave us a tutorial, like how to do this and how to do that. So, that gave us pretty much almost everything about coding with Tynker.
How have your coding skills improved since you started using Tynker? Variables! Before, I just wanted to do stuff like attack somebody, but I didn’t know how to do it. But then when I learned Tynker at school, I knew how to do more stuff!
How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? I was surprised because in one day it had like 10,000 views and it said it was featured I was like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know it was getting big!”
L’aventure de la patate
What is your favorite project you’ve made so far and what do you like about it? I’ve only actually made one project, the school project. But what I like about it is that I made a map with levels and I’m pretty proud of that because I really didn’t know how to do that!
How do you get inspiration for your projects? Well when I play video games, I just think that I could use that. Like, if there’s a map I say, “I could use that in my game,” and if there’s a cool boss level I say, “I could also use that!”
Why do you like to code? Well, I like it because it’s not too complicated and it’s easy to learn. And I like that there’s a section for each block. And if you don’t find a block, I like how you can research it!
What is your favorite way to use code? I like variables! I use them a lot because, before I didn’t use a lot of them but then I realized that resolved lots of my problems, like if I wanted to do something I could just use variables!
What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? Well, I finished it, and then I showed it to my class. Then I realized that other people in my class were publishing games so I said, “Why not publish mine?” So, I published it, and it started getting lots of views!
What are you planning to make next? It’s not complete yet, but maybe a game where there’s creatures that are coming to eat you and you have to teleport without having them touch you!
What’s the best thing about Tynker? I like that you could publish games, so, anybody could see your game and they can like it. That’s really cool! I like publishing games!
How do you think learning to code has prepared you for the future? I still want to become a programmer, so now I know the general idea of what coding is and how it works!
Do you think other kids should try coding? It depends on what they like, if they’re on their computer a lot, I think they should so they could actually create their own game.
What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker? I would tell them to go step by step with the easiest thing. First, how to just move a character, and then when you tap a character, what happens, and then start doing more complicated stuff like levels and then attacking characters, and then maybe having special abilities. Just step by step!
Yosef, Adel’s dad, joined us to speak about Adel’s coding experiences on Tynker and how he feels about him learning to code. “Adel is very interested in coding and because of that he chose to participate in coding programs in his school and he’s enjoying it a lot,” Yosef said. “When I see him working on it, I feel he’s happy, he’s enjoying it, it’s not like a duty to do, it’s really like a game. Yeah, He’s saying that he wants to be a programmer, it’s his dream of the future!”
Although Yosef doesn’t code, he supports Adel any way that he can. “I suppose that I cannot support him technically because I don’t know how, but usually when he tells me he needs some research or things like that, I can help him with that,” Yosef said. “The coding helps teach him how to think with computer stuff in how to think logically in what he’s doing.”
Yosef is aware of other benefits to coding: “I think the skills, because Adel likes math, I think what helps him is really helping him in understanding even the difficult stuff. Like how to find a way to resolve problems, that’s what I feel is helping him.”
Yosef mentioned that Adel would like to learn Python and feels that he is well-equipped to do so since he is learning with Tynker. He knows that the future is bright with Adel and that the most important thing is that he’s enjoying what he is doing.
We want to thank Adel and Yosef for taking the time to speak with us and discuss their experience with Tynker! We look forward to more projects from Adel! Happy coding!
