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Good tips. I don't think I will have available resources for demos -- i.e. this is a generic "career day" talk, not something for computer class. So I may be limited to what I can show on an iPad.

I found some cool sites/apps for making games and building models:

http://scratch.mit.edu/

http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

http://gamestarmechanic.com/

From these sites:

http://techkimgames.blogspot.com/p/game-tools.html

http://www.nanny.net/blog/10-ways-to-teach-young-kids-to-wri...

Not sure how much I can demo of these, but at the very least, can talk about them and send them home w/ a URL of a site that I'll throw up to post and summarize these URLs.

1 comments

I wouldn't mind seeing a live demo with Scratch if you can get your hands on a projector. It's a bit hands on but I think it's your best bet.

What I would do is, I would spend 5min giving a brief overview of what you do, then 25 minutes doing a live demo with Scratch.

You can have a basic plan in mind and then call on random kids. Ask them stuff like "ok, we have this person... should we make him jump up and down?", stuff like that.

Then go through the rules of what needs to happen to make it jump and down and eventually close the session tying in that you give a computer instructions to create things and solve problems, etc..

If done well I think you could motivate them.