What software to help a 9 year old learn

For learning web design

[vordmeister]

I have a 9 year old niece who is being encouraged by my sister to learn web design. So far she has found some online html creators, but they seem complicated and the code is full of javascript so while she gets something on the screen quickly but they are maybe not so great for learning.

How would you teach your 9 year old to code?

I could offer some web space and I think a WYSIWYG editor with the code visible and editable would probably be useful. Anyone have ideas or software recommendations?

[NickMNS]

I have a 9 year old and a 6 year old. I would not teach them "web design", I would rather teach them to "code". The most important thing is for them to learn the basics of coding. How to break down problems into parts and then solve each block and them bring all back together. The best resource for this is a software called "Scratch", it was created and is hosted by MIT and is free. Best of all it is in safe environment designed for kids. [scratch.mit.edu....]

Another cool resource for teaching kids is Lego Mindstorms, which is Lego's programmable/robotic kit for kids. There is an educational version used by schools, or the commercial version. Both are great, the commercial version is more showy with a variety of "cool" projects like creating a programmable snake among others.

[lucy24]

How would you teach your 9 year old to code?

Give her a text editor with an HTML Preview function. Let her see the magic of this text leads to that visible result. And then show her the View Source function in your browser, so she can see that what she is doing is exactly what “real” websites are doing.

[tangor]

^^^^ Notepad++ (free) and any browser you have. Start with "Hello World!" and go from there. (Windows based editor with color coded tagging ... pretty sure there is a Mac version of same out there).

Like any language, coding web starts with the ABC's.

There really are no shortcuts. Any "teaching tool" that says they can do that without going through the basics are either charlatans or cut and paste bandits. This can only result in the kiddies having to dig themselves out of a hole at a later date.

[vordmeister]

Thanks. She was playing with Scratch at Christmas and doing well, then she decided she wanted to make a game! The html5 games tutorial at W3 schools was really good and she managed to change the colours to her liking, play with speeds and turn off the die function. :-)

An HTML editor with preview sounds ideal. I'll have to look around I would find one handy too - I've been using a 2002 version of Dreamweaver as a text editor but it doesn't know what to do with modern CSS.

[mack]

Glad you are supporting here along the way. We were all there at one point. I think if anything the young ones have it even harder than we did. Mobile first and responsive design is yet another aspect that newcomers need to learn.

I think sticking with a text-based editor and a browser is the way to go. Focus on structure, not just a single page. Get to know how pages link together to create sites. Then start trying to introduce her to dynamic content. If she has a grasp of HTML, then CSS then an understanding of how dynamic content works she will be well on her way.

The HTML 5 games will also help a lot because that's one aspect where the content is constantly being updated. If she can master that a web page will be a piece of cake.

Mack.