The 3 best apps to teach children coding

Today's children live in a very different world from their parents when they were the same age. Many of the toys they play with are digital and from an early age they start to be in contact with many web services, such as Youtube or Google. It is one thing to know how to use these programs, it's a different thing to understand how the logic behind them works. Today's children need to be able to not only consume this technology, but to understand it and control it. These 3 applications will make learning how to code an exciting adventure.

 

Scratch is perfect to get started with reasoning skills and basic programming that will serve children well no matter what their future occupation is. They will be able to program their own interactive stories, games and animations! Scratch helps them not only how to code but  to think creatively and teamwork. Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge.

Cargo-Bot is a puzzler designed to teach programming. The teacher is a robotic arm, that they will need to move while using code. It's not always easy and some adult assistance might be needed. Scores depend on how well the program runs.

Codecademy is perfect for early teenagers. The application teaches the basic concepts behind the apps and the websites we use every day. Code Hour is the perfect way to get started in programming and a great way to understand concepts that you need every day. Through Codecademy, children as young as 12 can get started in programming languages such as Python, Ruby or HTML.