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Tuesday 16 December 2014

#Ad Would Your Child Enjoy Learning Tech Skills? Free Online Kids Programming Courses From Pluralsight!

Kawartha Lakes Mums Readers Did You Know Plural Sight Offers Free Online Kids Tech Courses? 

Pluralsight, dedicated to providing computer science education since 2004 for businesses, schools, and individuals;  in addition to a tonne of courses for adults, offers several free online tech courses for children. PLUS adults can  enrol for a free 14 day trial. Pluralsight also offers teaching opportunities that may interest our readers.
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What free online programming courses could your children take from Pluralsight?
Glad you asked

Pluralsight Free Online Computing Courses for Children

Pluralsight offers computer learning solutions for businesses and schools, as well as individuals. Pluralsight offers a free 10 Day trial, and also some free online courses for teaching children computer programming basics.
While the Pluralsight free programs for teaching children programming are aimed at kids, some are also useful introductory courses for adults as well.
When I first learned programming eons ago, we saved programs on audio tape and programmed in machine language  - a series of 1's and 0's. Programming is much more accessible today, and Pluralsight instructors have created free courses aimed at parents and children of varying ages and abilities. 
Here's My 2 Cents on the Pluralsight Online Courses for Teaching Children Programming:

Start Learn to program: Kodu Kingdom Defense 

Learning Programming with Kodu- Free Kids Computing Course
Have you played Farmville or a similar game? If so, you'll be comfortable guiding your child through this free online Kodu programming course by Pluralsight. Kodu lets kids create games using a simple visual programming language using either an XBox or Desktop Computer. This is one of the most visual free kids computing courses offered by Pluralsight, making it accessible to younger students with parental guidance. In this course, kids will use Kodu Game Lab to learn how to program a tower defense-style action game that is able to run on both PC and Xbox.
Basic HTML for Kids

Basic HTML for Kids - Free Pluralsight Kids Programming Course
Jill Gunderson, the course instructor of Basic HTML for Kids, has integrated a mischievous cartoon character, "Sally" into the lessons which makes the course entertaining, and approachable. Jill also compares programming to making a lunch, something in children's everyday life. In this course, kids will learn the basics of HTML, the publishing language of the web. Step-by-step demos will show them how to build a site, including how to utilize the most common tags used in HTML5. Find out more about Basic HTML for Kids.
Start Making Games With Hopscotch
Making Games With Hopscotch - Pluralsight Free Course for Children
This course contains a good introduction to the importance of Computer Science. This course introduces kids, and the young at heart, to programming concepts while making a fun interactive game using the Hopscotch app for iOS. Learn more about Making Games with Hopscotch
Start Learning to Build Apps with App Inventor 
Free App Inventor Course on Pluralsight - Tweens and Up
This Free App Inventor course teaches tweens and up how to use MIT's App Inventor to create four functional apps, upload them to the Google Play Store, while learning some basic programming concepts along the way. What is App Inventor? App Inventor allows kids to create and publish Android applications without writing a line of code. It's a gentle introduction to programming in a language like Java, and they'll have fun creating real applications as they learn. The course begins with creating a number guessing game, then advances to creating a drawing app, creating a Role PLaying Game character, and even creating a version of Angry Birds called Angry Dolphins. Find out more about the free Pluralsight App Inventor Course.

Start Learning to Program with Scratch 
Learning Programming with Scratch - Free Pluralsight Teaching Children Programming Course
This course is a good introduction for parents and teachers to Scratch. Scratch teaches the general skills and principles to be successful in just about any programming language, yet it's fun and intuitive. Scratch was designed to teach children the basics of programming in a visual way.  While Scratch allows kids to visually grasp the basics of how programming languages work, to create fun computer games, this course taught by a University Professor, has vocabulary, and a teaching method, aimed at teens and up. Although Scratch 2.0 has been available for awhile, Scratch 1.4 is still available for download and can be used on a wide variety of computer systems including Windows and Mac.Find  out more about the free Pluralsight Children's Course Teaching  Programming with Scratch.

Teaching Kids to Program 
Teaching Kids to Program Using C# - Free Pluralsight Course
Do you know how to program using C#?  This course was designed by Pluralsight authors to teach their own children the basics of programming. Now you can use Visual Studio to teach your own kids to program in C# and learn about objects, methods, variables and loops in a fun and creative way. The instructors use role play to demonstrate how to teach C# programming integrating a discovery method to make lessons more engaging.This course assumes the parent is a C# programmer and is aimed at parents or teachers of children age 10 and up.Find out more about the free Pluralsight course teaching Kids to Program in C#.

Teaching Opportunities with Pluralsight

What does it take to become a Pluralsight author?
 Aaron Skonnard, one of their founders and CEO explains: “We want to work with authors who absolutely love helping others. We look for the best communicators and presenters in the business, which explains why we’re constantly scouring conferences and getting to know the best speakers. We look for authors who believe in the power of community, mentoring and giving back.” 
 What sort of course topics are of interest to Pluralsight?  If you believe what you have to share can positively impact the career of a software developer, IT admin or creative pro, they want it in their library.
 How does the authoring process work? Pluralsight uses a collaborative process. Authors work directly with the CCO and content VPs to build curriculum and propose course ideas. As an author, you own the development and production of your course, which allows you to bring your own personality and creativity to your projects. During production, you have the support of a friendly and knowledgeable editor, who will help guide you through the process. You’ll be recording from home and making your own hours, so there’s no travel involved and production deadlines are flexible. Pluralsight does have a professional recording studio at their headquarters, if you’d prefer to record away from home.
What kind of time commitment is involved? It takes about 6-8 weeks on average to record your first course. After two or three courses, some authors cut that time in half. It varies based on the amount of hours spent per week on content creation.
How do you get paid? When you finish the course, you'll be paid a completion payment to compensate you for the work you’ve put into the creation of it. Once your course is published in the library, you'll also receive a royalty payment every quarter for as long as the course is in the library and receives views. Ultimately, it’s up to you and their curriculum team to terminate a course. You’ll be earning residual income the entire lifetime of the course. So how are royalties calculated? Royalties are based on the minutes of view time your course receives during a given month and then divided by the total minutes of viewed content in the library. Pluralsight figures out your contribution to the total revenue. You receive a percentage of that total, based on the payment option you chose when contracting the course. Keep in mind, each course is contracted individually. You can tailor the payment option for every course. Interested? Sign up for a free 10 Day Trial and see how others have created courses for Pluralsight. It may get your creative ideas flowing.
About PluralSight
Pluralsight's mission has been presenting hard core education since they opened their doors in 2004 as a provider of classroom-based training for developers. In December 2014 Pluralsight, worked together with Utah schools to present Computing Week and the Hour of Code project.
Since taking their developer training online,in 2008 their course offerings have grown by leaps and bounds.. At the start of 2013, Pluralsight had about 400 developer courses, authored by 200 of the industry’s top experts. As the needs of their subscribers shifted, with more and more people taking on hybrid roles and requiring diverse skillsets, they took $27.5 M in Series A funding to grow at an accelerated rate. In the course of three months that year, Pluralsight acquired three companies, PeepCode, TrainSignal and Tekpub, to broaden theirr library with high-quality open source and IT admin courses. In 2014, they announced their largest acquisition yet. . Today, with the addition of Digital-Tutors’ 1,500+ creative courses to their offerings, Pluralsight has grown to more than 600 authors and 3,000 courses (and counting). Pluralsight is making professional training accessible for people around the world, and they can’t get enough of it.

What do you think of the Free Children's Computer Programming courses on Pluralsight?
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1 comment:

  1. Do you know someone who could use this info? Please pass it on!

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