When I was quite young, I was lucky enough to live in a house with an early computer. To be specific, our family had the TI-99 4A. It was on that machine that I did some of my first tinkering with the BASIC computer language. But before even that, I got my first taste of "programming" a computer through a quirky little game called Story Machine.

The game consisted of writing little sets of commands that were then animated for your viewing pleasure. As silly as the whole thing was, it was mesmerizing to be able to tell the machine what to do and have it obey your commands. In retrospect, it was what kindled my interest in computers and programming. It makes a lot of sense to me then, to see the development of education technology to spark interest in programming and logic through animation and games. When I taught middle school, I was a big proponent of Scratch, a drag and drop coding tool that taught logic as you invented little animations. More recently I have come across Tynker which is a browser-based descendant of the scratch concept. Upon first exploration it also seems to have some incredible possibilities for engaging the logical mind in an exciting way.

The tools get better but the lesson remains, get the kids to start exploring and the learning will come naturally!