Today Google has inserted an interactive doodle on its home page, which replaces the usual search engine logo, to introduce and celebrate programming languages for children, about fifty years after their introduction. Programming languages for children allow children to learn with easy and intuitive systems to program computers, and to understand how algorithms work and inserting instructions into an application. The doodle shows some of the principles behind these programming languages: it is a kind of game at levels of increasing difficulty, at the beginning of which you have to give a series of instructions to a rabbit to make it reach a carrot placed at the end of the scenario. . The creation of the doodle is part of the initiatives for the “Computer Science Education Week” (CSEdWeek), organized all over the world to involve children in the study and use of programming languages.
It may seem surprising that programming languages for children have been around for a long time, given that computers have been around for a few decades. Among the first to develop them was Seymour Aubrey Papert, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), considered one of the most important popularizers in the early years of programming. Together with other MIT researchers, Papert created Logo, the first programming system designed for children. It made it possible to establish the movements of a turtle to make it experience various types of experiences, with references to mathematics and science in general. Papert thought that computers could become an essential tool in children's learning: a simple and intuitive code could offer the gateway to the world of computing, which at the time already showed to have enormous potential.
Logo took many years to become a successful initiative and to inspire other university researchers and teachers to develop new programming languages for children. In the sixties the idea was probably considered futuristic and not everyone understood its usefulness, while in the eighties something began to change, thanks to the greater diffusion of personal computers even in the home. New programming systems began to be conceived and disseminated, the evolutions of which are still the basis of the software used by children to learn programming.
One of the most extensive and interesting projects in this area is carried out by Scratch, an initiative also by MIT which involves the use of a very simple system to enter the instructions necessary for programming. A very large community has developed around Scratch which has produced nearly 30 million shared projects. The site also has a version in Italian and is aimed at individual children and teachers, who can experiment with the system and involve their classes. Today's interactive doodle was created by Google in collaboration with Scratch and with Bockly, a Google initiative for programming languages for children for use in schools and beyond. The system is largely based on the programming language developed by Scratch, in order to offer children the opportunity to get to know it and then continue their experiences with the MIT tool, which offers more advanced features.
Papert was convinced that to involve children in programming it was necessary to interest them by focusing on fun and their creative abilities. The idea, realized in part with Logo, was to offer something that was not repulsive or difficult to understand, in order to make learning easier and linked to the direct experimentation of the commands.
The week dedicated to education and information technology follows the same ideas put together about 50 years ago by Papert and his team. In these days millions of children around the world will be able to approach information technology, guided by their parents and teachers. The aim of the initiative, which has been repeated for several years, is to ensure that children become familiar not only with programming languages, but with computer science in general and can better understand how the devices they use every day work. , from computers to tablets. Programming also helps you learn techniques for organizing your work, for planning to-dos, and for arranging commitments and thoughts in your mind based on their importance and priority. In collaboration with the National Interuniversity Consortium for Informatics (CINI), the Italian Ministry of Education in recent years has activated some initiatives to make the use of programming systems for children easier and more accessible. The initiative had some points of excellence, but the lack of resources and funds for the school make its implementation complicated.
