About two years ago, I was responsible for the curriculum of a number of after-school "learn programming" classes for kids aged 11-14 (Canadian grades 6-8), and we used a slightly older version of light-bot as one of our teaching tools, among others.
After using light-bot as a central piece of the first classes we ran, I decided to make less use of it, because it had significant usability issues for the kids. The awkward click-targets and instruction management were very difficult for the kids, who wanted to experiment and change the order of their bot programs frequently. I'm very glad to see that that's one of the biggest improvements in this version of light-bot: instructions highlight when you mouse over them, clicking them removes them/adds them immediately, the position they will end up in when you release a drag is highlighted, etc. Great work on that! Starting with just enough instructions and slots to demonstrate the direction of flow is also a good move.
There are a few other issues that seem to have popped up: there are so many buttons on the relatively small screen that at any point, it can be difficult to tell what to push next. What do >> and >>> mean to an 11-year-old, or < vs a wraparound back arrow?
I haven't tested this version (I no longer teach those classes), but I can imagine kids clicking arbitrarily around until things move forward without them quite understanding why or whether they were successful, or just being paralysed by not being sure what to do. That paralysis was very common for us, and it sometimes took a lot of encouragement to get kids to just play around and try whatever came to mind.
Regardless, I think light-bot is fun, challenging, feels good to beat, and helps to familiarize kids with step-by-step operations and looping structures especially. Procedures often required some extra conceptual explanation, but also get a good treatment. Glad to see it being updated and promoted!
I used the hour of code version of light-bot on the first day of a 5 day intensive programming course for 11-14 year olds to get them exposed to programming concepts. It worked great - we graduated from it to other content after a few hours with it but it was a great introduction to programming for the kids.
After using light-bot as a central piece of the first classes we ran, I decided to make less use of it, because it had significant usability issues for the kids. The awkward click-targets and instruction management were very difficult for the kids, who wanted to experiment and change the order of their bot programs frequently. I'm very glad to see that that's one of the biggest improvements in this version of light-bot: instructions highlight when you mouse over them, clicking them removes them/adds them immediately, the position they will end up in when you release a drag is highlighted, etc. Great work on that! Starting with just enough instructions and slots to demonstrate the direction of flow is also a good move.
There are a few other issues that seem to have popped up: there are so many buttons on the relatively small screen that at any point, it can be difficult to tell what to push next. What do >> and >>> mean to an 11-year-old, or < vs a wraparound back arrow?
I haven't tested this version (I no longer teach those classes), but I can imagine kids clicking arbitrarily around until things move forward without them quite understanding why or whether they were successful, or just being paralysed by not being sure what to do. That paralysis was very common for us, and it sometimes took a lot of encouragement to get kids to just play around and try whatever came to mind.
Regardless, I think light-bot is fun, challenging, feels good to beat, and helps to familiarize kids with step-by-step operations and looping structures especially. Procedures often required some extra conceptual explanation, but also get a good treatment. Glad to see it being updated and promoted!