Motherboard Books {A Review}

Easy to follow e-book aimed at teaching children how to make a webpage

Let's Make a Webpage

The Essentials - What you need to know

• Company: Motherboard Books
• Let's Make a Webpage
• Age Range: 8 - 14
• An e-book in PDF form.  You must download a free trial version of the website designer software, CoffeeCup.  
• $19.95

The Review

Let's Make a Webpage is a 60 page e-book in pdf file form.    The tagline on the book reads "The Computer Lady from MotherboardBooks.com takes you by the hand and shows you how".  I think that is an apt description of the book.  Written for children ages 8 to 14, with the idea that kids older than 10 can do it by themselves, younger children with an adult beside them.  

Looking at the chapters, the book does what it says it is going to do, lead you through the process of making a webpage, one step at a time.  I love at the end of the book where the author, Phyllis Wheeler, challenges the reader to go through the book and make another website, and another.  Zippy chose to interview herself for her webpage.

We downloaded the 28 day free trial version of  CoffeeCup, the website designer software, as the book instructed.  Essentially CoffeeCup writes the html code that is required to make a website.  One section I really liked was where Phyllis, takes the reader out of CoffeeCup to show them the actual code in Notebook.  CoffeeCup is a very intuitive environment to navigate, with drag and drop technology.  I skimmed through the book and played around with it a little.  It was fun.

The book focuses on the creative aspect of making a website, explaining how to manipulate text, background color, sound, photos, and animations.  Although it is strongly creative oriented it does not skimp on the technical aspects.  I like that she explains about html code, how the internet works, and ftp for uploading the finished product to the web.  There are two appendices at the end of the book that are a bit more techy than the rest of the book.  One deals with uploading to the web and hosting.  It also talks briefly how to proceed without CoffeeCup, so the book is still relevant after the free trial version is expired.  The second appendix is about troubleshooting.   

Zippy went through the book by herself with just a little help from me.  She enjoyed the straightforward, simple, writing and step by step process.  She also liked the freedom to be creative with her website.

Computer Science For Kids {A Review}

A step by step guide to computer programming success for kids.

Computer Science for Kids

The Essentials - What you need to know about the product we are reviewing:

• Company:  Computer Science for Kids 
• Product:  Computer Bible Games for Microsoft Small Basic 
• Digital Downloaded e-book
• Age Range: 10+
• Price: $34.95

The Review:

This digitally downloaded e-book teaches students, step by step, how to use the Microsoft Small Basic computer language. The end goal is to program seven different Bible story inspired games. The product is downloaded in a zip file.  Each class/chapter is its own Microsoft Word document.  It also comes with several Small Basic programs which are used in the course.  It is necessary to download Microsoft Small Basic, a free program.  The steps to download the program are part of the first chapter.

This e-book eases the student into the language.  Each chapter begins with a preview/review paragraph.  The first chapter is a thorough introduction to the topic, including why one should learn a computer language, why one should learn Small Basic, a nice little history of computers, and finally, installing and understanding the Small Basic environment.

The second the third chapters begin the real work.  The components of the language are explained, then the student uses that information to complete an exercise.  The author uses bold print to emphasize important vocabulary and there are lots of screen shots to illustrate. I really love that the author takes the approach of learning a foreign language.  He mentions that we are "talking to the computer in its language" to get it to do what we want it to do. I also love that he takes time to clearly explain complicated concepts using simple language.

Each chapter takes about 3-6 hours to complete, according to the book, and I would say this is right on target.  I had Zippy work on this for 30 minutes per day, most days.  This helped her to not be overwhelmed by the amount of information in each chapter.  If she was struggling with something she could let it go and come back to it the next day.   Because of the nature of computer programming, every assignment has to be perfect, or the program just doesn't' work. This was good for Zippy to understand that there is a clear, logical path to success with computer programming.

I also tried my hand with the Small Basic.  It was a very interesting experience.  I've played around with HTML with this blog, but never programmed anything.  One of the things I learned doing Computer Science for Kids, is that computers are very good at, well, computing.  There is math, and the course explains how to do the math.  Mostly it is basic concepts, but within the actual programming there are some very sophisticated concepts that used words from math, like variable.  However because the author takes such time and effort to explain everything, those concepts go from a little intimidating to understandable.

I would definitely recommend this course for any Middle School or High School student looking to experience the world of Computer Programming.  I would also highly recommend this for any beginning adult who would like to try their hand at something new.