Grampy is learning to code with Bitsbox along with his grandson.
8-year-old Liam.
After spending his career in the technology world and dabbling in bits of HTML, he picked Bitsbox to help his grandson learn to code. As he says, "I'm learning to code using Bitsbox also so I can help Liam with the contents and new concepts in each month's Bitsbox package. And it turns out I'm having a LOT of fun myself doing it :-)"
We asked Grampy where he gets his app ideas from, and he says he's inspired by the challenge apps Bitsbox provides, but also what Liam is learning in school: "What Liam is studying in school triggers other ideas." This metric conversion app was created since Liam's second grade class was learning the metric system, and also to help him prep for a summer in Canada!
Grampy also likes to get Liam excited by building apps inspired by Liam's hobbies: "his extracurricular activities, e.g., guitar lessons, surface other areas of coding interest, e.g., play music notes." Check out this awesome music note app here: https://bitsbox.com/run.html?0v5tt.
As you can see, Grampy's apps have lots of comments to help Liam understand the code and what each line does. Grampy creates a printout of the code so they can walk through each line together, and Liam can make notes and leave questions as he has them.
How to copy your Bitsbox code.
Grampy's advice to other grandparents interested in learning to code with their grandkids? "The key for me is to review ahead of time what's going to be in the package Liam will receive. [Bitsbox makes] that easy by sending me an email ahead of time with a link to an electronic pdf version of the package. I can get a jump start on the nature of the apps, how they work, key new concepts, etc. and prepare some discussion points to use with Liam. He thinks I'm really smart! I'm not, I'm just prepared ;-)"
Want to try to code your own app like Grampy? Check out our Sample PDF and see if you might just want to learn to code with your grandkids, too.
