Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Minecraft Mod Design from Youth Digital

I'm curious how often your kids had to contact support. I think the course is really well done, but my kid can't seem to get through many lessons without getting stuck on something and asking me or messaging support. He still really likes it and doesn't seem frustrated. His errors aren't typically with programming per say, but with not copying and pasting something correctly, or importing an item to the wrong location, that sort of thing. He's 9.

My kids, 8 and 12, messaged support independently so I'm not sure how often it was needed. At a guess, maybe once per lesson (that is, 10 times for the course). I took it as a good lesson in self-advocacy. The tutors aren't in on Sundays; since the kids mostly worked on the weekends, that provided enough of an incentive to figure stuff out on their own that I wasn't worried they were using the instructors as a crutch.

DD is 9, I'll ask her. She hasn't asked me for help...which is good because I'd have no idea what she's talking about.

DD9 says that she messages the instructors just to say "hi". Good grief--I told her to stop doing that. I'm not sure how often she is sending them messages for actual help but probably at least once per day (when she's actually doing it).

DD8 has had to contact them once or twice each lesson. She is not too frustrated so far. She thinks it is cool to be able to contact them herself... so, I guess it is giving her another new skill:-)!

That's great My son contacts them too. I had to teach him how to attach the file with his code so that they can look at it and find the error. He got a new game called space engineers that he loves so is taking a bit of a break from the class. It's nice that they have a year to complete it.

That's hilarious and cute. It must be interesting to work there, I bet they get a lot of funny messages. The titles of the messages my son sent are goofy "WHYYYYY JAVA?!!!!" and "JAVA strikes again...".