ASCII Art is the art of creating pictures out of text.
Well begun is half done
Introducing anything new to kids can be tricky because kids these days have a very short attention span. Parents we talk to often tell us that their kids lose interest in anything new after a month or two. Therefore, a child's initiation into anything into anything new is very important and must be carefully planned so that the child stays interested.
Kids really enjoy visual code platforms such as Scratch because they are easy to play around and create code in as well as have virtually no syntax. However, moving into a text-based programming language can be quite overwhelming for a middle or high school student because of the complex syntax. A lot of children we came across tend to lose interest due to the complex syntax of a programming language.
It is therefore, imperative that the journey from visual programming languages to text-based languages is carefully planned.
At CodeTigers, believe ASCII Art is a great way to initiate a child from visual to text based programming languages. We have worked with numerous kids and help them transition smoothly. Our team of educators are possibly the best in India at making this journey for students of all ages. ASCII Art has been around for years now with one of the earliest known examples from Bell Labs in 1966. The original idea behind creating ASCII Art was the lack of graphic ability of early printers. Therefore, characters were used instead of graphic marks.
It does however have another great use which most people are not aware of.
ASCII Art is a brilliant way of introducing Python to kids.
Shared below are some ASCII Art examples of CodeTigers students.
Jasjeet is a student of Class 6 and this is his Helicopter ASCII Art.
Divyanshu is a student of Class 8 and below is his ASCII Art of an Autobot
Saveer is a Class 8 student and this is his attempt at creating a high rise
Aakarsh is a student of Class 9 and this is his astronaut.
Kids love expressing themselves through ASCII Art. This simple artform of converting your keyboard characters into art is a great way to take their first Python lesson.
Encourage your kids to join Python, a wonderful easy to learn programming language with wide ranging applications.