[olivierlacan]

I learned basic electric circuitry in primary school in basically the same context (extra-curricular activity the hour after regular classes end, once a week) and it was great.

We learned how to solder stuff on circuit boards (yes, soldering irons, yes some kids burned themselves, big whoop), how to use glue guns (again, I burned myself a bit, nothing serious) to put components together when assembling basic machines.

Can you even imagine the kind of amazing physical computing kids could be doing with Arduino and Raspberry Pi these days. HTML & CSS seem like a no brainer. I learned those in a "Technology" (in regular class hours) during my last year of middle school (again, in Paris).

If it weren't for a sympathetic instructor who told us to do make a website using FrontPage on anything we were passionate about (RTS for me at the time) I'm not sure I'd be a web developer today. I think these kinds of a programs are a great first steps to get kids excited about the web and/or basic languages before middle school and high school classes (in our out of class schedule) provide more thorough or complex introductions to programming proper.