forgive me if this is something covered before but I'd like to contrast two opposite ways of teaching a language
What i mean is to teach something like python, you can go through the rigorous language elements (which can be pretty boring) and build up your skills to the level that you can program. This I would call a bottom up style. The other approach is you pick a problem in the field of your students (in my case astronomy, so my example may not work for biology students), and disect it and teach them the language elements as you go. I would call this top down. Has this approach been tried and has it been found at least equally good? Of course the huge drawback is that it only applies to a small group of students. I'm curious to try this. - peter _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
