As a practicing computing teacher also undertaking research into the topic of children
and programming I was hoping for some views on this topic.
It seems to me that programming has slowly been removed from the school syllabus since
the days of Mindstorms and logo excitement. This may be due to the research never
concluding that learning to program helped children, or something to do with the
difficulties of teaching programming to children, or the changing of computing at
schools to teach how to use applications like Word rather than learn about the
computer/tool they are using and how it works.
Some queries :
Do you feel programming should be taught to children in some way whilst they are at
school ?
(or should it be done at out of school clubs)
Should children gain an understanding of how a computer works at school and perhaps
master part of it rather than just become users of software ?
If you were taught programming at school did it help ?? or do most people learn from
some initial feeder and then tinkering at home rather than a formal instruction course
(the research also indicates that universities also have problems teaching programming
- perhaps if it was introduced in a controlled way in schools this might help ...)
I don't want to, currently, get into what language children should use as that seems a
topic where everybody has their own point of view !
Any viewpoints gratefully received. (or links to research documents )
Thanks,
Martyn Colliver (Warwick School)
