What does an economist do when she wants to understand complex economical systems? She programs a model. What does a physicist do to understand thermodynamics? Same. So yes, there is something special about programming: its a medium which allows us to play with ideas. In one of the papers I mentioned, we argue that programming is a medium which affords 'mathematical narrative', and given the epistemic powers of narrative - has a great potential for learning mathematics.
That's not to say that I see any magical virtues in learning programming for its own sake. Its fun, which would be enough for me, but in itself will, of course, have zero effect. Its a question of what you do with it. As for the comparative study (programming vs. Latin), I look forward to read your report. - Yishay On 01/08/07, Ruven E Brooks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Yes, I am really asking the question, why try to teach children > programming? > The place where Latin comes in is because Latin was taught in schools > centuries after > it had any major value in every day life. The argument for doing so was > because it "disciplined the mind." > > > http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-6773(190504)13%3A4%3C281%3AASIFD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0<http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-6773%28190504%2913%3A4%3C281%3AASIFD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0> > > Walter Milner questions, as do I, whether there is any general benefit in > other areas to teaching programming. > Yishay Mor gives some references to work that shows that doing programming > exercises can help children learn > mathematics. Is that because there's something special about programming > or just because it meant children > were spending extra time on mathematics? I would very much like to have > seen a control condition in which, > instead of learning ToonTalk, children learned Latin by studying texts > about motion and sequences. I wonder > whether they might have done even better on the mathematics than the > ToonTalk group. > > Ruven Brooks > > > > *Walter Milner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>* > Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > 08/01/2007 03:43 AM > To > discuss@ppig.org cc > > Subject > FW: PPIG discuss: teaching kids to program > > > > > > > Is this asking WHY try to teach children programming? > > A possible answer would be that it does something which has a positive > transfer to other areas - and that there is no evidence that it does, or > > It produces better commercial programmers whne they grow up - again no > evidence > > I'm not sure where the Latin comes in, unless the suggestion is that > trying to handle challenging natural language structures enhances the > ability to deal with formal language constructs such as a computer program? > There is evidence that bilingual or multilingual children on average do > better educationally than others. > > ------------------------------ > *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf > Of *Ruven E Brooks* > Sent:* 31 July 2007 16:30* > To:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject:* RE: PPIG discuss: teaching kids to program > > > Can anyone point me to any research results that show that teaching kids > to program has any transfer to other areas? > Last I followed this kind of thing, the results were negative - teaching > programming doesn't have any more of > a beneficial effect on, say, mathematics than time spent directly on math. > > Can anyone point me to any research that shows that kids who learn > programming are better at it than those who > learn it later, after you control for personality/apptitude effects? > > Last, but not least, what is the effect of learning Latin on learning to > program? > > Ruven Brooks > > > > *"Guzdial, Mark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>* > Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > 07/31/2007 09:52 AM > > To > "Enda Dunican" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, discuss@ppig.org cc > > Subject > RE: PPIG discuss: teaching kids to program > > > > > > > > > We're seeing a lot of use of both Alice and the new MIT Scratch with > children. We're successfully using Python for media computation with > children as young as 11 years old. > > Mark > > -- ___________________________ Yishay Mor, Researcher, London Knowledge Lab http://www.lkl.ac.uk/people/mor.html http://yishaym.wordpress.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/yishaymor http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=yishaym%40gmail.com +44-20-78378888 x5737
