* I am really asking the question, why try to teach children programming?
I really liked this question. Perhaps another way of tacking it might be to ask, 'why do we teach the subjects that we choose to teach children?' The main subjects (from my school days) include maths, language(s), literature, sciences (physics, chemistry), and humanities. What is so special about maths? Fearing stating the obvious, it allowed me to discover (and understand) other phenomena, especially during my physics and electronics classes (much of which I have sadly forgotten). A similar argument could be said about language classes - it gave me the vocabulary to learn the other humanities and literature subjects. These subjects were the fundamental tools that facilitated the further discovery of other things. One thing that struck me about Logo is that it theoretically (I chose that word carefully) facilitated the discovery of mathematical ideas and concepts in a 'fun' way. I agree that 'what you do with it' is important but I think what you might be able to 'discover' (or develop) from it is also important. Perhaps when it comes to tools like lego mindstorms discovering how a sensor might be accessed by code may not be as important as discovering new ways to communicate amongst a group of peers. (I've found the following Wikipedia link that was interesting and there was a whole bunch of other languages that I haven't heard of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_programming_language ) Chris ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Yishay Mor Sent: 01 August 2007 15:49 To: Ruven E Brooks Cc: discuss@ppig.org Subject: Re: FW: PPIG discuss: teaching kids to program 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] <mailto:[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%3 E2.0.CO%3B2-0 <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-6773%28190504%2913%3A4%3C281%3AAS IFD%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] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ] On Behalf Of Ruven E Brooks Sent: 31 July 2007 16:30 To: discuss@ppig.org 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
