On 5/10/05, André Roberge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Arthur wrote: > > > >>Behalf Of Kirby Urner > >>Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] K-16 CS/math hybrid > > > > > >>Children understand about conventions. I draw an invisible line on the > >>car > >>seat: sister stays on her side, I stay on mine. But there's no electric > >>fence (much as we might wish there to be). Java provides electric fences. > >>Python provides lines in the sand. Children know the difference. > > > > > > If someone insisted on wasting their time on designing a programming > > language for children, I would strongly recommend them limiting its options > > - certainly to the extent that it would have no interest to an adult, being > > adult. > > > I happen to subscribe to the philosophy of giving children a "small" > language to play with ... but try to give them easy means to extend the > artificial limits given to them as they are ready to do so. > > Children learn to speak (human languages) with a few "baby" words, and a > very simplified if not absent grammar. Parents often interact verbally > with their children in a similar way at a young age. Soon, the > communication skills of the children improve, and the parents keep > giving them more to learn. > > Never is a line drawn on the sand per se. > > And when it comes to computer language, rather than speaking in the > abstract: > > There are quite a few programming 'language' that were designed for > children. Take logo, turtle graphics, etc. > Richard Pattis (who indirectly inspired me) introduced a subset of > Pascal together with a few high-level instructions given to a robot > as a means of introducing computer programming. > > I personally subscribe to a similar philosophy, but with no artificial > boundary enforced. > > Start small, but give them the chance to expand beyond what you might > think is their limit. They might surprise you. > > André > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >
>>> import turtle >>> dir(turtle) ['Error', 'Pen', 'RawPen', 'Tkinter', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '_canvas', '_getpen', '_pen', '_root', 'acos', 'asin', 'atan', 'atan2', 'backward', 'ceil', 'circle', 'clear', 'color', 'cos', 'cosh', 'degrees', 'demo', 'down', 'e', 'exp', 'fabs', 'fill', 'floor', 'fmod', 'forward', 'frexp', 'goto', 'heading', 'hypot', 'ldexp', 'left', 'log', 'log10', 'modf', 'pi', 'position', 'pow', 'radians', 'reset', 'right', 'setheading', 'setx', 'sety', 'sin', 'sinh', 'sqrt', 'tan', 'tanh', 'tracer', 'up', 'width', 'window_height', 'window_width', 'write'] >>> _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
