> Any kind of comments would be appreciated, especially as I am thinking > of writing a rur-ple lesson using this approach :-) > André > ====================
I really like this kind of thing André. One thing I like is the visual imagination is engaged (avenues, obstacles) and yet the code and evaluation loop are entirely lexical. This is more like reading a book (without pictures even), which is what children are learning to appreciate (we hope): scanning typography while using their imaginations at the same time. Those of us heavily into TV as a medium don't want to lose or undermine that skill. The fact that you actually *do* move to visual animations later, using the facilities of wx, is very good as well. Switching between modes is valid, and we're dealing with TV generations who hunger for more visual stimuli. I often think education is a travesty because we build visual literacy through television and then set up our classrooms to fight or ignore that literacy, going only for chalk boards and slow talking. Switching between modes is key. It restores faith among students that we recognize all their modes / talents and plan to reinforce across the spectrum. Cartoons are not evil, but neither is reading and imagining (with few if any visual aids). In sum, I think it's OK to teach the traditional read/imagine mode ONLY IF we acknowledge and respect the TV and audio modes they've learned from multi-media. I am very much in favor of teaching multi-track editing as a part of regular schooling (lots about this in my blogs). More to the details of your code: a technique I use sometimes is to start with a simple Monkey (or let's say Robot in this case) and evolve it through subclassing. In other words, as I add new capabilities, I don't show a more and more complicated Robot. Rather, I show more and more descendents, in an inheritance chain, each generation adding to and/or modifying the behavior of ancestor robots. There's an implicit message here, that the children may be more capable than the adults. That reflects my belief system: that humans are still on a learning curve and our children *are* more generally adapted and competent to live in the future than we are, in the natural course of things. That doesn't mean they should disrespect us (we have much more experience). It does mean we should eagerly share power. Too much talk today, on adult math teacher lists, is about how "the kids today" are dumber and/or less qualified than we were or are. This is all a prelude / setup for not turning over significant responsibility to younger people. Because our traditional school system has not made sophisticated use of TV or multimedia (which young people grew up on), I tend to side with them and make it part of my business to boost their power and authority, in part by taking their talents and powers seriously. Related blog post: http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2006/02/boosting-bandwidth.html Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig