> Is the idea to teach programming? That seems wrong for any inclusive > curriculum. Programming-the-skill will never be relevant to most of > these children. As a way of teaching a larger set of ideas about > abstraction, I think programming is a great medium. But it's only a > useful skill for a small set of students.
The idea is to teach a new kind of fluency that accommodates the technologies likely to make the most difference in a developing world context. Cheap hardware and free software make for a new kind of analytic thinking skills delivery system, a new kind of playground if you will. Not just your daddy's swings and slides any more. So we approach a coding language much as we approach a math notation today, complete with greek letters and canned functions. It's a new way of covering a lot of familiar ground, while meanwhile roping in a lot more contemporary information, relating to real world challenges on the ground. > One thing that I think Logo gets really right is the insistence > (cultural as much as anything) that it isn't a language for teaching > programming, it's for teaching *with* programming. > Yes, this is "programming to learn" more than "learning to program". We'll develop our analytical skills by practicing OO-style thinking, meaning a diagrammatic breakup of a problem domain into main players and their relationships, a kind of analysis needed in advance of any coding. How far into working code we go will depend on the context, but some practice in going all the way will be necessary, because students want that kind of feedback as a measure of mastery. If your code doesn't actually work, what fun is that? Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
