On 2/8/07, Andy Judkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I teach a "serious computer literacy" course to 10th graders. The course > covers some things about how hardware works, how the internet works, what > operating systems do, etc. The last part is a 3-4 week intro to Python > programming. I've encountered some interesting student behavior and I'm > curious to know how those of you who are better and more experienced > teachers would suggest handling it. > > Specifically, I've found that many kids seem to have a natural ability to > use > recursion, but they don't realize that they're doing it, and they don't > understand the implications. [snip]. But they don't have any clue that > there's > a call stack involved, or that someday this could get them in trouble. I > shudder > to think about the blank looks that I will get if I try to explain why it > could be a problem. So far, I've handled it by pointing out "that's > recursion, > you can do that but there's a little more to it and if you're interested, > ask me or look into it further on your own." I guess that lets me off the > hook > but it doesn't feel quite right. Other options I can think of are: > 1) try to explain it and lose most of the class > 2) just say "I don't allow it, I have a good reason, let me know if you want > an > explanation" > Neither of these feels quite right, either. These are bright kids but they > have > great difficulty understanding things like function parameters and return > values, > and I really think recursion is beyond them at this point. > > Anybody have any suggestions or similar experiences?
No experience, but you may want to have a look at a little video that I did a while ago on the topic of recursion: http://showmedo.com/videos/video?name=rurple2_recursion_andreR&fromSeriesID=15 (Note that I have found since that the tower of Hanoi can be solved fairly simply using iteration.) André > > Thanks, > Andy Judkis > Academy of Allied Health and Science > Neptune, NJ > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig