Re: [racket-users] Getting young children started with Racket

[Matthias Felleisen]

> On Mar 5, 2018, at 4:47 AM, HiPhish  wrote:
> 
> As for Racket, I'm not quite sure. ...
> immutability and functional programming are a bit harder to wrap your mind
> around than the usual way of giving the computer a sequence of instructions to
> follow.

Do you also think that calculating is hard? That using a calculator is hard? 
Kids are bombarded with immutability for 12 years in American schools ..
it’s called mathematics, and most of the math is programming, except that
we don’t do it that way. 

Have you ever thought that programming could reinforce math and math
could directly, without detour reinforce programming? Have thought about
the idea that coding could animate math tremendously and that math 
could power coding beyond the boring ladybug chasing with step-by-step
commands? 

Did you ever consider that a parent may wish to teach a child how to code
but that the child should still be free to become a doctor, journalist, or 
accountant
.. and that the coding lessons should help with all of these professions? 

This is where Racket actually comes from. — Matthias, long live S-expressions 


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Racket Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: [racket-users] Getting young children started with Racket

[Neil Van Dyke]

I think it would be a shame *not* to put many things in front of 
children, during the super-brain-sponge years, as unpressured and 
unstructured play, and see what interests them, and answer their 
questions, and occasionally inject new things they can do with it.


Most programming is too abstract for kids so young, but if they are 
using a PC/tablet, or they see you doing it, they will probably want to 
start playing with it, and making it do things.  You could then load up 
some kind of concrete child-oriented graphic/music platform (maybe from 
Racket, or from Squeak or Scratch), and help them get started playing 
with that.


My non-expert inclination, which I've seen work very well, anecdotally, 
is to let their natural curiosity (what they try to do, what they ask) 
guide things, and occasionally inject a new idea for some thing they 
might want to do but hadn't already discovered on their own.


For example, when a 5yo was playing with my professional DSLR camera, it 
was mostly self-directed play, but, in addition to answering her 
questions as she went, I'd occasionally inject concepts like that she 
could also "make things closer" (focal length), "make some things fuzzy" 
(depth of field), "make the sky blue" and "see through the reflection" 
(polarizer), and let her do everything like lens and filter changes 
(only a little optics damage happened), and let her self-direct whether 
and how she played with all of that.  She was delighted, doing things 
like making her mom fuzzy, and, very quickly, she was integrating 
multiple DSLR mechanics at once, just as play, without being prompted to 
integrate them.


I figure that kids get enough structure in school already, that it's 
safe to focus on self-directed play outside of school, and let the 
experts handle structure for a while.  Though I don't have experience 
with when and how to introduce more structure and push most abstract 
concepts, outside of school.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket 
Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.