[HN Gopher] How to teach programming and other things (2019) [vi... ___________________________________________________________________ How to teach programming and other things (2019) [video] Author : tosh Score : 20 points Date : 2021-08-13 11:48 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com) | echelon wrote: | I wish subjects enumerated the tools up front so it is easier to | fill in the gaps and make connections. | | Tell folks they'll be using input and output from various places, | numbers, strings of letters and bytes (images, video, crazy | stuff), conditional logic to make decisions, a couple of key | "data structures" to group data (lists, dictionaries), and | organize code (functions). You could cover all of these in an | hour lecture, then dive into them on subsequent lectures. | | They'll absorb everything as they proceed, but a high level helps | immensely to help organize concepts. | | I wish other subjects did this too. | | I also like that my chemistry teacher admitted to us that we were | learning lies in General Chemistry. And then again in Organic and | Physical Chemistry. We were being taught models that would be | continually refined with new information. | ModernMech wrote: | I've done a little research on student perception of programming | in grades 5-9. One thing I found was that kids in 5th/6th grade | (elementary school where I'm from) _love_ programming. It 's fun | and engaging, and it feels like a game to them. If you look at | their programming environments, they're using things like Logo, | Blockly, and Scratch, which are intentionally designed for this | demographic. There's color characters and graphics, interlocking | blocks, programming models tailored for their level of cognitive | development, etc. It all works very well. | | But a strange thing happens around 7th-9th grade (middle school | where I'm from). Suddenly perceptions about programming drop of a | cliff. Students start describing it as "frustrating", | "confusing", "boring", "scary" and generally not enjoyable. If | you look at their programming tools, they're using VSCode, | Javascript, Java, C++, Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse... tools | meant for professional developers! | | And the results are a lot of them just stop considering | programming as a viable career path. They are presented with | these tools and told these are what the pros use, and when these | students hit roadblocks many conclude they don't have what it | takes to become a professional developer. They get discouraged | and become disengaged entirely in the idea of programming. | | Now, as I said this is all just preliminary research in my local | community. Maybe things are different elsewhere, but I think | there's an opportunity for programming tools that target this | middle school group, to help facilitate a transition between toys | like Blockly and full-blown professional developer environments. | throwaway47292 wrote: | Teaching programming is extremely difficult, I think because it | is a learning staircase instead of a learning curve. | | For example, `color = input("what is your favorite color: ") .. | print(color)` seems like the variable name is somewhat related to | the content. The first time I saw my daughter "get" variables was | after some time she just started naming them `kj`, `jdh`, `hdj` | when she was going to use them immediately after. | | I am writing a log of how the lessons go: | https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids | wrnr wrote: | Also check out her excel talks, her spreadsheet skills are better | than my programming skills, it's insane. This VC funded push to | unbundle excel is just stupid, fast food for IT. | ModernMech wrote: | After watching the talk, I think this presenter might argue | that spreadsheet skills _are_ programming skills. | chrisweekly wrote: | Yeah, see also MWeststrate (MobX's creator) who cites | spreadsheets as an ideal way to explain the mobx reactivity | paradigm. | | https://www.mobxjs.com/README.html ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-14 23:00 UTC)