[Watford] Something else discussed last night

[M Fernandes]

I too had the same thoughts when I was trying to show my young girls the
rudimentaries of programming.  I showed them the "hello world" program
(Python) and I was surprised at how curious they became.  It's all about
how you present the concept to them.  I'm not an expert, not by a long
shot, but, that was my attempt to help them understand.  One of my
daughters has asked me for that program again, so, I've had partial
success!!  :-)

Incidentally, I've just come across this article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/get-coding-people-its-the-new-mandarin-and-its-not-just-children-who-can-learn-how-to-do-it-9117071.html.
 I think she has been let down by the PR machine, which, I suspect, is
currently engaged combating the negative press surrounding flooding.
Wasn't the gist of her message correct though?

Mike

On 7 February 2014 21:23, Jim Ford <jaford at watford53.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> On 07/02/14 20:19, Peter Grant wrote:
>
>> Programing mentality can be taught without programming languages being
>> needed.
>> Having seen Scratch taught in a school, I think it's well worth doing to
>> the right age as it help convey the prinples of programming without
>> requiring that the pupils don't accidentally use a colon instead of a
>> semi colon.
>>
>
> I'm surprised that it has been taught in a school! My experience of
> working at a secondary school (as a science technician), is that anything
> that wasn't in the curriculum was totally ignored. I tried to interest a
> couple of science teachers in 'Squeak', suggesting that some physics laws
> could be modeled using the language, but only drew blank looks. This was at
> a 'good' independent school.
>
> Powerful though the underlying Smalltalk language is, I feel that students
> used to sophisticated computer games aren't going to be inspired by putting
> a lot of work into crudely moving a simple avatar around a Squeak or
> Scratch 'playground'.
>
> Jim
>
>
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