Roger Kenyon  wrote:

>It doesn't matter how
>good the software is if the teacher is left out of the loop.

I don't agree, though if possible it is great to keep teachers in the loop.
There is lots of worthy software out there that has great educational value
without involving teachers. In the 1980s, as you mentioned, there was
ChipWits (which I've heard good things about but don't know), Rocky's Boots,
and Robot Odyssey. More recently there have been plenty of titles that a
child can master on their own without the help of a teacher or parent. I
would include Incredible Machine, SimCity, The Sims, Lemmings, Droidworks,
Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and Lego Mindstorms as titles that fit in
Taylor's third category (computer as tutee).

My view of attempts over 30 years to teach computer programming (using Logo,
Smalltalk, Basic, or whatever) in elementary or middle schools is that they
rarely succeed because they depend upon teachers having a deep understanding
of programming. A small fraction of teachers who try are good at teaching
programming. They often achieve wonderful results.

So I can think of two solutions: (1) teach teachers better and (2) make
programming tools that can be mastered without adult help. Being a software
developer I don't know how to change society to accomplish (1) but have some
ideas about how to achieve (2). ToonTalk has been mastered by many children
(some as young as 6) with little or no help. While I'm proud of that
achievement, the remaining problem is that most of these children understand
the language primitives and how they combine but have no idea how to design
and build a program. They lack the design skills and programming techniques
to build what they want to build. But I'm hopeful that more learning tools
and materials combined with a growing user community will alleviate this
problem.

Regarding Squeak, is work going on so that a child with no prior training
could walk up to an installation and figure how things work?

And just to avoid misunderstandings, I'm not claiming it is better to learn
without the help of a knowledgeable teacher or parent - only that too often
there isn't an alternative.

Best,

-ken