Computers in school

Stephen Pair spair at advantive.com
Tue Aug 7 18:46:51 UTC 2001


There are a couple of factors that I think make intro CS classes
difficult to define:

1.  A lack of a well defined curriculum for K-12.  Students entering
college have a wide range of backgounds wrt to programming.  Some have
ten years or more of programming under their belts, others have none.
Therefore, introducing children to computers earlier, and having a more
standardized cirriculum in K-12 will help...trouble is, figuring out
what that cirriculum should look like.

2.  Too much focus on the tool, and not enough focus on the tool's
impact.  I think that rather than teaching "programming," intro courses
should focus more on human thought and how human thought is captured in
a variety of mediums, including the computer.  But, how do you do that
without being so esoteric and vague that you can't really measure how
much a student is really learning?  Maybe active essays are the place to
start...give a student an assignment to write about gravitational
forces, but have the student do it twice, once using a plain old word
processor, and once using active essays, complete with a working
simulation of the solar system.  The goal is for the student to
communicate those ideas about gravitation, not to see how well the
student can twizzle bits.  They can learn in later courses about the
mechanics of the underlying systems.

- Stephen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Rev Aaron
> Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 1:49 PM
> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: RE: Computers in school
> 
> 
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2001 12:45:17 -0400 guzdial at cc.gatech.edu (Mark 
> Guzdial) wrote:
> 
> >By "boredom" I mean a bunch of things that make a class 
> un-interesting.  
> >Assignments that have no real purpose or don't lead to real 
> artifacts 
> >can lead to "boredom."  Being forced to use strategies that 
> don't work 
> >for you can lead to "boredom."
> 
> That's the impression my SO has of the majority of college 
> classes she's taken in the last two years. Especially in the 
> lower level, intro classes, where they try to cram tons of 
> somewhat-useless information into your head, and grade you on 
> how well you can regurgitate it.  That's how the first two 
> years of college seem to go, you get judged on how well you 
> can tell the prof what s/he told you, but no real synthesis.  
> And that can be done with a good book or two, making the 
> entire multi-thousand year of college education a giant waste 
> of money.
> 
> I don't tend to get bored as many do, I just simply see the 
> intro classes as an evil I must get over with before I can 
> take the more interesting courses.  Or, as in Biology, I've 
> enjoyed even Bio I.
> 
> I believe that does apply to K-12 schooling as well, 
> especially in grades 7 and up.
> 
> Aaron
> 
> 
> 





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