Factors

[Edwin Pilobello]

Rik has 10 kids in his class which started today and goes M-W-F for 6
sessions.  I really don't know what he's going to do.  I will try to
check out how his clas is going next Monday.

Cheers,
:-)  edwin

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-squeakland at squeakland.org
[mailto:owner-squeakland at squeakland.org] On Behalf Of Kim Rose
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 7:37 AM
To: squeakland at squeakland.org
Subject: RE: Factors


Hi,
I am curious to learn more about "Rik Smoody's Squeak class for 10-12 
year olds".   Will Rik be using the "etoy" component of Squeak to 
teach this or Morphic?  What kinds of projects will the kids be 
creating?  How many kids will participate?
  -- Kim


At 1:37 PM -0700 7/3/02, Edwin Pilobello wrote:
>I am currently teaching a Logo class for high school students.  I am 
>also assisting in a Java class (same age group). In two weeks, I'll sit

>in on Rik Smoody's Squeak class for 10 - 12 year olds.





>I'm hoping to get a sense of how each paradigm builds a foundation for 
>learning to program.  Of course, there's going to be differences in 
>pedagogy.  The Java course is tracking traditional "Hello World".  I 
>prefer a "black box" approach.  Rik will have his own style as well.  
>In addition, Java is algebraic, Logo is lambda-calculus and Squeak is 
>Squeak (? what's a good word?).
>
>Fortunately, all three instructors are professional programmers.  We're
>(1) not afraid of our own bugs, (2) practiced in real world 
>applications
>(3) emergent to the needs of the class (4) can teach programming in
many
>languages.
>
>I shudder to think of what it's going to take to move all of this 
>programming pedagogy into the regular classrooms.  Unlike the paper and

>crayons of an art class, the medium of programming is equally 
>unforgiving of experts or beginners.
>
>A bug is a bug!
>
>Cheers,
>Edwin
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-squeakland at squeakland.org 
>[mailto:owner-squeakland at squeakland.org] On Behalf Of Diego Gomez Deck
>Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 11:39 AM
>To: squeakland at squeakland.org
>Subject: Re: Factors
>
>
>Hello,
>
>[snip]
>>I don't think adults who have never programmed are challenged in the 
>>least by OOP.
>
>Of course my experience is *too* far away from the Alan's one, but I 
>can
>
>tell you my experience:
>
>The last year, I was responsible to teach OOP and Smalltalk to two 
>different groups of persons.  One group was composed of Agronomical 
>professionals with near to zero experience with computer, the other 
>group was composed of computer near-professionals.
>
>The computer professionals had a *lot* of problems to lean OOP, but the

>Agronomical had NOT problem at all.... Most of them are using Squeak as

>a tool for research ( http://www.agro.uba.ar/smalltalk/ )
>
>In in the other side, the teaching was *much* more funny to me teaching

>to the agronomical professionals.
>
>>But the first paradigm that one learns seems to have quite a lasting 
>>effect these days. It was easier in the early sixties when I learned 
>>because there were no orthodox machine or language architectures, and
>one
>>had to learn at least 20 or so. This helped quite a bit when a new 
>>idea
>
>>came along .... By the end of the sixties, all had changed, and data
>  >structures and procedures had quite taken over.
>  >
>  >Cheers,
>  >
>  >Alan
>
>Cheers,
>
>Diego Gomez Deck


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