Fill in the Blank

Edwin Pilobello e_pilobello at attbi.com
Wed Jun 5 18:06:58 PDT 2002


Mark,  I have to thank you.  You inspired a music based learning
activity that has made several 3rd and 4th graders very pleased with
themselves.  

During the school year, I teach "Talented and Gifted" classes in Oregon
Public Schools.  One class is called "Logo Programming" wherein I use
Terrapin Logo.  Here's a story that started it.

One little boy discovered the PLAY function and decided to program "Ode
to Joy".  He found each succeeding note by experimentation.  He simply
edited and played the list until each note fit.  After about 20 notes,
he jumped and exclaimed, "That's what the letters mean!"  The next week,
his mother reported that the piano teacher was blown away by the
progress the little boy made.

Left brain, meet right brain...  

Cheers,
Edwin

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-squeakland at squeakland.org
[mailto:owner-squeakland at squeakland.org] On Behalf Of Mark Guzdial
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 2:09 PM
To: squeakland at squeakland.org
Subject: Re: Fill in the Blank


I think I'm after something similar, Edwin.  Elliot Soloway and I 
published an article recently on "Teaching the Nintendo generation to 
program" where we argue that we need to get beyond "Hello, World!" 
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/guzdial/17

Now, I'm trying to build an intro class around these ideas for 300-600 
freshmen/term at Georgia Tech.  We're planning it now at 
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediaComp-plan  We're not currently using 
Squeak, but mostly because of time constraints.  Down the road, I'd hope

to have a scripting-level interface to Squeak and use that.

Mark





More information about the Squeakland mailing list