Factors

Edwin Pilobello e_pilobello
Fri Apr 18 14:54:18 PDT 2003


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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