[squeakland] What do I want kids to learn (and how do I know if they did?)

[Steve Thomas]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 9:20 AM, Harness, Kathleen <kharness at illinois.edu>wrote:

> The Scratch Ed site web is huge and their instructional resources are
> great.
>

Yup one day they may be as good as Etoys Illinois<http://etoysillinois.org/>
 :)


 ------------------------------
> *From:* squeakland-bounces at squeakland.org [
> squeakland-bounces at squeakland.org] on behalf of Steve Thomas [
> sthomas1 at gosargon.com]
> *Sent:* Friday, June 01, 2012 1:39 AM
> *To:* squeakland
> *Subject:* [squeakland] What do I want kids to learn (and how do I know
> if they did?)
>
>   What do I want kids to learn?
>   Great, talk on Assessing Computational Thinking<http://scratched.media.mit.edu/resources/assessing-computational-thinking-may-2012-scratched-webinar> by
> the Scratch Ed team.
> I was sorry I missed the live version, but Memorex is just as good
> (okay I'm dating myself, see video below if you don't get the reference)
>
>  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZyFcJcZiaU&feature=em-share_video_user>
>  Memorex VHS Tapes Ad from 1982 - Is It Live Or Is It Memorex?<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZyFcJcZiaU&feature=em-share_video_user>
> An old commercial for Memorex VHS cassette tapes.
>
>
>
>
>  Here are some of my initial notes and thoughts:
>
>  How do you Assess?
> Damn good question and I LOVED Karen's line:
>
> "Some of the things that are easiest to evaluate are not the things we
> care about."
>
> The problem is that the things that are easy (ie: quick and inexpensive)
> and "fair" (standarizable across a wide population) to assess are not what
> I care about.
>
>  What do I hope kids learning:
>
>    - Certain Habits of Mind that will serve them well in life and make
>    them better citizens.
>       - Confidence that they can create things they care about.
>       - Help others
>       - How to work with others and build a team
>       - Explore different ways of Knowing/expressing something
>          - Write it in Scratch, JavaScript, programming another person,
>          etc.
>       - Balancing Churchill and Twain
>          - Never, Never, Never Give Up. - Winston Churchill
>          - Try, Try again, then give up. There no sense making a damn
>          fool of yourself - Mark Twain
>          - NOTE: I like giving kids conflicting suggestions.  First it
>          forces them to think.  Second, It requires them to look for appropriate
>          balances and realize things are not always black and white.
>       - Try understanding “Why it works” (especially after "hunting and
>       pecking" until you get an answer)
>       - Look for connections
>    - Things I look for and questions/comments I ask/make toward this end.
>       - How is these two things the same and how are they different?
>       - How else could you do this?
>       - Do the simplest thing possible to make it work. Then you can
>       refine later.
>       - Its okay to make mistakes.
>          - I expect mistakes. In fact if you aren’t making mistakes you
>          aren’t trying hard enough.
>          - What can you learn from that mistake?
>          - Learn from the mistakes of others. You don't have time to make
>          them all yourself.
>       - Wow that’s cool, how did you do that?
>       - How did you come up with that idea?
>       - What did you try that didn’t work?
>       - If a student finishes early, ask them to help someone else. Part
>       of this is training them to help in a way, that builds up the other
>       students and tries to question them toward an answer, or provide examples
>       or small pieces of code they can look at and try and figure out. That said,
>       sometimes, doing it for them is appropriate.
>       - Make mistakes on purpose and see what happens.
>          - Done with text based languages so they can see the error the
>          compiler produces and get a better understanding and appreciation of the
>          error messages.
>       - Give them: Wheres the bug problems.
>       - Read their code out loud to themselves and
>       imagine/visulize/kineticize (move your hands/body to mimic what the code is
>       doing, good for drawing shapes projects).
>          - I tell them reading it out loud helps you slow down and see
>          what your code is really doing, which is often NOT what you want it to do.
>           (“Do what I meant, Not what I said”)
>       - Its okay to copy (re-use and hopefully re-mix)
>       - Can you make this a re-usable compoment that you can use in other
>       projects? Should you?
>       - How is this like (fill in the blank) and How is it NOT like (fill
>       in the blank)
>          - Example 1: Scratch Draft Curricullum comparing programming
>          each other how to Dance with how its like programming in Scratch.
>          - Example 2: How are these programs, which all do the same
>          thing, but are written in different languages (one in Scratch, one in Java
>          Script and one in Squeak) similar and different?
>
>
>
>  I also want to comment on the question that came up towards the end
>
> How do you encourage kids to be bold? (and not afraid to ask questions or
> make mistakes)
>
> But that's another post.
>
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