Thanks Alan,
I am a beginner in education. I am really need to learn a lot. I have also learned the powerful ideas book. It is really inspiring.
I emphasize student creativity during my classes. I hope the children can use programming skill to express their creativity. Meanwhile, The skill of doing Animation, presentation, simulation and game programming will be the objective of my class.
Regards, Nigen
Alan Kay wrote:
Hi --
The biggest difference between elementary school children - and teens and adults - is in their ability to make plans and carry them out -- quite a bit of this seems to be developmental and thus somewhat related to age (where ages 11-13 are a pivot point between one kind of planning and more elaborate plans). A second developmental difference is in how certain kinds of abstractions can be learned and used -- one could easily divide up the elementary years into 3 or 4 categories based on the kinds of abstractions and the forms for them. Some of these results have been used in both Scratch and Etoys to achieve a better cognitive fit.
The most important questions for you to ask yourself have to do with your ultimate goals for teaching programming to children. Programming can be a route towards learning lots of powerful ideas and thinking processes, but it is not sufficient all by itself (the class of programmers today doesn't appear to be necessarily very enlightened or knowledgeable about much of anything by virtue of learning to program). So you need some goals, and then some ways to possibly use programming to help children learn what you hope.
Cheers,
Alan