nigen wrote:

I am a Delphi programmer. I have start to taught programming to 4 grade elementary student using Scratch for about 1 month. I have seen that the programming concept can be understood easily by the student.

I have learned "squeak learn programming with robot" . Currently, I am learning smalltalk. I found that smalltalk is really powerful programming environment. I hope I can eventually teach children real programming. But I found that GUI programming like Delphi is much simpler in the term of GUI.

I believe elementary student can do programming like adult if we have a good method to teach them programming skill. (Please advice me if I am wrong). I need advise to how I should proceed my programming class. I have some scenario Scratch --> Etoys--> BotsInc. --> smalltalk or Scratch --> BotsInc --> smalltalk or Etoys --> BotsInc. --> Smalltalk or Scratch --> Lazarus (Delphi like Open source).

This is a little hard to answer because one does not exclude the other. You can do very advanced projects in both Etoys and Scratch that are on 'Computer Science' level. Or you can go trough different languages and approaches but you will spend time relearning the same skill in different environments. I can see benefits in both approaches. Karl

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