[HN Gopher] How to teach programming and other things (2019) [vi...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How to teach programming and other things (2019) [video]
        
       Author : tosh
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2021-08-13 11:48 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | I wish subjects enumerated the tools up front so it is easier to
       | fill in the gaps and make connections.
       | 
       | Tell folks they'll be using input and output from various places,
       | numbers, strings of letters and bytes (images, video, crazy
       | stuff), conditional logic to make decisions, a couple of key
       | "data structures" to group data (lists, dictionaries), and
       | organize code (functions). You could cover all of these in an
       | hour lecture, then dive into them on subsequent lectures.
       | 
       | They'll absorb everything as they proceed, but a high level helps
       | immensely to help organize concepts.
       | 
       | I wish other subjects did this too.
       | 
       | I also like that my chemistry teacher admitted to us that we were
       | learning lies in General Chemistry. And then again in Organic and
       | Physical Chemistry. We were being taught models that would be
       | continually refined with new information.
        
       | ModernMech wrote:
       | I've done a little research on student perception of programming
       | in grades 5-9. One thing I found was that kids in 5th/6th grade
       | (elementary school where I'm from) _love_ programming. It 's fun
       | and engaging, and it feels like a game to them. If you look at
       | their programming environments, they're using things like Logo,
       | Blockly, and Scratch, which are intentionally designed for this
       | demographic. There's color characters and graphics, interlocking
       | blocks, programming models tailored for their level of cognitive
       | development, etc. It all works very well.
       | 
       | But a strange thing happens around 7th-9th grade (middle school
       | where I'm from). Suddenly perceptions about programming drop of a
       | cliff. Students start describing it as "frustrating",
       | "confusing", "boring", "scary" and generally not enjoyable. If
       | you look at their programming tools, they're using VSCode,
       | Javascript, Java, C++, Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse... tools
       | meant for professional developers!
       | 
       | And the results are a lot of them just stop considering
       | programming as a viable career path. They are presented with
       | these tools and told these are what the pros use, and when these
       | students hit roadblocks many conclude they don't have what it
       | takes to become a professional developer. They get discouraged
       | and become disengaged entirely in the idea of programming.
       | 
       | Now, as I said this is all just preliminary research in my local
       | community. Maybe things are different elsewhere, but I think
       | there's an opportunity for programming tools that target this
       | middle school group, to help facilitate a transition between toys
       | like Blockly and full-blown professional developer environments.
        
       | throwaway47292 wrote:
       | Teaching programming is extremely difficult, I think because it
       | is a learning staircase instead of a learning curve.
       | 
       | For example, `color = input("what is your favorite color: ") ..
       | print(color)` seems like the variable name is somewhat related to
       | the content. The first time I saw my daughter "get" variables was
       | after some time she just started naming them `kj`, `jdh`, `hdj`
       | when she was going to use them immediately after.
       | 
       | I am writing a log of how the lessons go:
       | https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids
        
       | wrnr wrote:
       | Also check out her excel talks, her spreadsheet skills are better
       | than my programming skills, it's insane. This VC funded push to
       | unbundle excel is just stupid, fast food for IT.
        
         | ModernMech wrote:
         | After watching the talk, I think this presenter might argue
         | that spreadsheet skills _are_ programming skills.
        
           | chrisweekly wrote:
           | Yeah, see also MWeststrate (MobX's creator) who cites
           | spreadsheets as an ideal way to explain the mobx reactivity
           | paradigm.
           | 
           | https://www.mobxjs.com/README.html
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-08-14 23:00 UTC)