1 / 13

How to Teach “Programming” Kenneth.Church@jhu

How to Teach “Programming” Kenneth.Church@jhu.edu. Lecture 1: Education for kids Lego Mindstorms ( NQC : Not Quite C) Scratch Lecture 2: Unix for Poets Request: bring a laptop if possible Windows Users: please install http://www.cygwin.com / Target audience: Grad Students in Linguistics

gaetan
Download Presentation

How to Teach “Programming” Kenneth.Church@jhu

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. How to Teach “Programming”Kenneth.Church@jhu.edu • Lecture 1: Education for kids • Lego Mindstorms (NQC: Not Quite C) • Scratch • Lecture 2: Unix for Poets • Request: bring a laptop if possible • Windows Users: please install http://www.cygwin.com/ • Target audience: Grad Students in Linguistics • Unix shell scripts (almost not programming) • Small is Beautiful • Lecture 3: Symbolic Processing • Target audience: • MIT Computer Science Majors (circa 1974) • LISP: Recursion, Eval, Symbolic Differentiation • Lambda Calculus (“Small is Beautiful” beyond reason)

  2. Lego Mindstorms • Iphone & Lego: • Better Together • Video • Rubik’s Cube: • Video • Sampler: • video • Knitting Machine: • video • Popular • with target demographic • video

  3. The Origins of Mindstormshttp://www.wired.com/geekdad/2007/03/the_origins_of_/ • Papert participated in educational projects at MIT which used the forerunners of the Lego Mindstorms system.

  4. Mindstorms • When children are young, they are incredibly facile learners.  • If your child were to spend some time in France, it is likely he or she will pick up quite a bit of French.  • "What would happen," asked Papert, "if children who can’t do math grew up in Mathland, a place that is to math what France is to French?" • In the 1970s, Papert constructed a kind of Mathland using the LOGO programming language, and robotic turtles that could draw pictures.  • These tools were used by very young kids, who would not ordinarily be exposed to concepts like angles and polygons.  • Papert’s book, Mindstorms, recounts this fascinating story. 

  5. Phrogram

  6. http://scratch.mit.edu

  7. Videos

  8. Social Computing • Emphasis: Community & Sharing • Man machine interface  Kid2kid • Machines should be seen (but not heard) • Scratch = LOGO/LEGO + Web Search • Keywords to try: • Circle_Circus, Fold Symmetry, Rubik’s Cube, Guitar Hero, BigPaw, Birthday • Instant gratification (Option to Run without downloading) • Source is always available • Lots of Mashups • Comments, tags, more projects by, recommendations, etc. • Stats/Community Feedback: • 1116 views, 6 taggers, 64 people love it, 4 remixes by 4 people, 41 downloads, in 3 galleries

  9. Is this Computer Science,Or is this just fun? • Social Computing • Emphasis on Community • GUI (Graphical User Interface) • Drag-and-drop • Lego Mindstorms on Steroids • Manuals/Documentation • Available (but not recommended) • Small Language • 8 menus  Circumscribes “reserved” words • There are smaller languages • Lambda Calculus • But smaller is not necessarily simpler • Or more accessible • Evaluation? • What is Success? For a language? Community?

  10. Homework • Suppose you have a 12-year-old kid sister. • Design a scratch project for her. • Ok to start with some other student’s project and ask her to modify it in some interesting way. • The project should be fun (and educational), and make her want to learn more. • What are the computer science principles? • Learning Moments (or just plain fun)

More Related