What is needed & related issues

[Mark Greenberg]

Hans (and Al, too),
	Yes, teaching kids to script -- that's the real power!  For seven 
years my student scripted to solve problems presented in other classes. 
  They got the computer to illustrate refraction, the laws of sines and 
cosines, color theory, mathematical summation, etc.  That gave them a 
focus, a goal. And yes, my students also came in early to get started.  
I had my students in teams (from 1 to 10 depending on the complexity of 
the stack they were working on).  Like you, I limited which projects 
they could choose from.
	There was one major difference.  The stacks my students made were to 
be games that would teach other students.  They had to make it smooth 
enough to actually be used by other students learning the law of sines 
and cosines, or color theory.  This put them into a circuit of testing 
& revision.
	For example, one student (Adam, working alone) chose to design a 
stack/game that would teach art concepts.  He asked whether he could 
make it a two-player game, something that had not been done in my 
classes before.  I was skeptical, but I told him (as I usually do), 
"Yes, if you can make it work."  His design was radical.  He had a 
piece of art, chosen randomly from several dozen, fill the screen.  
Then he made terms like "Complementary Color Scheme," "Triangular 
Composition," and "Impasto" flash in the middle of the art, each for 
about a second.  They appeared randomly from a bank of sixty or so art 
terms.  If player 1 thought that the painting featured impasto, then 
he'd try to press on the space bar while that word was on the screen.  
Player 2, meanwhile, would be trying to hit the enter key when a 
correct term appeared for the picture.  The player who built her score 
up to 20 won the game.  If you clicked at an inappropriate time, your 
score decreased.  Because a piece of art may embody several of the 
characteristics, say "Romanticism," "Juxtaposition," "Earth Tones," 
"Strong Diagonal," and the artist's name, the students who played 
really had to be on their toes and understand the concepts of 
composition, color schemes, art movements, etc.
	Adam had to keep testing it to get the timing and other design 
features just right.  Otherwise students would not learn from it.  The 
game became so popular that students held tournaments to see who was 
the best, and the grand winner challenged me.  (I beat her 2 out of 
3... whew!)
	You are right, Hans and Al, that special something that makes learning 
worthwhile happens most when we put a tool like Rev into the hands of 
students, not when we make teaching tools for them to use.  My kids 
were high school level, and Hans' were middle school.  I'm not sure if 
it works at the elementary age.
	Of course, this brings us back to the original dilemma: the teacher 
who is facilitating all this discovery learning has to know how to 
program.  "Figure it out yourself" only goes so far.  If a kid needs an 
incrementing variable inside a for-each loop, then the teacher should 
be able to help.  So, from the looks of it, there are fewer than 20 of 
us who could actually teach such a class.  Maybe THAT's the problem 
this list could solve best.

		Mark Greenberg

On Tuesday, June 7, 2005, at 06:10 AM, hans kleinen hammans wrote:

> The recent outburst of discussions induces me to tell some of my 
> personal
> experiences. At this moment I am giving a course in XTalk ( more  
> about this
> later ) to 32 kids in age group 14 - 15. This actual course lasts two 
> weeks
> ( usually three ): dayly from 8.30 am to 10.10. At the beginning 
> pupils are
> very skeptical, and quite unwilling when I tell that there will  be 
> lots of
> maths. Within 15 minutes, after the very first introduction, you see 
> the
> first broad smiles: "this is cute!" Day two: some of them are waiting 
> at the
> door at 8.00 am. "Let us in, we want to start!" After day three some 
> of them
> have started dreaming about writing scripts, and a few have had the 
> unique
> experience most of us know too well: got stuck, admitted defeat, forgot
> about it, and within 24 hours, in a flash, unexpectedly,when you are 
> doing
> something entirely different: there is the solution.
>
>> From my own experience I know that a course in programming "an sich" 
>> has
> little or no sense.
> After an introduction with the mere basics you must have real topics 
> you can
> translate into a program/script. My pupils get a lists of subjects 
> from  the
> maths, physics and economics that are studied during the year. For 
> instance:
> linear functions: write a program that derives the equation of a line 
> when
> the co-ordinates of two points are known. Edit the card with fields, 
> buttons
> and graphics in such a way that you get something that looks nice, and 
> that
> is easy to use.
> Or: make a program that calculates x and y for any given quadratic 
> equation.
> And so on, and so forth.
>
> In the type of school where I presently work a class is a mixed group:
> children of all levels of capacities are present. In order two make
> everybody happy I have marked all subjects with asterisks: from one to 
> dead
> easy to five for the theoretical physicist "in spe".
>
> During the scripting practically all children begin to realize that 
> they
> never really had understood what Pythagoras for instance was really 
> about.
> And they begin to realize that maths can be fun.
>
> My course consists of three parts: after a short introduction with the
> basics of scripting follows part two, the maths/physics/economics 
> part. Here
> the learn more about messages, commands and backgrounds.
>
> Part three is mainly for fun: special effects, colours, animation, 
> importing
> images, soundclips and videoclips. In the remaining time they are 
> asked to
> create a "Free Production"
>
> At the end of the period there is always a mood of euphoria: they 
> liked it,
> they are amazed that they have learned and done so much in so little 
> time.
> And they are happy to have discovered that they can do and learn far 
> more
> that they had ever expected.
>
> I have written a little course-book of about 30 pages. In Dutch,
> unfortunately. But if anybody is interested, I could make an English
> version.
>
> About XTalk and plans for the future:
> Presently I use a free version of MetaCard 2.4.1 because:
> it is free ( Holland and Scotland have something in common here )
> it looks simpler than Dreamcard
> the 10 lines limit prevents beginning scripters getting lost 
> completely.
>
> Next year I want to start courses with Metacard, and to switch to 
> Dreamcard
> after, say, ten days.
>
> The little course book will remain, but will be extended with a little 
> stack
> contaning scripts of a very, very basic nature.
>
> Hans Kleinen Hammans,
> Geert Groote Secondary School, Amsterdam