What is needed & related issues

[Marielle Lange]

> 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.

You are in good company... most of us agree with this.

> 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".

Can you share this list with us?

> 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.

Yep, having to express a solution to a problem in a program forces  
you to understand the problem first :-)

> 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.

I really like your ideas. I can read Dutch myself (Belgian) but for  
the sake of the other users of this list, that would be great to have  
your coursebook translated.Feel free to use the wiki, this would let  
other users help you out polish your English (though your english is  
great, doesn't really need revisions).

> The little course book will remain, but will be extended with a  
> little stack contaning scripts of a very, very basic nature.

Did you have a look to the teacher manual (education gallery <http:// 
revolution.lexicall.org/stacks_education.php>... this shows how you  
can implement a way to give example scripts to copy and complete. One  
window has the example script. Another one is empty and the kid is  
asked to rewrite the example code he sees. He then clicks a little  
arrow to execute the script and get warned about any error in his  
script (works nicely for the most common ones and brings the  
attention on the necessity to type code exactly, strictly obeying  
transcript's syntax).

That's a clever stack, I really invite you to have a look. If you  
don't have a dreamcard license yet, let me know, I will send you the  
code for a typical script example/retype card.

I was told that there were problems with the navigation widgets not  
showing up... That looks fine on my mac. What are the platforms for  
which this is a problem (apparently, Linux, any other?)

Cheers,
Marielle

_________________________________________________________________
Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguistics, Lecturer in Psychology and  
Informatics
University of Edinburgh, UK

Homepage:  http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mlange/
Lexicall project: http://lexicall.org
Revolution-education project: http://revolution.lexicall.org