Real Audience, Real Purpose

[Mark Greenberg]

	First I'd like to say, thank God for this list.  I've been spending 
hours every week sifting through the advanced programming discussions 
in the Rev list to find the few grains that I might use as an English 
teacher who happens to program.  Though I'll continue to monitor the 
Rev list, I might actually have something worthwhile to contribute here.
	Once the students find that they can control the computer with 
HelloWorld.rev, they need a real reason to do so.  For his 6th grade 
project my then 11-year-old son wrote a Visual Basic program that 
taught beginning algebra.  People would (or could) use his program for 
something real.  That was tremendously motivating.  I've taught high 
school students to program learning games for eight years now, and the 
goal of producing a usable, real product drives them to learn.  They 
often discover and teach me new approaches to programming simply 
because their games needed it.  As an added byproduct, the students who 
are programming learn the content of the game more deeply than they 
would otherwise.

		Mark Greenberg