Teachers as Programmers? Get Real

[Chuck Friesen]

I strongly suggest that everyone on this list go visit a history 
teacher in a public school to see first hand why they do not have time 
to program.  I work with and observe teachers on a daily basis.  As a 
group, they don't have time to program!!

The fact that teachers do not "program" has nothing to do with whether:
a.  "it" is called programming.
b.  Regardless of what anyone tells them, teachers soon find out that 
programming does not come for free.  The price:  A heavy time 
commitment over an extended period of time.
c.  programming takes a significant time investment, at least up front.
I started programming in HyperCard 4 times.  Start, stop, start, stop, 
you get the
idea.  Then I finally took a formal course where I devoted enough time 
to it that I finally made progress.
d.  Parts of it are hard.  If you don't have a programming background, 
they soon run into road blocks.  Hard??  Major time commitment?  Call 
it what you want.  It doesn't come for free.
If you've never seen a "loop" of any kind, then FOR-NEXT, IF-THEN-ELSE, 
WHILE-DO, .... will require teachers to think differently than they 
have in the past.  I'm not sure what teacher-ed tells them, but I would 
support teacher-ed NOT making programming a focus for their education.  
Very few teachers have the interest, time, and/or aptitude to program.  
Schools have defined many other priorities for them that have to first 
be addressed before programming can even be considered.

Right or wrong, in the era of testing and assessments, teachers are not 
going to be programmers.  Are there some teachers who will be 
programmers?  Yes, and some will do this very well.  Mark Greenberg is 
one such person.  But he is very atypical, and I mean that as a very 
high compliment.  I am aware of his work and have conversed with him 
over the years.  But schools do not reward efforts such as his, nor do 
they give their employees time for such endeavors.  Should they?  Yes, 
but good luck getting anything to change.  Only when you have a Mark 
Greenberg to serve as an existence proof, do you have any hope of 
making inroads in that arena.  Even then, it is tough.

I strongly support encouraging and training teachers to program.  
However, without adequate teacher training programs through 
universities, there will be little progress in this area.  And 
typically, university computer science departments have not show a lot 
of interest in providing the leadership or service for these kinds of 
activities.  And in the rare instances when are they are interested, 
they push their own agendas and are not quick to design programs that 
are truly beneficial or helpful to teachers (similar to the teachers, 
they have other pressures/interests/priorities that dictate how they 
spend their time).  If I'm wrong, tell me where these things are really 
happening?

Chuck Friesen
Lincoln Public Schools
Lincoln, NE




On May 21, 2005, at 5:44 PM, Judy Perry wrote:

> Well, now, that's my initial question exactly.
>
> Do they need a tutorial on animation?  Building a slightly interactive
> version of their favorite PowerPoint presentation?  How to create 
> stacks
> that present information and then test the user?
>
> Despite Richard's comments (to which I will respond later), I believe 
> that
> the reason why the typical, say, history teacher doesn't "program" is:
>
> (a) because we call it programming
> (b) they are told they cannot/need not program
> (c) programming (even simple things) is hard
> (d) they've not been shown that it's not necessarily hard
> (e) their teacher-ed programs tell them all they need to know is PP...
>
> These people needn't begin second careers writing major, commercial
> software titles.  But they have the ability to author simple coursework
> for their classes.  Given the tremendous amount of money spent by state
> and the federal governments to put computer technologies into the
> classroom, for that history teacher NOT to learn to do so is a waste of
> the taxpayer's money.
>
> Judy
>
> On Sat, 21 May 2005, Alejandro Tejada wrote:
>
>> Which others useful task could be assigned
>> to novices programmers in this platform?
>
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