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I have encountered a lot of people who earnestly want to learn to program. But it is difficult as we all know - and a big part of that difficulty is learning to
by sophacles 11y ago
I have encountered a lot of people who earnestly want to learn to program. But it is difficult as we all know - and a big part of that difficulty is learning to think in terms of process and small discrete steps. When that is confounded with annoying things like syntax pickiness, dealing with OS oddities and compiler warnings, the result is a lot of long-term confusion in folks learning.
I've found that a deck of cards and some patience can really help people understand the tiny step by tiny step thinking that is fundamental to computer science and programming. Things like sort this row of cards (following only these rules) and, yeah it's frustrating to do that over and over, lets group those together in a new rule called $X, and so on gets that thinking instilled better than any amount of explaining the programming language ever did. Later, introducing the computer in the mix actually seems easier once the student is accustomed to thinking like a computer.
- artlogic 11y agoI have to second the deck of cards approach. One particularly effective exercise is to hand someone a shuffled deck of numeric cards and ask them to write down a process for sorting them, using only the concept of bigger or smaller. Given about 20 minutes, most people will come up with selection sort on their own. It's this sort of introspection that's key to understanding computers. We abstract large chunks of computational thinking naturally. It's essential to be able to ask yourself, "How am I really doing this?" - and to come up with an answer. edited slightly for grammar
- jsingleton 11y agoI'm volunteering to run a code club for kids. I saw a great video of how to teach a sorting algorithm in the playground by drawing with chalk on the floor. The kids then walk through the pattern and end up sorted at the end. It was something like this: http://csunplugged.org/sorting-networks/#Videos http://csunplugged.org/sorting-networks/#Videos
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- krrrh 11y agoRobot turtles is a cool take on this approach for kids. http://www.robotturtles.com http://www.robotturtles.com