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When I was 8 my public school had a gifted program that I was fortunate enough to have participated in. They attempted to teach us BASIC on Apple IIe's, or rath

by jboggan 11y ago

When I was 8 my public school had a gifted program that I was fortunate enough to have participated in. They attempted to teach us BASIC on Apple IIe's, or rather the teacher (who had little or no understanding of programming) followed through a lesson book and told us what to do. We were creating still color images, pixel by pixel, and I thought it was the most boring, pointless, and stupid exercise we did that year. No connection was made to the programs that we used on a daily basis or the Nintendo games that I was so happy to run home and play. It completely disinterested me in computers for the next 15 years as I was more drawn to competent teachers who could share their love of music, mathematics, and literature. I wince when I think about the years I spent not coding because of poorly-intentioned education. I'm not sure that a mandate to have that many CS teachers at that level will create positive educational experiences on the net.

ploxiln 11y ago
By that logic, they shouldn't teach math or english either. (EDIT: maybe just math is the really good example here)
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Yeah, people end up hating Shakespeare and polynomials.
- monort 11y ago
  If you think it's important to teach math to uninterested pupil, take a look at the results of PIAAC adult skills survey: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51bb74b8e4b0139570ddf020/t/535fdfdbe4b032825e56cbf8/1398792155103/PIAAC+Results+Summary+Brochure_Final_041814.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51bb74b8e4b0139570ddf...
blister 11y ago
That's interesting. My school in Indiana had a gifted program that taught us the rudiments of Basic programming in almost the exact same way. We used to take home grid paper, draw in the pixels where we wanted them, and then write out the code to display them on the screen. Thus began my life-long love affair with making computers do what I tell them to do. As a 4th grader, even just the exposure of typing words and having graphics show up on the screen was enough to let me know that this was something I would love.
- matthewbauer 11y ago
  My school in Kansas had the exact thing too. Oddly enough they still used them ~5 years ago when I checked last.
- jboggan 11y ago
  I'm guessing it was some sort of standard lesson plan. The problem wasn't with the lesson plan so much as it was being taught by someone who didn't really understand or wasn't personally moved by code. At that age I was the same kid who typed random characters in my Apple IIe at home pretending to be the G.I. Joe "Sci-Fi" who was "hacking" the Cobra Terrordrome. But somehow the static pixel assignment came across as the slowest coloring book ever and I didn't get the point of it at all. What I would have done for a reference manual or any bit of the internet back then. I remember hacking Logowriter to trace out a clock's second hand in 6 degree increments over the course of a minute, but my regular teacher thought it was stupid and told me to finish the assignment drawing squares.
icelancer 11y ago
Man, I absolutely LOVED pixel by pixel creation. We mapped it out on a piece of paper with the grids drawn in, and then we coded it in BASIC on Apple IIe's showing how the grid in physical space was translated to code. I thought it was amazing on how we could connect the dots.
deciplex 11y ago
When I was 11 or so we had a class where the teacher spent probably a total of 10 days of the year doing instruction, and the rest of it he just cut us loose on a bunch of late 80s-era Macs, with a few games, a word processor, and Hypercard installed. We were allowed to play games a bit if we were bored, but otherwise we either had to write something, or make stacks. I mostly made stacks, and while I stuck to the visual tools in Hypercard at first, once I realized how much more I could do actually writing the code myself I got pretty into it. I didn't actually realize I had been doing computer programming until years later. That might be the most influential class I ever took, looking back 25 years later, and it was so mostly because the teacher got the hell out of the way and let us be kids. Also, I miss Hypercard :-)

by jboggan 11y ago

ploxiln 11y ago

By that logic, they shouldn't teach math or english either. (EDIT: maybe just math is the really good example here)

calibraxis 11y ago
Yeah, people end up hating Shakespeare and polynomials.
monort 11y ago
If you think it's important to teach math to uninterested pupil, take a look at the results of PIAAC adult skills survey: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51bb74b8e4b0139570ddf020/t/535fdfdbe4b032825e56cbf8/1398792155103/PIAAC+Results+Summary+Brochure_Final_041814.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51bb74b8e4b0139570ddf...

blister 11y ago

That's interesting. My school in Indiana had a gifted program that taught us the rudiments of Basic programming in almost the exact same way. We used to take home grid paper, draw in the pixels where we wanted them, and then write out the code to display them on the screen. Thus began my life-long love affair with making computers do what I tell them to do. As a 4th grader, even just the exposure of typing words and having graphics show up on the screen was enough to let me know that this was something I would love.

matthewbauer 11y ago
My school in Kansas had the exact thing too. Oddly enough they still used them ~5 years ago when I checked last.
jboggan 11y ago
I'm guessing it was some sort of standard lesson plan. The problem wasn't with the lesson plan so much as it was being taught by someone who didn't really understand or wasn't personally moved by code. At that age I was the same kid who typed random characters in my Apple IIe at home pretending to be the G.I. Joe "Sci-Fi" who was "hacking" the Cobra Terrordrome. But somehow the static pixel assignment came across as the slowest coloring book ever and I didn't get the point of it at all. What I would have done for a reference manual or any bit of the internet back then. I remember hacking Logowriter to trace out a clock's second hand in 6 degree increments over the course of a minute, but my regular teacher thought it was stupid and told me to finish the assignment drawing squares.

icelancer 11y ago

Man, I absolutely LOVED pixel by pixel creation. We mapped it out on a piece of paper with the grids drawn in, and then we coded it in BASIC on Apple IIe's showing how the grid in physical space was translated to code. I thought it was amazing on how we could connect the dots.

deciplex 11y ago

When I was 11 or so we had a class where the teacher spent probably a total of 10 days of the year doing instruction, and the rest of it he just cut us loose on a bunch of late 80s-era Macs, with a few games, a word processor, and Hypercard installed. We were allowed to play games a bit if we were bored, but otherwise we either had to write something, or make stacks. I mostly made stacks, and while I stuck to the visual tools in Hypercard at first, once I realized how much more I could do actually writing the code myself I got pretty into it. I didn't actually realize I had been doing computer programming until years later. That might be the most influential class I ever took, looking back 25 years later, and it was so mostly because the teacher got the hell out of the way and let us be kids. Also, I miss Hypercard :-)