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I've tried a few approaches to explaining recursion ("just assume that it works", "trust yourself", "turn off your brain" (the latter of which is from Will Byrd

I've tried a few approaches to explaining recursion ("just assume that it works", "trust yourself", "turn off your brain" (the latter of which is from Will Byrd)), but I like "Recursion Fairy" an awful lot. Might have to try that next time.

emme 8y ago
We designed a small tool to bring the fairy metaphor even to lower secondary school students. I actually believe it is a very promising approach. "Nothing to fear but fear itself: introducing recursion in lower secondary schools" https://aladdin.di.unimi.it/materiali/pubb/2017_latice.pdf https://aladdin.di.unimi.it/materiali/pubb/2017_latice.pdf
- ff_ 8y ago
  Super interesting! Do you happen to have an Italian translation/version of the paper?
  - emme 8y ago
    No, I'm sorry... It was thought in Italian... but written only (more or less) in English :-) But the supporting tool is actually in Italian: https://aladdin.di.unimi.it/sw/fatine/ https://aladdin.di.unimi.it/sw/fatine/
  - emme 8y ago
    Just remembered: in fact the work was a master thesis, and the final report is in Italian. http://aladdinsrv.di.unimi.it/archive/pdf/tesi-previtali.pdf http://aladdinsrv.di.unimi.it/archive/pdf/tesi-previtali.pdf Enjoy!
    - ff_ 8y ago
      Amazing, thanks a lot!
- DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
  That looks super interesting! I'll take a deeper look when I get the chance. Thanks for sharing!
  - emme 8y ago
    You're welcome!