3 ms·
I've actually used a "PB&J" exercise like this to teach HS kids from my hometown that took a computer engineering lab. The class would start. I'd have a whole
by encoderer 16y ago
I've actually used a "PB&J" exercise like this to teach HS kids from my hometown that took a computer engineering lab.
The class would start. I'd have a whole loaf of wonder bread, a pack of plasticware, pb, jelly, and paper plate.
"OK, who wants to tell me how to make PB&J"
The first kid will inevitably say something like "Put the PB on the bread." So I place the jar of PB on the closed loaf of bread. They laugh. Then they start to get it. But even then, it takes time before they break it down into "atomic" steps that I can actually interpret.
- btilly 16y agoI have seen the same game called "robot" and played with small kids. The "robot" was somewhat forgiving, because otherwise there was no way that the kids could have gotten the sandwich made. The kids found it funny, but I'm quite sure that the actual point sailed over their heads.
- sophacles 16y agoI don't know... sure the kids may have missed some of the subtler points, like decomposition and atomicity. I bet though, that they now have a pretty good memory "hook" for robots being silly creatures that are a little dumb and need lots of very careful instruction. This is a good fundamental bit of understanding for later dealings with computers.
- sosuke 16y agoMy dad did that exercise with me one evening. When I told him to open the bread he tore the packaging apart with pieces flying out. It took me a long while to settle down after that but it was an excellent lesson.
- famousactress 16y agoThe thing that hangs me up with exercises like this is how to communicate how atomic the steps ought to be. The analogy misses, there. Why does the 'system' need to be told to open the jar, but not how to open the jar?
- encoderer 16y agoActually when they say "Open the jar" i start beating it against the table. But yeah, most the exercise is figuring out the granularity. After they get the idea, it's quick work to give me the steps. I've been thinking up a similar exercise, for later in the course, for concurrency. EG you can have one student get a piece of bread and apply jam, another to apply the PB, etc etc. The best part about food-based analogies is that everybody can enjoy them and relate and they all get to snack afterward while i give a brief lecture tying the example into the coursework.
- sid0 16y agoThat sounds like a good starting point for a discussion about different types of programming languages.