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These kinds of reports are always interesting to me since I have kids, and I'm trying to think ahead to where to go once they outgrow Scratch. Reading about the
by technomancy 13y ago
These kinds of reports are always interesting to me since I have kids, and I'm trying to think ahead to where to go once they outgrow Scratch. Reading about the gap between the engaging visual curriculum and then dropping down to C for "real coding" makes me a bit worried that something similar will happen with my kids.
In order to avoid that I'm investigating Racket--it's powerful enough that you won't outgrow it like you would with traditional learning languages like BASIC; in fact it's much more powerful than most mainstream languages. But it's still got fantastic support for visualizations and programming with images as values, so I feel like it'd be a good choice for a next step where you wouldn't have to compromise between "serious" and "engaging". The main drawback is that while the htdp.org curriculum is pretty solid for a textbook, it's definitely not as engaging as some of the interactive curriculums like http://learn.code.org http://learn.code.org or the one shown here. But the potential there is huge.
- Uehreka 13y agoI think what's most important is that kids get something rewarding out of their work. If they can use their coding skills to make something cool that they want to show people, it will keep them motivated. I think the biggest problem with most curricula is that they have students writing to the console for the first year. The kids are doing "real coding", but the results aren't things that they consider "real programs" (like Microsoft Word, or Flappy Bird). In the long term, we need to change the way we do programming everywhere, not just how we teach it. In the short term, I think students who can grasp the basics, find programming fun and understand why we use the console won't be held back by it.