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Hour of Code 2015 Star Wars Tutorial: Spare the IF Statement, Spoil the Child?
theodp writes: Teaching U.S. K-12 kids their programming fundamentals in past Hours of Code were an IF-fy Bill Gates and a LOOP-y Mark Zuckerberg. Interestingly, the new signature tutorial — Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code — created by Lucasfilm and Code.org ("in a locked room with no windows") for this December's Hour of Code, eschews both IF statements and loops. The new learn-to-code tutorial instead elects to show students "events" after they've gone through the usual move-up-down-left-right drills. With the NY Times and National Center for Women & Information Technology recently warning against putting Star Wars in the CS classroom ("Attracting more female high school students to computer science classes might be as easy as tossing out the Star Wars posters," claimed an Aug. 29th NCWIT Facebook post), the theme of the new tutorial seems an odd choice for Code.org, whose stated mission includes "increasing [CS] participation by women." But if Star Wars is, as some suggest, more aimed at boys, perhaps Code.org has something up its sleeve for girls (a la last year's Disney Princesses) with another as yet unannounced signature tutorial that it teased would be "just as HUGE" as the Star Wars one. Any guesses on what that might be?
"Attracting more female high school students to computer science classes might be as easy as tossing out the Star Wars posters,"
Excuse me, but by that warped sexist logic, just throw out the computers entirely! Replace them with stoves and dish racks!
Literal WTF
Wow, 13 freakin' links ... like anybody reads the articles now.
Is there an actual article in there somewhere?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I realize that some social engineers want this done, and that certain agencies make money selling the fantasy (media). Teaching someone to code does not make them a programmer. No, it does not make them a better person. No, it does not make them responsible or moral. What it does do is try to flood the market with cheap labor, and make a zombie force that can't think very well for themselves.
Just say "NO" to social engineers working for the ultra wealthy!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
if (!programLogic.Contains("if"))
{
_isTrivial = true;
}
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I'm married with three daughters, and all the women and girls in this house like Star Wars.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
2014: Promotional campaign using mass-media characters targeted at girls. Media narrative: is it acceptable to expose kids to commerically-owned media franchises in an educational context?
2015: Promotional campaign using mass-media characters targeted at boys. Media narrative: is it acceptable to expose kids to educational content that might be oriented towards boys?
Conclusion: Narratives regarding possible female exclusion trump allegations of corporate mass-media meddling. Useful information for CorpComm professionals.
I for one welcome our new GOTO overlords!
DO Kiss your Privacy Goodbye WHILE Using Facebook
IF Windows 10 THEN Microsoft uploads your personal information
FOR Google App in List of Apps Let x = Another 10 million users bought and sold to highest bidder
I mean teaching people to use highly abstract concepts like events before they have mastered basic control flow is certainly the path to their developing a greater understanding.
STUPID!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
"Star Wars isn't for girls," are the NYT's, NCWIT's, and FORTUNE's words, not mine. :-)
another as yet unannounced signature tutorial that it teased would be "just as HUGE" as the Star Wars one. Any guesses on what that might be?
No idea what it could be.
I'm never going to get this.
I'll get this when hell's FROZEN over.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Kind of sexist?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Um, I would hypothesize that there is correlation between liking Sci-Fi and liking technology and coding that has nothing to do with gender.
Gosh, why don't we focus on poetry instead of tools in shop class? BECAUSE IT'S SHOP CLASS.
You might get a few unusual suspects to come to the first week of shop class if it's focused on cake-making, too. But eventually the tools will come out and at that point you'll still lose anyone that wasn't in it for the hardware and banging.
Same thing goes for IT and STEM in general. It is what it is. Geeks like it. Geek women like it. They also like films and bits of pop culture that are full of technology and physics and stuff. Downplay that all you want, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. Hanging a bunch of photos of flowers and unicorns in programmer school is not going to keep the flower-and-unicorn set there once the homework begins.
I read the Fortune article linked from the Facebook post and it's pretty flawed. It's based on simply asking teen girls if some art and flowers in the classroom would make them more likely to enroll in computer science classes. Of course they said yes. That has shit all to do with whether they'd actually do it, or whether they'd actually stay in computer science class once they got there. Clearly not. Anyone that is swayed to choose their courses by the presence of art and flowers in the classroom (or that concedes so easily to a survey like this one) is not likely IMO to stick around and become a computing professional through years of staring at a screen all day, or to hang tough through the related homework.
Silly stuff.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW