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Did Google and the Hour of Code Get "Left" and "Right" Wrong?
theodp writes: Command the dancers to "point left" in Google's dance-themed Code Boogie learn-to-code tutorial on the Santa Tracker website, and the dancers actually point to their own right. The lesson seems to reinforce a common mistake made by younger children learning to code in LOGO, which is to use their own or the display screen's frame of reference rather than the turtle's frame of reference. "These misconceptions," explained Richard E. Mayer, "may be due to the knowledge that the child brings with him or her to the programming environment. For example, children who possess an egocentric conception of space (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956) would fail to recognize that when the turtle is at a 180-degree orientation, its right corresponds to the child's left." So, it should probably be asked if the learn-to-code tutorials from Lucasfilm, Code.org, and Google that are being used to teach the world's K-12 schoolchildren to code might be making the same mistake as 4-7 year-olds. In this year's flagship flagship Lucasfilm/Code.org Star Wars Hour of Code tutorial, for example, command the droid BB-8 to move left and it could move to either its own left or right depending on what direction it's pointed in. So, did the "Largest Learning Event in History" also get "left" and "right" wrong?
Welcome to the difference between "Left" and "Stage Left".
So was stated to move the object to its left, or your (the coders) left?
Not clarifying the perspective is an epic fail.
They are not 'making a mistake.' In this case, left and right are ambiguous. It is why is real situations like this (eg a director telling a dancer which way to point) the terms 'stage left' or 'house left' would be used. Or at the very least, 'your left' or 'my left'.
Sounds like some people are setting much higher expectations from Lucasfilm, Code.org, and Google that I have. Actually getting things right is too demanding of a standard.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
... the reference frame of a BB-unit? Aren't they completely omni-directional?
This is why sailors don't use left and right. They use port and starboard, which are specified as port being left if you are at the front of the ship looking in the forward direction of travel. If they just said "left" or "right", the instruction was actually ambiguous. Another poster already pointed out that in this context, you have "stage left" and "stage right" which serves the same purpose as the nautical terms.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Eh, Theodp?
Nothing is ever wrong. Everyone gets a trophy.
Every played any game (2D or 3D)? Tell me O wise one, which direction does your character move, when the "left" and "right" arrow keys are pressed?
The summary reminds me of that pop psychology nonsense about asking kids which super power they'd want. To be invisible, or to fly. The answer (according to some pop-psychologists thinking) is that kids who say invisible means there's something wrong with you, and you're trying to hide.
Which always made me laugh. Apparently the idiots of the world who made this up never thought about the practical aspects of this. Invisibility would give you a HUGE amount of power in the world. Flying would be just kind of stupid. We have lots of thinks that get you from point A to point B very quickly already.
For example, children who possess an egocentric conception of space (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956) would fail to recognize that when the turtle is at a 180-degree orientation, its right corresponds to the child's left."
I'd argue that this is a failure in instruction. If s/he was told at the beginning that s/he *was* the turtle, perhaps with a couple code examples demonstrated in first-reptile view side-by-side with a top-level view, the child would probably get the idea right off the bat.
In a 3rd Person Isomorphic situation where your character runs all over a static screen (think Diablo), then left or right should be based on the screen, as you're not in the same 'perspective' as the character is. However, for 3rd Person (over the shoulder) or First Person games, then left or right become the character's perspective (which incidentally lines up with the screen.
In the Hour of Code example (I did the StarWars one not the elves) it was pretty obvious what perspective you were in and how left and right should work. However, if the elves just dance (and don't move) it's possible the Santa one is 3rd person Over the shoulder, with a rotated camera.
The question is if you're controlling the elf, or telling the elf what to do. There's a subtle difference.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
By that I mean if they said left refers to the left of the screen and the turtle moves to the right of the screen then they are wrong..
Without reading the course material I can't say they are wrong..
Like Snagglepuss I'll step to the left
Some have mentioned the idea of "stage" left and right. Coming from a theater and television background I can relate to this, but it is unnecessary in this application.
My wife just got her entire school to do the hour of code. She teaches a 1st and 2nd grade combo class. Adding the difficulty of character-centric directions from the get-go would make it more difficult for some first and second graders to do this, that is a concept that can come later. A few of her students breezed through the entire first lesson set, most can just grasp all the concepts, and some need a little more help but always succeed. (they work in teams, trading off keyboard/mouse time, and that works best for kids of their age.) and it teaches an amazing wealth of concepts even without having to deal with third party perspective direction.
It would be a good concept to switch it up on a much later lesson and specifically talk about the difference between screen direction and character perspective direction. They did not 'get it wrong' for the basic lessons in any way shape or form.
This is much ado about nothing. The hour of code and code.org offerings are amazing as they are. They are giving kids a big boost in fundamental concepts they would not normally learn or at least in an applied manner until much later. It makes learning fun. Unlike most technology oriented education programs, this one actually is useful and works. When first and second graders go home and explain to their parents what an algorithm is and how they use one that's a pretty awesome thing.
Take a step to your left!
proof:
left -> left -> left = right
Your other left.
Merry Christmas, y'all.
This is transparently part of the MS/Google/Code.org plot to ensure that American children cannot reason or program properly, thereby ensuring that facts can be brought to bear supporting the case for programming jobs (which should be theirs by birthright) to be outsourced to India/China.
After my previous post I went and talked to my teacher wife directly about this. She said at the age level that she teaches (first and second grade) it would be a really bad idea. They are just then learning their directions and compass directions and changing the perspective would make it very confusing.
Also, she pointed out that some, but not all of the lessons use compass directions, North South East and West. Switching East and West on them when they are just learning about them is not an age-appropriate thing to do, their brains are not ready for that yet. You and I get that concept easily but at that age it's not there yet. She did say that the code.org programs are an excellent and applied way for kids to learn compass directions.
The interesting thing however is that if you DID want to teach it, the tools are there. One of the first things that they learn to do is to define the function of the direction buttons in the GUI when making interactive games. You could wire them in reverse. But there's no way that she would be doing that with her grade level.
This is a concept that should be saved for and given as a lesson for the older kids using the more advanced classes that are programming directly in javascript.
I'd like to hear from more actual teachers who are actually using code.org with their kids.
Most programming games for children are plagued by this problem. It is well-established that many kids struggle with the notion of left and right relative to the perspective of some other character, and yet "turtle graphics"-inspired games ask kids to do exactly that. If you change to absolute direction, then you end up confusing older kids. As a game designer, I thought long and hard about this issue when designing the programming puzzle game Code Master (review here: http://pastgo.net/2015/12/08/g...). The solution I came up with was to base the programming instructions around colored paths, rather than orientation. A seemingly obvious solution in hindsight, and yet, I'm unaware of any other prior programming game that does this.
I don't believe in the case of rotation left and right really are the correct descriptions, since the bottom could be rotating left, so the top is rotating right, correspondingly. Clockwise and anti-clockwise (using western definition) make more sense, IMHO.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
This article is turning into a pissing contest to see who got it "right". I remembered seeing some medical images where eye image on the left is the patient's right eye and vice versa. Confusing as hell but hey, that's the convention in the medical field. The point of Hour of Code is to get kids to learn how to issue commands to computers. I'm more interested in basic stuffs like variables, functions, loop, conditionals than whether left mean "my left" or "the turtle's left".
Back when I started, "the game" was to print patterns using loops. Star of David, the American flag, etc. And I thought that was a lot of fun.
You can't blame Google for saying "left" when they mean "right". Left and right are subjective concepts which are ambiguous except to each other.
This is part of my grander theory that we live in a mirror world where DNA winds the other way and so do screws. Our liver is on the opposite side. Game controllers have the buttons on the other side than you think and the letters are printed backwards. We switch the words "left" and "right" because our brains were wired ass-backwards when the English language developed. In fact, the only reason I can type on this YTREWQ keyboard is because I think it's a QWERTY keyboard.
As my hang gliding teacher would yell to his students overhead from the sand dune, pointing with great sweeps of his arms:
"Left. Left! LEFT!! YOUR OTHER LEFT!!!"
Maybe the programmers are indigenous Australians. This language has no concept of relative directions.
this is why we always drop a compass rose on any kind of map
We can work "backwards" just Bloody Well tell us we need to!!
Oddly enough, the Minecraft version of Hour of Code is strictly from a 'turtle' perspective. (There is no 'move left' command, but rather 'rotate left' and then 'move forward' commands - the move command is always 'move the direction that 'steve/alex' is facing, and the rotate is always relative to the "character's" current orientation ). Yes, my girlfriend's daughter had to figure out which way to turn Alex based on which way she wanted him to face and which way he was facing, which involved pointing in different directions - I was impressed she was getting it right though!
Perhaps this lines up with the established 'first person' perspective of Minecraft, that no doubt most of the users would be already be familiar with compared with the Frozen and Star Wars, which are both movie based.
But, yeah, sidestep the issue. Use the Minecraft version.
I say this because I'm reminded of a question posed to me by a foreign colleague (at the time) who was writing documentation for software. He wanted to convey that the user should look for a button on the left side of the screen, but he was questioning that the proper form might be to refer to it as the right side of the screen, since it was the screen's right.
His logic went something like this:
Which way are you facing? And which side is your right?
Which way is the screen facing? And which side is its right?
Ok, so to refer to that button, you would look to the right side of the screen.
And there was a certain logic to that view, despite that every single user would get confused by the instruction, as they would assume (rightly so) that the instructions were written from the user's frame of reference.
Starboard, port, stage left, house left....
Here is the real lesson, "ASSUME makes an ASS out of you YOU and ME!"
Clear language and communication is key, assumptions and presumptions cause trouble.