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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?
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.