Slashdot Mirror
How Scratch Is Feeding Hacker Values into Young Minds (backchannel.com)
Reader mirandakatz writes: It's the 10th anniversary of Scratch, the kids programming language that's become a popular tool for training the next generation of minds in computer science. But as Steven Levy writes at Backchannel, Scratch's real value is how it imparts lessons in sharing, logic, and hackerism: 'A product of the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is steeped in a complicated set of traditions -- everything from educational philosophy to open source activism and the pursuit of artificial life. The underpinnings of this tool subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, convey a set of values through its use... These values include reverence of logic, an unshakeable belief in the power of collaboration, and a celebration of the psychic and tangible rewards of being a maker.'
Just tried this out because I was curious. It requires Adobe Flash. Already lost interest, sadly. And it looked kinda cool to tinker with, too!
Python seems like it would be a good beginner language, if you leave out some of the fancy stuff and dumb it down it's pretty easy to grasp. It would also have real world applications, too.
I was going to say that I didn't realize hacking could be so lucrative that it was turning on a generation of young programmers!
So for the past 30 years learning BASIC was a terrible idea but learning to use Scratch isn't?
Get a load of this bullshit.
You want to teach programming, then teach programming. Don't make it out to be some sort of overarching value system.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wont someone PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!!!
While giving a programming advice to an anonymous, probably-native-English-speaker someone, I said something about writing the code from scratch and that person answered "No. I want to learn a proper language". Back then I didn't even know what this Scratch was, apparently an extremely limited environment for kids to play. What puzzled me of this association of "from scratch" with a so unrelated-to-programming toy was how easily a so wrong idea appeared as evident. The programming knowledge of that person (as per our short conversation) was extremely low, most likely non-existent; but s/he wasn't aware about that fact, perhaps because of having once used this Scratch thing and assuming that this was all what programming was. I don’t remember the exact question, but it was a very simple concept like why the loop was showing 2 in the second iteration? who wasn’t able to grasp despite my explanations; was expecting an even simpler explanation?!.
I cannot be against what I don't know (as said, never really used that thing) and much less regarding a field outside my expertise like educating kids, but am certainly against pseudo-/partially-/dishonestly-educating people by over-simplifying what isn't simple. This is especially important in fields like programming, which are usually associated with long learning periods and where only certain types of personalities tend to succeed. Knowing a bit of everything sounds good to me, but only within the right context (e.g., real-life applicability of that knowledge).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
As a parent of a kid who has learned a little javascript and a little brother who might jump in I clicked through to check it out. As a former Actionscripter I saw "click to start flash" and closed the window. Yuck.
This just in - UNIX terminology promotes black magic. Windows daemons are called TSRs, which clearly is a Dungeons and Dragons plug, and therefore also black magic. Insidious! Let's pilot a turtle through the maze of kids programming languages, see if maybe we can find a cure for lisp. Seriously, was this post a Scratch plug or some kind of trojan designed to scare middle class conservative parents (or excite their children) and deepen alignment between makers and the left? Did BASIC teach me the morality and values of being a nerd? I'm pretty sure it was reading books that did that thing. It seems to me that articles like this are trying to align hacktivism, minorities, Scratch, "collaboration" (read: use Facebook), and most importantly, the benevolent appearance of friendly and benign Uncle Zuckerberg, who we can expect to see on the ballot in 2020.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
I live in Sweden, I've been invited to those so called scratch introductory courses, because I sometimes work as a substitute teacher, and now - Scratch has been introduced to the Swedish learning institution because the government has finally realized we need to get kids to code (which I fully agree with BTW.)
But scratch?
Not sure about that. I tried introducing the kids at my school to Arduino - and they went NUTS with happiness and excitement. Why? Because it was that much cooler. The kids are not idiots, they immediately recognized scratch as some 4 year old pedagogical learning tool made to be a "learning tool" instead of something cool they would actually use in their everyday life. Arduino on the other hand, when they could plug some 2 dollar electrical device into their laptops and code on it, and leave the code on the device to perform interesting functions like sensing light, moving a motor around, checking a switch or displaying something cool on an oled display - now THIS is what got the kids, not that pedagogical "make that flash-like-cat-thing-move-on-the-screen" stuff.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
>> celebration of the psychic and tangible rewards of being a maker
I once thought I'd like to be a maker too, but the thought of wriggling through sand (itchy!) and just spending most of my days chasing after the "thump, thump, thump" turned me off.
I can't say enough good things about this system. I'm amazed that my kindergarten aged son can work through the tutorials and there is an working flash game that they have made after each one. He's not completely sure how it all works yet but he is able to modify the tutorials to customize the programs as he goes and has a blast.
Stencyl is like Scratch only better.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
"No make things-only consume."
What the unholy hot taint of Beelzabub is wrong with these people?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read the referenced article. Scratch is one of the mainstays (with Python, for older, more advanced kids) of https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ and has been for 4/5 years, at least.
We also teach it as part of Raspberry Pi Jams: https://www.raspberrypi.org/ja... as well as assorted hardware and robotics projects based on the Raspberry PI.
Most of this is volunteer supported. I've just finished a year in a local primary, that's probably 1st to 5th grade in the US system. There's a little more of this in the US now, go find some, it's fun. And I agree, not every kid will want to progress, but this is a good way of dipping toes in and finding out.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Sounds nothing like Python.
The piece starts off with "Last year, I went to Nigeria with Mark Zuckerberg."
So privileged!