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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!
IMHO there no difference between knowing 2 or 3 commands in c vs 2 or 3 commands in an 'easy' language.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
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.
There is now an Open Source BASIC compiler for PIC controllers. That is a simple and very cheap 8-bit computer.
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!
I don't get it either.
BASIC was the launching pad for indoctrination for nearly 10 years and offers a lot to the curious mind. Is it clutsy? Sure. Is it effective for 'type and see' exploration? Absolutely.
I'm part of the early second generation of home computers users (early 80's, Apple IIe); so my first exposure as a kid to computers centered around Applesoft BASIC. At 12 or so, I recall a tech minded adult (a teacher, if memory serves) explaining that Apple, Atari and Commodore (the most common systems one might find in a middle school computer lab) all licensed their BASIC from Microsoft and explained how it was hardcoded into ROM.
At that point, I began comparing the BASIC 'type and see' stuff included in the computer mags at the time (Compute! and the like). They all looked similar, but didn't quite mesh. Why? What was going on? This led me to Beagle Bros., hanging a Peeks & Pokes chart on the wall above my venerable IIe and trying to learn more. Ultimately, it also led me to opening the case and exploring the chips on the board, trying to visualize what I was typing and where it was happening.
The progression ladder is there... 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit as are the documented real world platforms that used them. Included in this evolution are also clearly outlined (and historically relevant) ecosystem collapses and platform extinctions.
To this day, I still say that the use of good emulators for three or four 8 bit systems would be the natural beginning for real exploration. Introduce a concept, offer similar environments for said concept to be demonstrated and explore the differences.
I'm not talking about spending years here, kids don't need years. Inside of a first year STEM track program (we're talking about focusing on 5-7th graders, btw), the perspective of time is not the same. You could easily focus on a single year to ground in fundamental logic in programming and have kids doing really impressive stuff -- meanwhile learning flexibility (Okay, you've accomplished this on a C64, now repeat by porting it to an Apple IIe). Provided the documentation, guidance and participation... the kid that asks, "Okay, so how do I make this run faster, easier to port, etc...?" is the kid that gets the need to move to assembler, is looking for a compiler, etc...
They're also learning efficiency in code due to the limitations of the architecture being emulated. That's a valuable lesson as well.
This also opens another track... not everyone will be a programmer. But those concepts might serve as a launching pad in other directions. "Wait, so this is a real computer, working real time inside a different computer? Can the two talk to each other?" You have the possibility of observing and guiding inclination, curiosity and skill sets toward gratifying pursuits.
A sysadmin, network admin and programmer will all look at a problem differently. All three are valuable. There is no right or wrong at that age, only approach to solving a problem. That's the point of education.
The whole knee-jerk reaction to how bad BASIC was, all of the terrible habits it formed, whatever... all seem to overlook the fact that it got kids (and adults) hooked. They moved on.
The technology world didn't get waylayed by BASIC, it got an entire generation of initiates.
I have far more of an issue teaching these lego-block hour of code programs and then thinking what? We're going to toss them into JAVA/Python and call the day done.
I think the best modern interpretation I've seen is with the Pi, Minecraft and Python as it most closely resembled what really helped kids decide whether their interest was in digging deeper or just playing around and scratching an itch.
#SickNotWeak