Ryan,
Thanks. I myself learned Scheme back in the day using DrScheme. For the learning/teaching populace that we are talking about, I feel this would be a bit over the top.
Thank you.
In our system, LaTeX (as of now) comes quite a little bit later in the studies, for (some of) those who decide to pursue a degree in the sciences. I think it is better to keep it that way for at least a few more years, till the number of people who know LaTeX is sufficiently large : it is always easier to teach kids things that many adults have some inkling of.
One good reason is: for a large majority of these students, the only computers they get to use are the ones in their school labs. Without a computer to read it on, how would they access the material at home?
Many of these points are already covered by the activities in the 8th standard textbook. We can probably integrate most of the rest of them in the next textbooks.
This would severly tax all but the hardiest of the students, and put tremendous pressure on the teachers. Our aim is to introduce the subject, not to scare people away from it!
If at all Python would be taught, only very basic (but Turing-complete) stuff would be taught. Most of the details of syntax would be left for them to discover by themselves if they so please.
Programming is essential. As a model language I would recommend an old BASIC with line numbers. This is close to how computers actually work, but still accessible enought for them. If you want to have an advanced course, teach Pascal.
I think that they chose Python in the 8th grade for its simplicity.
It is essential in our modern world that people, especially children, know how computers work and how to program them, in principle, at least.
The point is not to turn them into great programmers, but to give them a basic idea of how the things work.
I concur.
Most of what you learn there will be found out equally fast by the children themselves.
This has been observed to happen here as well, more or less without fail.
Slashdot Mirror
Zimbra Desktop ?
Did you mean "subverts"?
in the Atlantic?
Well, traveling salesman is an NP hard problem. That means you can VERIFY whether a proposed solution is optimal in polynomial time.
No, it doesn't mean that.
Thank you. We can use many of these ideas.
Ryan, Thanks. I myself learned Scheme back in the day using DrScheme. For the learning/teaching populace that we are talking about, I feel this would be a bit over the top.
Thank you! That looks interesting, and I think Scala would not be hard to learn as well.
Thank you. This could be useful.
Thank you. In our system, LaTeX (as of now) comes quite a little bit later in the studies, for (some of) those who decide to pursue a degree in the sciences. I think it is better to keep it that way for at least a few more years, till the number of people who know LaTeX is sufficiently large : it is always easier to teach kids things that many adults have some inkling of.
Exactly!
One good reason is: for a large majority of these students, the only computers they get to use are the ones in their school labs. Without a computer to read it on, how would they access the material at home?
Thank you. This list of software will come in handy when we want to think about what more software to include in the course.
Thank you, especially for that last suggestion.
Thank you.
Introducing simple DB concepts in the 10th grade was on my mind as well, but I didn't know about the SQLite+Python part. This is useful!
Thank you, that helps.
Since we have to teach "if", I guess we will have to teach elementary boolean logic as well.
We aim to teach only a small, but Turing-complete, subset.
Yeah, kids are lot smarter than we think they are, when it comes to these things.
Many of these points are already covered by the activities in the 8th standard textbook. We can probably integrate most of the rest of them in the next textbooks.
Thanks once again!
Mathematics can be thought of in two different aspects:
In the 9th and 10th grade math, (2) gets the priority, with occasional glimpses of (1) to spark the interest of the kid with an aptitude for math.
We would like our IT curriculum to take a similar approach as math in this respect.
This would severly tax all but the hardiest of the students, and put tremendous pressure on the teachers. Our aim is to introduce the subject, not to scare people away from it!
That's sad!
If at all Python would be taught, only very basic (but Turing-complete) stuff would be taught. Most of the details of syntax would be left for them to discover by themselves if they so please.
Programming is essential. As a model language I would recommend an old BASIC with line numbers. This is close to how computers actually work, but still accessible enought for them. If you want to have an advanced course, teach Pascal.
I think that they chose Python in the 8th grade for its simplicity.
It is essential in our modern world that people, especially children, know how computers work and how to program them, in principle, at least.
The point is not to turn them into great programmers, but to give them a basic idea of how the things work.
I concur.
Most of what you learn there will be found out equally fast by the children themselves.
This has been observed to happen here as well, more or less without fail.