Aaron's non-blog

I have recently been involved in discussions about the dreadful effects of computing teaching in UK schools -- driven by the misguided idea that children should be taught to use things that industry and commerce think they want their employees to be able to use -- like teaching physics by teaching children to drive cars.or use lawnmowers.

There is a different way: namely teaching them to design, implement, test, debug document, and extend/improve working systems. But not necessarily programs selected because those are things future programmers or their employers will be interested in. Rather programs that model aspects of the way humans think, or use reason, or see, or decide, or that model interesting things in the environment.

Many people who agree that new forms of computing teaching are desirable assume that it is necessary to make programming "fun", e.g. by letting learners interactively assemble games, or pictures or other visually compeling entities.

An alternative is to use a basically textual development interface, but with graphical options available. I have been updating the information about teaching tools using the language Pop-11 in the Poplog system available here: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html

In Poplog's teaching section I have given several examples of unconventional, but productive, ways of teaching Programming. here: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/freepoplog.html#teaching

Aaron