Aaron's non-blog
I don't have a blog here. All information about me and things I do and think can be found via my web page in the School of Computer Science, university of Birmingham, UK:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs
However, I shall occasionally add items here, usually pointing to things I have put on the web elsewhere.
Tuesday 18 August 2009, 1:37 AM
The lost opportunties of computing in schools
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
Comments on this post
Too right Aaron.
I've been a governor of two schools.
Tutoring young learners to be intuitive leads to innovation, invention and excitement. Teaching them the same functiionality as everyone else is static, leads nowhere and bores everyone rigid - but, it passes exams and boosts league table results.
Lance Q
I wondered in the days of the BBC Micro (early 1980s for the neophytes) what exactly computing in schools was all about: tools for education for teaching about computers.
If the former, then at the time they were woefully inadequate. If the latter then: why? Employers would teach you how to use one if they were required for the job (they weren't ubiquitous and cheap as they are now) and if they weren't, why teach someone how to use a BBC Micro, which weren't exactly flooding workplaces? And even so, is it the task of schools to subsidise company training? I didn't think so.
Thirty years on, I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to why computers are needed in schools...
Well I'll give you one, to give pupils of all backgrounds a chance to spark a cultural interest in them, that they may then choose to pursue.
The BBC B was designed as a teaching machine, and itr did that exceptionally well. I don't mean teaching programming (although it was certainly excellent for that too), but general electronic engineering. It's greatest strength was the number and variety of I/O ports, along with (for the time) astonishingly open documentation of these.
Really good schools jumped on this with great glee, and their students developed some excellent robotics, control systems etc. I have no doubt that many of today's better engineers have a soft spot for the old BeeB ... even some of us older 'kids' :)
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