Teaching computer programming in schools

Teaching computer programming in schools

I reproduce few lines from the book “ Studying the Novice Programmer” edited by Elliot Soloway and James C. Sphohrer, published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, publishers.

“Why should programming be taught in schools? The two most commonly heard answers to this question are: (1) computers are the future, so students should become familiar with them to enhance their job skills and to make them informed citizens in a technological society, and 2) learning to p;rogram is a cognitively demanding activity that can open the door to new ways of exploring powerful ideas and thereby help students develop “good habits of mind” that will make them more creative and effective problem solvers. This second answer to the question of why programming should be taught in the schools deals with the problem of transfer: how to make knowledge and skills learned in one context available in unforeseeable ways in some other context”.

Any body has the experience of the second answer in teaching computer programming?

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Permalink Reply by Joaquim Lopes on August 25, 2007 at 12:46pm

I'm tempted to say: read Papert's book and start with Logo (specially the Turtle Graphics part). ActionScript (the language that is available in Flash could also be an option although it can get pretty heavy when you start getting deeper into the language because you will need some knowledge about Object Oriented Programming). However, since it can be linked to some interesting multimedia stuff, it would be interesting to know if the kids would get it (at least I would like to try this with one of my next year's classes, but they are older - 13-15 years).
Anyway, any option you take (either Logo or Action Script or may be C or Pascal) you will need to know about programming.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 25, 2007 at 4:55pm

My kids are only 10-11 years old; I'm not learning programming. That's why Q Basic was nice--they could explore and figure it out on their own. Thanks for the advice.