[Yr7-10it] Scratch, Gamemaker, VB.net, Python, PHP and MySQL - Programming for all levels

[Kevork Krozian]

Hi Bill,

 I am cross posting to IT Software Development here as there is a parallel thread evolving under [Programming Languages for 2008] .
 

I feel I may be giving the wrong impression in some of the comments I have posted. 

Let me explain. 
Having left "formal" computer science in 1983, and having used 3G programming in teaching until around the late 80s I was forced to take on Non imperative programming in the early 90s as a requirement of the study design. 

Result: I picked up prolog and ran with it for about 5 years. 
Outcome for students: With so little time ( we also had to do an imperative langauge - Pascal ) the students could only fumble to reproduce something similar to what was in the learning.

Forward to mid 90s. Prolog was thrown out and I had to pick up Visual Dbase.  
Outcome for students: Students also struggled with lack of time.

Continue to 2000: Inspired by a colleague ( are you there Rob Ward ? ) I picked up Java using Borland's JBuilder. I called back an ex student who just finished his Ph D in Comp Sci and asked him what HE thought students should know by Years 11 and 12 and to "bridge the gap to Year 13" . We spent around 3 months devising a set of exercises and programming tasks.

 Here is what we covered in the "purist" academic sense:
       1. Simple Data Types, primitives
       2. Functions
       3. User defined Objects
       4. Arrays and Vectors
       5. Text and Binary Files
       6. User defined objects, methods, inheritance, encapsulation
       7. A vector of user defined objects saved to binary files
       7. OOP 

 Outcome for students: They found it a struggle. Only the top end managed to survive due to a lack of time. 
Are you there Steven Baird ?  

In 2007 : We have moved to VB.NET in Yr 10, Python in Year 11 and PHP and MySQL in Year 12.

 The last time I felt "educationally pure" was when I did my Cisco CCNA Instructor Course a few years ago. It felt so good . I was at home.
I can't wait to do my CCNP instructor.
 
 Another comment I made about VET ITwas that " as long as it works , the intellectual honesty doesn't matter" .
 Not competent ? An attitude of just redo it, who cares why it didn't work the first time. Keep doing it, and if you get it right eventually the teacher can tick you competent. 
 
Enrolment for 2008:  Continuing decline in IT enrolments. 10 students for VET IT in Year 11. 2 students for IT in Year 11. 10 students for Yr 12 Software Development  in a school of 550. In 2009 we are unlikely to offer SoftDev at Yr 12 for the first time in 20 years.

So Bill, Steven, Mark, Kent, Claudia, Maggie and others help me out.  
Tell me how we can get back to the purely academic, inquiry based approach to teaching programming and retain our classes?


Best Wishes
Kevork Krozian
Edulists Creator and Administrator
www.edulists.com.au 
kevork at edulists.com.au 

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bill Kerr 
  To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 6:55 AM
  Subject: Re: [Yr7-10it] Scratch, Gamemaker, VB.net, Python,PHP and MySQL - Programming for all levels


  Hi Kevork,

  well I've tried for 2-3 days to resist responding but in the end I haven't been successful :-)

  the tipping point is that rob used the word "purist" too in the thread he started

  [quote from rob in other thread] -
  I feel a bit like I've found a combination of ICT and philosophical thinking that seems, in any given school, to be a minority (the "lets just use the stuff" approach / use some app with low entry and high graphics or communication payoff - seems to dominate. That whole tension is one I'd like to investigate - I'm not unsympathetic to that approach for lots of kids - gamemaker is a good hybrid between the two (purist vs ICT user) 
  [/quote]

  that is one thing that intrigued me about your reply: that you used the word "purist"  to describe what I described as an educational approach to the use of computers

  One aim is to try to get at your thinking behind this use of language and the other language we use wrt computers in schools (?) 

  Initially the thinking behind teachers introducing game maker (to focus on that for a sec) was far from purist

  key words here would be - engagement, motivational

  advocates of game maker have been criticised for their lack of purity, for their capitulation to vulgar populism eg. see Kent's comments in this thread 

  go back a few years and the educational flavour of the decade was logo

  key words here would be - epistemology or more accurately "genetic epistemology" (from Piaget) and papert invented a new one, "constructionism" (mmm ... not recognised by my spell checker, it has become a rare beast) 

  these are difficult words but do have some sort of real basis in educational thinking - it's not really fair to describe this approach as purist

  some have argued and produced research studies that logo didn't work (eg. Roy Pea) in achieving its stated goals - but that's a big discussion really 

  My point is about the language we use in describing computer use in schools - what I think is that this tends to reflect metaphors of the computer we have internalised

  I see this as -
  obstacles to introducing a child centered developmental approach to the use of computers in schools 

  Maybe it's "idealist" in some way because the prevailing ethos is very much "some other way" - labels might include vocational, administrative, data management thinking, hardware / networking focus, VELS etc. 

  I like rob's approach of exploring the tension b/w existing approaches but don't like the way rob has described the poles of the tension (purist vs ICT user)

  I'd prefer something like -
  educational versus vocational 
  or
  epistemological versus instrumentalist 

  "explore the tension" - good phrase rob

  Kevork, I liked this reality check from you -
  "if we are looking at what is the best programming language for children to learn in Period 1, and in Period 2 we are teaching students VET IT and what they need to go out and work in industry next year and the period after that we are teaching Cisco students how to set up a network in the "real" world through a simulated or school based problem then you will forgive my oversight if I stray into what is needed in industry as part of what they are doing. Maybe I am suffering VET fatigue."

  and there have been other such recent comments, eg
  "I don't have time to learn a new programming language"

  cheers,
  - Bill


Kevork Krozian
IT Manager , Forest Hill College
k.krozian at fhc.vic.edu.au
http://www.fhc.vic.edu.au
Mobile: 0419 356 034