[Yr7-10it] girls, IT, computer literacy

[Bill Kerr]

tony forster wrote:
No I haven't used Crickets but I am prepared to make predictions based on
Lego Mindstorms programmable bricks. I would have given anything as a kid to
have had Lego Mindstorms and was surprised that the kids showed little
interest when they had GameMaker as an option.

I put this down to the development cycle. In Lego Mindstorms and GameMaker
there is a cycle of implement test debug implement. With Mindstorms, the
implement & test is much slower. Consequently kids spend the majority of
their time in implement & test in Mindstorms and debug in GameMaker.
-------

alternative or complementary explanation from marvin minsky:

"About the time that building-toys went out of style, so did many other
things that clever kids could do. Cars got too hard to take apart -- and
radios, impossible. No one learned to build much any more, except to
snap-together useless plastic toys. And no one seemed to notice this, since
sports and drugs and television-crime came just in time. Perhaps computers
can help bring us back."
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Logoworks.html

need to find ways to slow down kids and adults in a world that is speeding
up?
principle of slow, deep thinking

-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/




On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 8:18 AM, <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:

> > Has anyone used Cricket technology? (I haven't)
> >
>
> Hi Bill,
> No I haven't used Crickets but I am prepared to make predictions based on
> Lego Mindstorms programmable bricks. I would have given anything as a kid to
> have had Lego Mindstorms and was surprised that the kids showed little
> interest when they had GameMaker as an option.
>
> I put this down to the development cycle. In Lego Mindstorms and GameMaker
> there is a cycle of implement test debug implement. With Mindstorms, the
> implement & test is much slower. Consequently kids spend the majority of
> their time in implement & test in Mindstorms and debug in GameMaker.
>
> The debug part of the cycle is where the real learning takes place. This
> is where the problem solving or higher order thinking takes place. To debug
> you build a runnable mental model in your head of the program and compare
> the output with what actually happens. Piaget would talk of cognitive
> conflict. I expect that being able to build these complex and robust mental
> models is an important generalised skill which is transferable to other
> visual learning domains. Building mental models is common to a lot of
> thinking, for example when we read a text we also build a mental model of
> the text. Our ability to use the text in sophisticated ways depends on the
> complexity of the mental model that we build and our ability to interrogate
> that model.
>
> Debugging is highly enjoyable, if you have been up late fixing that last
> program bug or adding just one more road to Sim City, you will know what I
> mean. This is because debugging is learning at its best, all mammals are
> preprogrammed to enjoy learning, it is called play (Crawford,
> http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html). It is
> closely bound up in flow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29>)
> We enter a state of flow when we are problem solving and the challenge is
> matched to our ability, we also enter a state of flow when practicing motor
> skills, eg skiing, in both cases flow and learning are closely related.
>
> Flow and Vygotsky's ZPD are related. With social support, it is easier to
> match challenge to ability, to put learning right out there on the edge of
> ability, to enter a state of flow.
>
> With Cricket I would expect that kids would spend too much time
> implementing and testing and not enough problem solving and that the level
> of engagement would not be as high as when solving similar problems in a
> virtual space like GameMaker (or Scratch).
>
> It would still be fun to try out Cricket, anybody know where I can get
> one?
>
> Tony
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