a better starter language than Scratch and a nice prelude to LiveCode.
I would hesitate to describe Scratch as a programming language at all:
I would tend to describe it as blocks you can put into
different orders to program on-screen objects.
And I would hesitate to describe LiveCode as a programming language "pure and simple"
(or, possibly, "pure and horribly complicated"):
I would tend to describe it as a collection of programmable objects that
you can get to work together to achieve things.
Certainly LiveCode seems nearer to the types of language I grew up with (BASIC & so on)
than to Scratch.
Progressing (not entirely sure if that is the right word as it implies C# and so on are somehow 'higher'
languages than LiveCode, which, snobby C# programmers aside, I do not agree with) from LiveCode to
Java, Python and C# is considerably easier than trying to do that from Scratch-like things.
I would argue that there is no need for something intermediate between Scratch and LiveCode,
(mind you I would not expose children to Scratch in the first place as I feel it gives children
the wrong impression about what constitutes computer programming)
But there is a lack of a certain types of material/online classes that can help preteens get on
the bandwagon; and this gap needs to be plugged if there is to be any hope of some sort of uptake
by children.
------------- Tangential 'Gubbins' follows ---------
I spend an awful lot of time in CALL development (Computer Assisted Language Learning), and,
due to that spend quite a lot of time thinking about interface design.
Having developed CALL programs at the U.A.E. University in Al Ain in the late 1990s for students in there late
teens and early 20s, I then turned my attention from 2003 onwards to CALL for preteens for the very simple
reason that the programs on the CD in the back of every ESL textbook turned out to be extremely badly
designed in a number of ways:
1. They contain instructions on each screen that, if the user (i.e. small child) could read them they would
not need to learn English at all; and it is extremely foolish to believe that Mummy and Daddy have any English
at all.
2. The screens are horribly cluttered with artifacts so that the user has no way of working out for themselves
(as they cannot read the instructions) what they are meant to do.
3. The content is tangential, at best, to the grammar and vocabulary those children are meant to be learning.
4. ALL the CDs that come with ESL textbooks that I have seen seem to have been made by people who either:
4.1. Are programmers, who are not ESL teachers, working from some vague set of instructions written down by
the authors of those textbooks.
or
4.2. Feel it is their duty to provide "something" to shove in the back of an ESL textbook.
It is obvious that the vast majority of ESL textbooks have been written by "ESL experts" who have little
or no actual experience of ESL teaching.
Of course an awful lot of this is redundant as something like 90% of the children I teach have laptops without CD/DVD drives,
and normally spend the first day of a new textbook running the sound files off the supplied CD onto Flash drives for
those children.
As Ruth Colvin Clarke pointed out in about 1992: interfaces should be minimalistic, uncluttered, and largely self explanatory.
-
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---------- End of side trip ---------------
Well, that "side trip" was not there so I could swank about my CALL design; it was there because it says something
about setting up programmes (whether self-study or teacher-directed) for preteens.
As far as I am concerned, the ONLY way to work out a credible programme is to develop it in a computer lab with
a set of preteens, and be prepared to admit failure and so on, and be ready to adapt and modify like there's
no tomorrow.
My first attempt at teaching LiveCode to children (about 8 years ago) was, largely, a load of rubbish for the first week
as I had written down a programmatic set of lesson plans which collapsed at the first hurdle, but it took me another 4 days
until my ego caved in.
Subsequently, each year, I have written a "shopping list" of what I want to cover in the 4 weeks of intensive stuff,
and generally that works out, but different groups work through different bits at quite different speeds.