Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Teaching software development? Using LiveCode to build your curriculum? This is the forum for you.

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capellan
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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by capellan » Mon Nov 27, 2017 12:03 am

Richmond, Do you want to translate these stacks to bulgarian and test
if bulgarian teachers and bulgarian-speaking students could learn better
programming concepts if LiveCode is written in their own language?

http://www.canelasoftware.com/mc/metacard25/mtp.mc
http://www.canelasoftware.com/mc/metacard25/mtpguide.mc

Probably, you could even find some university students that want to test this
premise as part of their final thesis. :D

richmond62
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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by richmond62 » Mon Nov 27, 2017 7:59 pm

What is wrong with the way LiveCode pushes their product to education?

This says most of it: right from the "horse's mouth" (an experienced teacher):
Screen Shot 2017-11-27 at 8.56.13 pm.png

capellan
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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by capellan » Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:27 pm

Probably, the cost of 46 pounds includes access to LiveCode support
and much more.

Open Source version is, as you explain, Community supported.

By the way, What do you think about translating MetaTalk Programmer
to Bulgarian or many other languages?

Al

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by richmond62 » Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:43 pm

By the way, What do you think about translating MetaTalk Programmer
to Bulgarian or many other languages?
Well, I wouldn't bother to translate it into Bulgarian for the simple reason that ALMOST ALL children and ALMOST ALL programmers in Bulgaria have a sufficiently good level of English to cope with LiveCode
already.

I DO believe that translating instructional materials into major world languages such as SPANISH, CHINESE and ARABIC could prove valuable, but as Bulgarian is a minority language spoken by about 8 million people, and as Bulgarians, being aware of that, are doing their best to learn 1 or 2 major world languages that is not worth the effort.

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by richmond62 » Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:45 pm

Probably, the cost of 46 pounds includes access to LiveCode support
and much more.
It probably does, but a competent programming teacher probably doesn't need that.

Certainly, I would recommend teachers to start with the Community version, and would also tell them that
as experienced teachers they should be able to cope with day-to-day stuff with LiveCode by themselves.

Of course, at a later date they might choose, if funds are available, to buy a commercial package.

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by richmond62 » Mon Nov 27, 2017 10:58 pm

Pretty Rude: but probably reflects the opinion of very many teachers:
Screen Shot 2017-11-27 at 11.53.30 pm.png

capellan
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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by capellan » Tue Nov 28, 2017 2:39 am

Then , we just have to prove them that they are wrong. :D
LiveCode is excellent for teaching programming
and problem solving.

Learning Livecode as First Computer Language opens the door to
learn and master other computer languages.

Just to prove this, we could include in every lesson, an interactive section
titled: "How they do it using C, Python and Javascript..."
In this way, every student could try every lesson in their own
(or their teacher's) programming language of choice.

If LiveCode were able to compile C programs in every desktop platform,
nobody could claim that it is just a passing fad or a niche language.
Everybody respect C language (and their pointers too) :lol:

www.studytonight.com/c/pointers-in-c.php

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by richmond62 » Tue Nov 28, 2017 11:20 am

I hope (cough, cough) the good people at LiveCode central are paying attention to this thread.

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by richmond62 » Tue Nov 28, 2017 11:43 am

Anyone claiming LiveCode is a niche or fad language is simply ignorant:

1. LiveCode and its predecessors have a pedigree that stretches back about 30 years.

2. As one can see from LiveCode's own website, programs written in LiveCode are deployed in all
sorts of places.

However, that ignorance may, partly be due to LiveCode's rather lack-lustre efforts at advertising,
especially in the education sector.

capellan
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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by capellan » Tue Nov 28, 2017 6:30 pm

Today, any student could use LiveCode to create (and share) their own personal learning stacks, just like many student's stacks in UMICH archives: http://umich.edu/~archive/mac/hypercard/

I propose that LiveCode creates a student's international contest (with prizes provided only by local sponsors) about producing educational content for student's personal learning and sharing classroom lessons: stacks (created with LiveCode IDE) and websites (using LiveCode Server).

If LiveCode wants to promote this international contest, they can count with us to help.
Multimedia Mania guidelines are an excellent starting point for this project:

https://projects.ncsu.edu/mmania/submit.html
https://projects.ncsu.edu/midlink/rubric.judge2000.htm
https://projects.ncsu.edu/midlink/mm200 ... t.kids.htm

(Notice that ISTE's HyperSIG dropped Multimedia Mania only after some
major corporate sponsors stopped contributing.)

Local sponsors are easy to reach for local teachers, but LiveCode should provide at least one person to manage this international contest.

Dear LiveCode, What do you think about this idea?

Al
Last edited by capellan on Wed Nov 29, 2017 5:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

capellan
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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by capellan » Tue Nov 28, 2017 6:44 pm

Richmond, a few years ago, I discovered with amazement that exists a tendency in education who propose that teachers should become skilled entertainers and compete along television hosts, radio personalities, actors and musicians for the time and attention of their customers... I mean, their students.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/m ... ng-schools

Of course, there is another side for this coin:
http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/ar ... tertainers

In some countries, the most effective effort to reach the education market only requires to
1) bribe someone who make decisions or :(
2) bribe an influential member of the ruling political party. :(

In fact, Who are most interested in the advantages provided by using LiveCode in education?
Private schools and DIY learners.

I need to reiterate this idea:
Learning LiveCode as First Computer Language opens the door to learn and master other computer languages. Even so, I am sure that we could find people who said otherwise... that learning first a very-high level computer language effectively cripple forever the imagination and other cognitive functions required for learning more traditional computer languages like C or Assembler... That is not true.
Clearly, that is not true.

For example: How could you use LC to teach about pointers and memory management techniques?
The answer is:
Create a simulation where techniques of memory allocation, heap deallocation, array allocation, memory ownership models, and memory leaks are represented visually as an array of color graphics or pixels.

Of course, someone could say: "But that is only a simulation, not the real thing!" but precisely because of that, teachers have better control over student's learning outcomes. Instead of avoid catastrophic errors, teachers could show each one of them and teach students how to avoid repeating these mistakes in their code.

And... one more thing:
Eric S. Raymond recently wrote: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7724#more-7724

"Ever since the very earliest computer languages it’s been understood that every language design embodies an assertion about the relative value of programmer time vs. machine resources. At one end of that spectrum you have languages like assembler and (later) C that are designed to extract maximum performance at the cost of also pessimizing developer time and costs; at the other, languages like Lisp and (later) Python that try to automate away as much housekeeping detail as possible, at the cost of pessimizing machine performance.

In broadest terms, the most important discriminator between the ends of this spectrum is the presence or absence of automatic memory management. This corresponds exactly to the empirical observation that memory-management bugs are by far the most common class of defects in machine-centric languages that require programmers to manage that resource by hand."

"Over time, there’s been a gradual shift from languages that require manual memory management to languages with automatic memory management and garbage collection (GC)"

And that explains a lot...

Al

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by Randy Hengst » Wed Nov 29, 2017 3:34 pm

I agree that ISTE's HyperSIG MultimediaMania concept is a good place to start. I was a judge for several years ... I mainly focused on the HyperStudio projects, but did see projects created with other tools.

capellan
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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by capellan » Wed Nov 29, 2017 4:01 pm

I was Judge in HyperSIG for a year. One of the projects that I evaluated (a website about Shakespeare) received the Second Place in it's own category. Precisely, a HyperStudio Project earned the First Place in that year. :D

When I asked HyperSIG about creating an International Version of Multimedia Mania, they told me that it was planned, but needed more resources that were not available at that time. I send them a spanish translation of their rubric and grading sheet.

Multimedia Mania stopped after some Major Corporate Sponsors retired their contribution, for this reason, local prizes, provided by local sponsors are the best option to organize a new contest.

LiveCode just need to assign one person that supervises and advice teachers who wants to create a Multimedia Contest for their students.

Al

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by Newbie4 » Thu Nov 30, 2017 3:46 am

I have a great idea that would be fun and get LiveCode a ton of free publicity worldwide. They should sponsor a "Million Programmer" webpage or a "Million Programs written in LiveCode" webpage.

This originates from the "Million Dollar" webpage that became famous worldwide. You can see it here: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com and read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milli ... r_Homepage It was an Internet sensation when he started it. The story was picked up by all the newswires and I even say it mentioned on all our local television news stations.

Everyone who writes a program in LC would get a pixel on the page (which pops up to their name). People love it when their name shows up on the Internet. They would show all their friends and the newspapers around the world would write about it.

Another way is to give them a pixel per program. The ones who wrote multiple programs would get more of a footprint on the page.

LiveCode could jumpstart it with the names of everyone who downloaded LC from the main site (and submitted their email address) or have teachers send in the list of students they taught LC.

It would be an interesting way to get free press and would not require much in resources (a web programmer)

Anyone game?
Newbie4
(Cyril Pruszko)
Cyril Pruszko
https://sites.google.com/a/pgcps.org/livecode/
https://sites.google.com/a/setonhs.org/app-and-game-workshop/home
https://learntolivecode.com/

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Re: Why do so few schools try LiveCode...?

Post by capellan » Thu Nov 30, 2017 6:21 am

If we convert all HyperCard stacks to Livecode, (with author permission) then the total numbers of stacks
and authors could reach a really high number.

I have already posted a Livecode version of a few HC stacks and have a few more stacks conversions pending.

Do you want to create an online editable and complete list of stacks and authors?
We could ask Max Vessi for a page in his LiveCode wikia website.

Al

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