Researchers say that dyslexic individuals exhibit "big picture thinking." Does that fit with programming?
On 11.10.2012 03:30pm, Joel Kahn wrote:
Ania Lesca wrote:Scratch is great, but our "productions" cannot be used outside scratch.This is true, and the same limitation applies to BASIC-256, Alice, VPython, and a number of other programming environments that are aimed at teaching programming to novices. When we are talking about students who are just starting to learn the way that computers really work, it may be a bit premature to think about stand-alone apps resulting from this process, especially if the students are facing their own special challenges. What kinds of programs should children write at what stages? That will have to be worked out. In connection with this, I strongly encourage everyone to read the *entire* text of a 2006 article by David Brin: http://www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/ Ian Larsen credits this article with inspiring him to develop BASIC-256 in the first place, and expands on the ideas here: http://basic256.org/whybasic While it's certainly possible to debate Brin's and Larsen's arguments in various ways, I would ask: How do they apply to students with dyslexia, autism, attention deficit disorder, &c, &c? Maybe such kids will not grow up to be professional programmers, but decisions still need to be made about what kind of "technology" education they should have. Joel ### To unsubscribe from the schoolforge-discuss mailing list: Send an e-mail message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with no subject and a body of "unsubscribe schoolforge-discuss"