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Re: [school-discuss] Dyslexia and Programming



Hello Joel,
A snippet from your mail inspired me:

What kinds of programs should children write at
what stages? That will have to be worked out.

Two short answers and one long to 3 utterly imprtant questions:

1. What kinds of programs should children write?
Short answer: ask them

2. at what stages?
Short answer: depends on how you cut the cake.

3. That will have to be worked out.
Long and proven answer:
http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/schoutdi/

Kind regards,
Dirk


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

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