Monthly Archives: May 2016

American Schools Are Teaching Our Kids to Code Just Fine, Thanks

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This post is a response to this article here.  You should read it, and then return.  Done?  Good.  Now I’m going to tell you why all of that is hogwash.

Here is the part of the article I agree most with.  It’s a quote, so the author can’t even take credit:

“As noted by MIT’s Marvin Minsky and Alan Kay, computational innovation and literacy have much in common with music literacy.”

Yes.  Let’s explore those similarities.

When you teach music for the first time in a general music class, do you teach every student the alto saxophone?  No, you give them each a recorder.

Recorder

The recorder is simple to use, but still manages to illustrate the principles of music.  Students can start to read musical notation and understand the relationships between the notes of a scale.  The “Coding Apps” the article references are the recorders of programming.

It’s as if the author is saying, “Students will never join the symphony orchestra if they only learn the recorder!”  That’s true, but it’s also ridiculous.

First of all, not everyone needs to join an orchestra, but it benefits everyone to have a basic knowledge of music.  Not everyone is going to become a programmer, but to have a basic knowledge of computer science is very enriching.

Secondly, students who are interested and/or talented with the recorder may move on to another more professional instrument.  Just as no one has suggested that students take up the recorder professionally, no one is suggesting that students stop learning about programming when the Hour of Code is done.  If students love Scratch, they’re likely to move on to learning Python, or Javascript, or another “real-world” programming language.  Conversely, if students’ first exposure to programming is punishing and intimidating, they may never move on from there.  With a bad first impression, learners will be poisoned against programming for the rest of their lives.

It’s perfectly obvious these days that numeracy should be introduced to small children with counters and manipulatives, rather than symbols on paper.  “But they’re not learning the important pencil and paper skills they’ll need to truly learn mathematics!” one might say.  This is not a threat to mathematics instruction because we know that students will soon move on.  The same is true for coding apps.

If Scratch were the tool of choice for Stanford’s Computer Science 201 course, I would be very concerned, but visual programming games and apps are a fantastic way to expose children (and adults) to programming for the first time.

~

Rob Lockhart is the creative director of Important Little Games.  If you’re interested in teaching kids to code, check out the game we’re working on, called Codemancer.

Where does Codemancer “fit”?

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‘Games that teach players how to code’ is becoming a genre of game all its own.  I made this little flowchart to show where I think “Codemancer” fits within the ecosystem of games (and other software) that teach programming.  Feel free to share widely.  Enjoy!

Children Need Flawed Technology

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It’s recently occurred to me, during my efforts to make my upcoming educational game, “Codemancer,” as flawless as possible, that in some cases it’s better to expose children to flawed technology.  My reasons are these:

  1. Children using flawed technology products can understand the humanity of the creator(s).
  2. They may be inspired to fix, or to exploit, the flaws they find.
  3. Using flawed technology builds up resilience.

Understanding the humanity of the product’s creator doesn’t seem like a big deal to most adults.  We understand that these things we interact with were designed and built by people.  Children don’t necessarily have that kind of awareness.  Even if kids know a device or a piece of software is made by a human being, they might not consider that person relate-able.  On the other hand, if their creation is flawed, children may reason, perhaps the creator is flawed, too — and perhaps I, a flawed person, could become a creator myself.  There is also evidence to suggest that understanding an influential person as a person helps kids to understand their influence as well.

To certain personalities, a mistake in design or development can seem like a thorn in one’s mind.  We may try to ignore it, but the discomfort will, over time, force us to take action.  Lots of normally developed kids fall into this category.  These are kids with a developed sense of taste. They know how technology ought to be.  There are more of them all the time as children’s relationship with technology grows.

There are two impulses that may spring from this kind of personality: the impulse to Fix It and the impulse to Exploit It.  Both can be constructive or destructive, but are always educational.  The urge to fix a flaw may cause a child to learn the inner workings of a system, or to build an entirely new one.  The urge to exploit a flaw might push a child to use an old system in a new way.  Any one might be the seed of an innovation (or a lawsuit) (or both).

When something doesn’t work as expected it can cause a great deal of frustration.  As a child grows up it’s important that they be able to deal with frustration and move forward.  The only way I know to foster the right kinds of coping mechanisms is by exposure.  Flawed technology can, and does, offer that kind of exposure to frustration — usually in a low-stakes environment.  As I observe people learning computer programming the hardest lesson for them is almost never the syntax or the reasoning.  The hardest lesson is this: “nothing ever works the first time.”

In contrast, perfect technology products (and I think there effectively are such things) create the illusion that they were divinely inspired or created by alien geniuses.  There is no chink through which to see beyond the armor and into the works.  The more kids use them, the more frustrated they are with everything else.

Note that I don’t advocate that we give children broken technology.  Broken tech is unusable.  Flawed tech is just a bit tricky.  Broken tech gives creators a bad name.  Flawed tech gives creators a personality.  Broken tech is just garbage — not worth fixing.  Flawed tech is almost right if only I changed XYZ.

So perhaps we should think about giving children the second-best phone, or the second-best software, and know that they will be inspired by its faults.