[Yr7-10it] Request for opinions, help, comments or any other feedback

[Dr Paul Chandler]

> Personally I love Flash / Actionscript but I don't think its an easy
language to learn to start with 

Before I make any further comment, I should preface it by saying that
I'm barely family with Actionscript

> Like Javascript in that regard.

I have no objection to Javascript, but languages which provide a decent
debugger and structured "step through" have always appealed to me more
for teaching purposes.  I quite like java as a professional development
environment, but even with the various "java for kids" environments
around, I'm still not convinced that it's well-suited to schools.

If I'd found a decent interactive development environment for
Javascript, I may have stuck with it (maybe someone knows of one).  Used
to do VB which was pretty good in this respect, but I'm also attracted
to environments which kids can have at no cost at home, and an
environment which integrates with a web server ... Python filled the
bill on all counts.

> Year 9s are enjoying Alice, which is like a scaffolded introduction to
the syntax of OOP 

> Scratch and Gamemaker are also good - and not as simple as may appear
at first glance - can actually be 
> used in very advanced ways - as complex as you want to make it really 

That's my concern with these 2 for short courses - not as simple as they
appear.  With the Alice work that I've done, my focus has been using the
environment which is nearly "as simple as it appears" to focus on basic
programming constructs such as repetition, selection, objects and
events.

> I'm planning to do it later this year, after some Scratch / Alice, for
the year 10s. 
> Re OOP :  not sure that learning OOP before a basic procedural
grounding in loops and control statements 
> makes sense (though some people would argue the other way.... ) 

Like Kevork, I date back to the "olden days", and learnt to cut code in
C and Prolog.  When I started teaching what was VCE Computer Science, I
was always amazed by presetations at moderation meetings by how "simple"
the programs were.  Its been my motto ever since.  Keep the programming
projects simple, and concentrate on basics of writing some kind of
algorithm (which is more than 'glue code' or 'selective stealing').  I'm
yet to be convinced that, at school level, we ever need to venture into
'real' OO programming.  Even classes, I feel, are beyond what a "good
solid student" needs to be able to do; more important is to set things
up so that they can easily venture in this direction.

Just MHO