Currently I am teaching Scratch to swiss teachers in two courses. This gives me the opportunity to intensively work with Scratch again. Scratch has attracted me some years ago, because it is grown out of the Smalltalk/Squeak scene. Scratch is built with Squeak. Since I did the initial job of translating it into the German language, there have been a number of activites in my business around Scratch.
Scratch really enables the course members to learn to program. Now that depends what you call "to program": Is it to know the native integer type's boundaries? Is it to know how to allocate memory? Is it to know how to manage threading? Is it to know whether an array starts with index 0 or 1? Is it to know the syntax and the compilers friendly error messages?
No. Basically none of the above (and lot more, you get the idea) is essential if you start to learn programming. In first place, you program with your mind, not with a tool. So that leads to: Don't annoy your pupils with C (no matter how many "plusses" or "sharps"), Java, Pascal, Visual Basic, etc. These tools disturb your mind, while learning how to program a solution.
Use Scratch instead, if your pupils are beginners. And use Squeak (Smalltalk) if you go further.
See some Scratch work of mine and my favorites in my profile on the Scratch website here.
Comments
Hi,
Another blog to follow ;)
I'm sure you know Element. I just discovered it. http://www.chirp.scratchr.org/blog/?p=24
Cheers,
Cédrick