0 Comparing Alice, Greenfoot and Scratch

I thought this session deserved its own blog entry :) Definitely an interesting topic and something worthy of discussion. At the moment, unless I am convinced otherwise, I plan to use Scratch for my Pre-AP class at SciTech.

Greenfoot
- higher learning curve vs scratch, alice
- can do much more because you are using java
- age: 14+
- scales as large as Java
- only limited by output (2d graphics)
- open source, Smalltalk

Scratch
- doesn't have classes
- ages 8-15
- over 900 uploaded projects
- concerns about plagarism, from website

Alice
- originally intended for college
- age: 5th grade
- open source and available for developers!

At the end of it all, each platform has a different target market. I think that Greenfoot is better for high school students, in a quarter or semester long course. So, YES - I shifted and plan to explore Greenfoot more. I think that my students will find Greenfoot more of a real and challenging programming language. Wish we would of talked about more of the specific differences between the different platforms. Looking forward to playing around with Greenfoot soon.

0 Scratch & Great ideas for CS1

What do you teach in CS1? What teaching methods or strategies do you implement? What applications or tools help you teach computing? This was the theme of two workshops I attended this morning: "Starting with Scratch" and "Rediscovering the Passion, Beauty, Joy and Awe: Making Computing Fun Again, continued."

Scratch is a "new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art (scratch.mit.edu)". Scratch and Alice (alice.org) seem very similar in nature - such as the drag and drop interface - but I'm interested to know which "language" (are these really considered programming languages??) really helps students develop transferrable programming knowledge. Activities that are 'visual' are most appealing to students ages 8-18, which explains why web design, robotics and "programming languages" such as Alice and Scratch are helping to generate interest in CS amongst middle and high school students. Another thing I like about Scratch is that the students are able to post their projects online. This essentially creates an online social network of students working on Scratch projects. At this moment, there are 347,024 projects with a total of 8,928,428 scripts and 2,710,427 sprites (animation objects) created by 52,655 contributors (from the Scratch home page). I'm interested to hear about others using Scratch, as well as comparisons to Alice? Is Scratch better for high school or middle school students? Or appropriate for both?

Dr. Henry Leitner, a professor at Harvard University brought up the book "Great Ideas in CS with Java" - while I haven't read the book, the topic sure does interest me. He uses this book to teach an Intro to CS course for humanities and social science majors who want "industry level" programming skills (ie. these students want something to put on their resume.) What about teaching CS2 from this level. From the description of the book on Amazon.com, it seems as a thorough book that covers fundamental object oriented programming concepts while connecting it to relevant programming projects. While he uses this book, he also mentioned using Scratch to introduce students to think 'algorithmically' through 3, 50 minute lectures.

The other workshop discussed how to make computing fun again. How do we rediscover (and share) the passion, beauty and awe of computing??????? Robb Cutler was one of the panelists and he brought up the point that "How we teach determines learning and PBJA." (PBJA is short for passion, beauty, joy and awe.) He also mentioned that "What we see as aww inspiring they see as "um hmm." Soo true :) What we (adults) find 'aww inspiring' youth are not so inspired. We have to realize what we like is not always of interest to students in CS1 - if teachers don't take this into account ... how do we get the PBJA factor? Finally, the computer as the tool and not the focal point. I believe that if we teach computer science from the perspective of computing as a tool to a means of solving a problem or achieving a goal we can make CS a more inviting subject. Zach Dodds said something I will never forget ..."what is learned is the square root of what is taught." :)