_why responds on the ruby mailing list

1_nicholas.txt

Subject: Ruby for Highschoolers?
From: Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt OwlManAtt.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 01:55:39 +0900
Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up 
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used. 
However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that 
she should try it for one of the programming courses next year. 
(Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to 
her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead 
of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a 
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were 
writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using 
cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year 
with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for 
that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had 
never been trained on Scheme.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It 
looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more 
concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files, 
object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably 
also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you 
think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in 
highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue 
environment available for Ruby (screencap: 
http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif)?

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all* 
Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort 
of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and 
the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type 
thinggy.

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

2_why.txt

Subject: Re: Ruby for Highschoolers?
From: why the lucky stiff <ruby-talk whytheluckystiff.net>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 01:09:11 +0900
References: 196754 196782 196796 196806 196812 196826
In-reply-to: 196826
On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 06:10:37PM +0900, Matthew Smillie wrote:
> Sincere and serious answer: Not really.  Most are willing to suspend  
> their disbelief and take your word for it, given some reasonable  
> explanations as to how it might benefit them.

Also, you will probably have to do a few sleights-of-hand.  For example, many
people feel driven to use Try Ruby[1] because of the initial fun of just
watching the tutorial work.  I knew most people wouldn't really care that
"2 + 6" works.  The first few lesson are just to get people comfortable, disarm
their ideas about the difficulty of learning.

I would find some tricks to make your students think they're learning faster
than they actually are.  It'll juice the adrenaline just enough.

It's just like a chemistry teacher having fun with liquid nitrogen and a banana.
You want to find dramatic, compelling exercises that you enjoy performing and
that the students totally lap up.

For Ruby, the equivalent of the liquid nitrogen experiment is the social
projector demo.  You set up a projector connected to a server.  And you give
each student a REPL (irb) which acts as the client.  Then you give students
commands which will affect the screen.  In the past, I've used DRb[2] and students
are given an object and they run methods.  I have a number of variations of this:

 * Each student gets a section of the screen which can be altered in color and
   shape.  Or a screen full of emoticons or avatars.

 * Students vote on topics and the screen charts their response.

 * You show a picture on screen and ask students to "tag" the picture.  Words
   appear on screen with size corresponding to the popularity.  Use ambiguous
   imagery that solicits interesting responses.

The idea here is that students watch the screen fill and feel the reward as a
group.  High school students crave group acceptance anyway, so this feeds that
craving.

Unfortunately, you may not have the resources to do this, since commerce has
thieved rabidly any good concentration on education.  I have been working on my
own tools, but I'm a very bad programmer and distracted.  It's sad that DrScheme
is even considered as an option.  Sure, it's among the best we have, but it's 
still a bad option.  It's ugly, it has too many menus, the interface is 
unnatural.  It's not made for the average kid, it's made for geek kids.

Anyway, this is Programming I.  Lower your goals.  I wouldn't even attempt to
cover most of the concepts.  Just get the class captivated and stay as simple as
you can.  Good luck, intrepid Nicholas.  DO NOT TRY TO WRITE A GAME.

_why