From: Trey Campbell <treycampbell@...>
Date: 2005-07-30T13:07:12+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Linux Journal article on Ruby


On Jul 29, 2005, at 4:41 PM, Ara.T.Howard wrote:

> On Sat, 30 Jul 2005, Phil Tomson wrote:
>
>
>> In article <42EA89EC.3050803@vallner.net>,
>> David Vallner  <david@vallner.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Phil Tomson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Why is it that people have the idea the ojects are difficult for
>>>> programming newbies?  Wasn't Smalltalk intended as a tool for  
>>>> teaching
>>>> children to program?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Hmm, wasn't that Squeak? I'm pretty much certain Smalltalk was  
>>> intended
>>> as a "normal"
>>> programming language.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Squeak is a more recent incarnation of Smalltalk with graphics.
>>
>> Here are some quotes that seem to support the idea that Alan Kay had
>> children in mind when he created Smalltalk:
>>
>> "After writing a thesis about graphical object-orientation and being
>> awarded a Ph.D. at the University of Utah he spent two years  
>> teaching at
>> the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. While there he began
>> thinking about a book-sized computer that the user, especially  
>> children,
>> could use in place of paper. He dubbed his project "KiddieKomp."  
>> It was at
>> this time that he also began work on the Smalltalk language.
>>
>> Smalltalk was designed to mimic Kay's biological model of individual
>> entities, or "cells," communicating with each other via messages.
>> Eventually his Smalltalk language would father the genre of Objected
>> Oriented Programming languages.
>>
>> In 1972 Kay took a job at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox  
>> PARC)
>> and began using Smalltalk in an educational context. Young  
>> children were
>> exposed to computers and their reactions were analyzed. Kay  
>> concluded that
>> children learned more through images and sounds than through plain  
>> text
>> and, along with other researchers at PARC, Kay developed a simple  
>> computer
>> system which made heavy use of graphics and animation. Some of the
>> children became very adept at using this system; in fact, some  
>> developed
>> complicated programs of their own with it! (3) "
>>
>> from:
>> http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML
>>
>> Phil
>>
>
> interesting.  there is an article about how 'dual representations'
> (understanding that a symbol is both on object itself and a  
> simulacrum of
> another thing) hinders learning in children in scientific american  
> this month.
> the article implies that teaching children, for example, how to do  
> arithmetic,
> with blocks instead of numbers on paper is actually counter  
> productive.  this
> seems to be at direct odds with kay's observations...  wonder why?
>
> cheers.
>
> -a
> -- 
> ====================================================================== 
> =========
> | email :: ara [dot] t [dot] howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
> | phone :: 303.497.6469
> | My religion is very simple.  My religion is kindness.
> | --Tenzin Gyatso
> ====================================================================== 
> =========
>
>
>

I don't follow how the symbol for a number written on a piece of  
paper is less of a dual representation that using manipulatives is.  
They reported a difference in speed of problem-solving, but I didn't  
see where they compared the accuracy of the work (that's usually  
where the number-sense developed by working with manipulatives shows  
up).

Trey