From: why the lucky stiff <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2006-06-13T01:09:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for Highschoolers?

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

[1] http://tryruby.hobix.com
[2] http://www.chadfowler.com/ruby/drb.html