You know, the sad thing is that you'd find it surprising that 8th- graders would know Java well enough to program apps for Android.
So very rare are schools and teachers who actually GET that kids can learn to program, and properly taught, are empowered and excited by it. Seymour Papert was teaching kids Logo back in the 1960s. Program after program have shown that kids can and will program at an early age, given suitable tools and opportunity. I myself, back in the mid-1970s, taught kids as young as this to program Lisp -- remotely, over the network. >From 1979 to 1982, Brian Harvey (now a lecturer at UC Berkeley) taught computers at the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Massachusetts. He modeled the lab an experience there after the AI labs at MIT and Stanford, and I used to religiously follow his postings about his experiences, which were fascinating. I've just located for your reading pleasure a talk he gave about his experience: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/freedom.html -- but that scarcely begins to cover it. Java is not some monolith that has to be taught all at once, nor is Android. Kids are motivated by curiosity, and if you give them a path that's not too steep, they'll not only follow that path, but will explore side trails and ideas that will astonish you. Contrast this to what passed as "programming classes" at our local high school, where my older daughter attended.Visual Basic -- just enough Visual Basic to manage to glue screens together in the screen designer. Not even enough programming involved to establish the concept of a variable, of an object! (Thus, it didn't work out too well when she tried a science fair project in Java, against a deadline -- only to discover belatedly that she really needed to start off as if she didn't know any programming at all.) Look at how computers are presented within our schools today. Even today, may teachers are intimidated by computers. When not, they're presented as tools -- editing, drawing/paint, spreadsheets, maybe a bit of movie production. That's good -- but they're also so much more. They're not just a tool. They are a platform for tool building. But so much depends on having teachers, who know how to build tools, and undertake to teach it. So, Josh Beck: I salute you. I'd love to hear more about your experiences, and I'd love to see your initiative replicated, explored, etc. Android may yet supplant OLPC, not by trying, but simply by being an affordable, mass-market platform in the right place at the right timme. On Jan 30, 7:35 pm, Kevin Duffey <andjar...@gmail.com> wrote: > Wow. 8th grade. They already know java well enough by that age to pick up on > android? > > > > joshbeck <josh.beck2...@gmail.com> wrote: > >Hello everyone: > > >I teach an 8th grade programming class in San Antonio Texas. We're > >learning Android and I convinced the school to buy us 3 dev phones for > >the kids. > > >Here's an article about what we're doing: > > >http://www.neisd.net/ComRel/News/Krueger_Smartphone_10.htm > > >I'd like to purchase a netbook to supplement the phones so that when > >the students check them out, they have an out-of-the-box programming > >environment within which the phones work. > > >I've put together a donation page. My goal is to raise $350 dollars > >for a netbook to go along with these devices. If you can donate $1, > >$5, or $10 to help my class out, it would be greatly appreciated. > > >http://www.linuxclassroom.com/donation/donate.html > > >Thanks so much for considering it! > > >Josh Beck > > >-- > >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > >Groups "Android Developers" group. > >To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com > >To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > >android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > >For more options, visit this group at > >http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
