Hi Karin,
I’ve not used it in an SWC context, but a couple of useful metaphors might be:
- a weekly travel card/multiride card on whatever the local public transport
is. (On the old GM buses, this used to be a real piece of cardboard that would
be clipped by a machine, giving a visual representation). A metaphor is,
approximately:
for rides on card:
get on transport
ride
get off
(it kind of breaks down as you do other things at either end of the journey,
rather than remaining within the loop)
- a dental checkup. There are a finite number of teeth, and the dentist checks
each one in turn for cavities and gum disease
teeth=[upper left wisdom, upper left molar, … , upper right molar, upper right
wisdom, lower right wisdom, lower right molar, … lower left wisdom]
for tooth in teeth:
check tooth
check surrounding gum
- checking your email in the morning. Treating each item of mail in the inbox
as an item to be dealt with
for mail in inbox:
read mail
importance = judge worth of mail()
if importance > boredom threshold:
do something(mail)
Although the cognitive load of deciding whether to deal with an email does
defeat us all in the end (not a metaphor ;) )
I hope at least one of these might be useful, or spark ideas for something that
actually is.
Cheers,
L.
> On 3 Dec 2015, at 09:24, Karin Lagesen <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The more I teach, the more I realize that I am not really able to convey what
> a for loop does to everybody. Do any of you have a metaphor or something that
> you use for teaching it? I explain about variables and collections, and the
> body of the loop, and I show examples, but I am still not able to get through
> all the time.
>
> Karin
>
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Leighton Pritchard
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gpg/pgp:0xDECACFFC
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