I think this is a very interesting question that I have considered. I helped at a workshop at a local university and decided to bring my 16 year old daughter. She is an excellent science minded student, and more or less kept up during the workshop (with extra support from Dad!). But in the end I am not sure she got much from the experience. I am pretty certain that she has forgotten shell, git, and R commands and syntax since she hasn't used them since. For her, normal high school computer use is limited to writing papers with word processors. My hope was that she would at least know that there is such a thing as a command line and scripts of programming languages that can be used to analyze data. Maybe that will help her when she faces more serious computer work later in college and beyond. So my hope was simply that a little familiarity might breed less discomfort later in her life.
John On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 5:14 AM, Robin Wilson <ro...@rtwilson.com> wrote: > My father teaches Computing at a private school in the UK, and I've been up > there to do a number of lessons with his classes. None of them have been > officially SWC, but they've covered very similar ground - although a bit less > practical than I'd have liked. > > I've been introduced as "a real-world programmer" (!) and have talked about > how to design larger pieces of code (eg. for their A-Level coursework), > splitting things up into functions effectively, testing effectively, good > code structure, variable naming and those sorts of things. > > I've mentioned version control, but have yet to persuade my Dad to let me > teach a lesson or two on it and get them to use it for their coursework...I > think it'd really help though! > > Generally it has gone down very well with the students: they've appreciated > someone from outside coming in and showing them how things like this actually > help with real-world coding - and apparently it has helped quite a lot with > their coursework. > > Cheers, > > Robin > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
