Hi, We (Camille Avestruz, Dan Chen, Tim Cerino, and I) taught a workshop two summers ago to high school kids that age. The workshop was part of a summer program at Rockefeller University in NYC aimed to put the kids in contact with real research. They spent a few weeks working with researchers at the university, run some experiments, and attend some talks.
We did pretty much the standard SWC curriculum (shell, python, and git) with some modifications to make it a bit less intimidating. For example, I taught Git using a different background history (a guacamole recipe) and the python lesson avoided some of the more complex math. The experience was very rewarding and not very different from a regular workshop. The kids were very enthusiastic and able to follow the whole thing. I noticed some differences though (personal opinions after all). They are much better than the average learner working with the computer as a machine. For example, typing and reading, finding things around, and installing the software. They are worst in grasping the higher concepts and they tend to just "complete" the lesson (entering all the commands or whatever) without reflecting much what's really going on. They also have a shorter (way shorter, I'd say) attention span, so quick changes in the lesson (alternating short exercises with demos) help a lot. I think that with minor modifications to take these things into account our standard lessons would work well. It'd be necessary to find a motivation for the workshop though (as they didn't experience the need of the tools yet), so they don't see it as yet another thing they have to learn not sure why. Best, Ivan On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Greg Wilson < gvwil...@software-carpentry.org> wrote: > On 2016-05-04 12:05 PM, John Corless wrote: > > 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. > > > +1 to this - in order for lessons to stick, learners have to be able to do > something with the knowledge that they actually want to do, and most high > schoolers don't have a lot of legacy data to reformat or analyze. This is > one of the reasons why the "media first" approach pioneered by Guzdial and > Ericson is so effective: pretty much everybody has a use for fiddling with > pictures. (I'm still frequently tempted to re-do our intro Python lesson > around image manipulation, but that's a topic for another day...) > > Thanks, > Greg > > -- > Dr Greg Wilson > Director of Instructor Training > Software Carpentry Foundation > > > _______________________________________________ > 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
