At 09:36 AM 1/25/2010, David MacQuigg wrote:
I can't imagine teaching or testing CS without an actual language. A much better alternative would be to have the same test in multiple languages (perhaps with a "handicap" factor for the students choosing Python, so they don't have an embarrassing advantage :>).
Sure, for teaching you can use a particular language (or two). Testing is another matter. Currently AP free-response questions are not just "program this" or "program that" -- they are stated in a particular language, e.g., here is a class, implement this particular method. They also have a "case study," now in Java, and ask questions about it, e.g., to write a new method or to implement a new derived class. The questions never ask students to write a complete program. Then ETS brings together 80 or so teachers and college profs for a week each June to grade AP CS free-response questions. These readers would have to be polyglots. They use an elaborate rubric to grade a question, with partial credit given for every little bit remotely related to the right answer. Supporting multiple languages would cost the College Board and ETS a lot of money, and this is a relatively small exam (about 20,000 students).
There are many programming competitions, of course, where they care only about the program's correct result, such as ACSL -- http://www.acsl.org/. That's where Python programmers have a great advantage. Unfortunately, few contestants use it now, because it is not widely taught in schools yet. Does a contest specifically for Python programmers exist? Is it feasible?
Gary Litvin www.skylit.com _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
