I hated doing programming at school, not because I didn’t have a UI but because I was being taught a programming language that was completely useless. Teaching QBasic is NOT okay. Teaching programming using ANY Microsoft Office is NOT okay.
Thousands of teachers are teaching kids redundant, propriety programming languages because they come wrapped in a UI or something and this provides the illusion that the kids will feel more engaged. This is not a reality of programming as a whole and this needs to be addressed. Thankfully codeacademy exists.
CodeAcademy is a website where you can easily learn Javascript. Javascript is a great language to use, it is used on 90%+ of the worlds websites and is now used on servers thanks to Node.
Note: This is probably aimed more at secondary teachers and I’m sure the curriculum has moved on from Microsoft/QBasic programming to something more fruitful.. Or has it?
I couldn’t agree more! Great find!
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I tried the lessons myself on CodeAcademy, and they are pretty decent. I already know JavaScript though, so it will be interesting to see what the reaction is for the people who don’t know it. You can’t actually use that first lesson though since it doesn’t talk about the DOM, etc..
Good post.
As a secondary teacher – has it moved on – err “no” springs to mind. OK Qbasic has gone, replaced by macro languages inside MSOffice.
What’s missing from ICT today is that sense of “hacking” that used to accompany the subject 10 yeas ago. Now we teach people to “use” propriety applications instead of wider “concepts” applicable to any package / language.
It might just be me, but I miss WordStar and it’s CTRL-B, CTRL-I for formatting — it prepared me for HTML. Now we mash an icon and hope for the best.
Alex