RPi use cases explained

Just leave her to it, coder27, is my advice.  Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, it's mesmerizing for all the wrong reasons, and a total waste of your time.

I'll be interested again when a new Pi board appears just in case it turns out to be good, although they'll undoubtedly stay with Broadcom so it's unlikely to be open hardware.  Until then, I think everyone knows what to expect from that quarter, and calm reasoned discussion that engages with questions isn't top of the list.

RasPi has posted items on their front page about Eben visiting various schools, mostly in the UK, so it's beyond token.

I remember on the first day the RPi was released, Eben visited an elementary school,

and the photo from that is still being used as recently as 2 weeks ago:

http://www.element14.com/community/community/news/blog/2013/06/26/ebon-upton-receives-the-silver-medal-for-bringing-raspberry-pi-to-the-masses

Do you happen to have any more recent links?

What Rob said about the educational side is that RasPi is counting on the "community" to come up with educational applications.  I suspect he'll say the same thing this year.

Well, I suspect this year Rob will say that Clive has been brought on full time in charge

of education, and is working on GCSE videos.

and calm reasoned discussion that engages with questions isn't top of the list.

It is interesting that they have given Gordon Hollingworth the new task of

answering questions:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4307

Maybe something will come from that.

Or maybe E-14 can be used for productive discussions regarding education.

Clive's videos are based on the GCSE curriculum here:

http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/72936-specification.pdf

which is essential to understand when discussing the videos.

For example, section 2.1.1 "Fundamentals of Computer Systems"

discusses input, output, processing, and storage, but makes no

mention of software or computer instructions that are followed like

a recipe.  And Clive's blender video followed this closely.

One point I found interesting was the discussion on clock frequency,

based on section 2.1.2.  It seemed to me that he confused the notion

of clock frequency measured in Hertz, or cycles/second, with the

fetch-decode-execute cycle.  Two confusingly similar uses of the

word "cycle". 

User Dio made a comment related to this, and Clive responded:

... I don’t see any “glaring errors” myself, just different ways of talking about a topic to a specific audience. (We call this “teaching” )

...

I’m aware of my use of the word “instruction” here but in this context I’m happy with it as the fetch-execute cycle, and instructions taking more than one cycle, are dealt with in a previous topic.  ...

This is a very interesting discussion.

The points made seem to be very intelligent observations.

I don't think your observations of the IT world are any different on this side of the world.

The educational observations are also similar, but while they teach ICT here, mostly its not going to help get programmers.

IMO Too many schools/teachers are using IT devices to teach rather than as a tool, and the basics or underlying concepts are being missed.

So my question (ignoring what the pen pushers say)

If you were to introduce computing/programming to 10-13yr olds, what would you teach?

For arguments sake .... lets assume you will be using either a Pi or BBB since it has external capabilities, and is affordable.

Would you start with a generalisation of the CPU, memory, etc and how it connects to the HMI bits.

Do you then jump to the software and how it uses the hardware to perform its tasks.

How much about the hardware do you need to teach, in order to achieve something on screen.?

Do you get into detail about the OS and how it works. (using one of the recommended/supported OS's)

What flavour of programming do you teach/introduce  ... Python/C or something else?

(Bearing in mind this is a beginning class and not a full time study at varsity)

Do you start with drag and drop (ie scratch) and hope they move on.?

Do you make it longer than one period (ie 1.5hrs) spread over a number of weeks, or do you get better traction with a full day.?

as a background

I'm not a teacher, and not a software programmer. (more like a ... dabbler)

I have introduced some pupils at my local school into Arduino.

I also support a program that introduces electronics to Year 7/8 and they get to make/program and take home a Xmas Tree.

http://www.element14.com/community/blogs/pdp7/2012/01/24/merry-birthday-to-you#comment-17591

Hence I'm interested in the thoughts.

Mark

coder27 wrote:

 

User Dio made a comment related to this, and Clive responded:

... I don’t see any “glaring errors” myself, just different ways of talking about a topic to a specific audience. (We call this “teaching” )

Ugh.  Explaining things in such a way that some people see "glaring errors"  isn't called "teaching", it's called being ambiguous, obscure or possibly incorrect.  And if it's the case that the student is mistaken, then dismissing it with a joke isn't called "teaching" either, it's called being unhelpful and leaving the student without comprehension.

Hopefully it was just an uncommon blip.  Teachers must engage.

I wouldn't know enough about teaching, but when I think about what I was taught, I think what inspired me and quite a few people I knew to begin having an interest in Engineering (even if some did not pursue a career in Engineering), a few things that stick out  all seem to have been concerned with some big picture, or an interesting goal. For example, building a model vehicle as part of a team, or learning drawing from a teacher who was a draughtsman in WW2, or a visit to see inside Concorde, etc. Not everyone would be interested in the same thing, but it gets creativity flowing, or a desire to learn. Some people went to see Concorde just to have a day outside the classroom, but I think they would still remember some interesting engineering-related things about it. Now there are some quite inspirational films and movies too - Apollo 13 and October Sky spring to mind. I don't know if such contrived examples as a blender help. But I'm no expert. This photo (source site) makes it clear that that the light-blue robot fetches data for the CPU, and that the green robot stores in registers, and the dark-blue robot reads from the program ROM.

Mark,

If you were to introduce computing/programming to 10-13yr olds, what would you teach?

First of all, I first learned programming in 10th grade, and never felt like I wished I had learned

it sooner.  In that sense I think it's different from learning a musical instrument.

I would want the students to be mature enough to be able to read a language tutorial.

There are some concepts like variables, and operator precedence (2+3*4)=14, not 20,

that are shared with algebra, so I'd want to build on a solid understanding of algebra.

I think Pascal is a decent teaching language, because you can read the entire reference

manual, the compiler doesn't do too many things behind your back, and many errors

are detected at compile time or with run-time checks.

I think you can start at any level of abstraction you think is interesting.  You can show

how to make a half-adder and full-adder out of logic gates, or you can teach base-2 arithmetic,

or you can teach assembly language programming, or you can teach python programming,

or you can teach html and javascript web design.  And I don't think it matters much what order

you teach such topics.

I don't know anything about teaching electronics.

I think calculating prime numbers by trying all possible divisors makes a good first project,

assuming the students know what a prime number is.  I gave some other suggested topics here:

http://www.element14.com/community/thread/23494?start=2&tstart=0

What I _wouldn't_ do in the first few lessons is try to teach GCSE 2.1.1

(d) explain the need for adherence to suitable professional standards in the development, use and

maintenance of computer systems

(e) explain the importance of ethical, environmental and legal considerations when creating

computer systems.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

Hopefully it was just an uncommon blip.

I suggest you don't read the rest of the comments coder27 has been quoting from then. I gave up quite quickly.

I didn't read the GCSE syllabus, or watch the videos, but I find it interesting that they appear to be slavishly following what I'll call a 'specification' and thinking everything's ok... While others are pointing out the spec may well be flawed.

I see similar stuff where people will, to some degree justifiably, close bugs with comments along the lines of 'works as designed' while completely ignoring that the design and the spec it was built from are obviously flawed if not simply wrong.

Shabaz

Thanks for your insight, and yes the little robots help explain easily ( a picture is worth 1000 words)

I agree there needs to be some bigger picture in order to want to get there.

Coder27

Thanks

One question 10th grade ? what year/age is that

Here we go to school at age 5, and that is considered year 1 (it had other names back in the days I went, so I still have to work it out)

I forgot about the post, and yes there are some good examples there .... thanks

Luckily we have no knowledge of GCSE , and it looks like that is a bonus.

Mark

One question 10th grade ? what year/age is that?

about 16.

Luckily we have no knowledge of GCSE , and it looks like that is a bonus.

Yes, definitely.   It appears to be completely uninspiring.

I'm surprised the RPF is slavishly following it.