Twenty Things to do with a Computer (1971) [pdf]

http://www.stager.org/articles/twentythings.pdf

by brudgers • 12 years ago

90 13 12 years ago

Everyone should read Papert's Mindstorms book, about teaching kids to code. It is one of the best books about learning there is.

subdane• 12 years ago

#1 - Make a Turtle. #2 Program the Turtle to Draw a Man. Origins of logo!

muonneutrino• 12 years ago

This seems like a far more hands-on and inspiring approach to teaching computer science to elementary, middle, or high school students than the typical intro to CS classes you see now, which might occasionally have some graphical interfaces, but primarily (at least in my limited experience) operate on the command line and do a variety of abstract things. It's a lot harder to fall in love with a sorting algorithm than with a turtle drawing robot or the interesting geometric patterns shown on pages 14-16.

enupten• 12 years ago

....or worse, build "web apps" with javascript! (Yes I've actually seen a school do this :)

ianseyer• 12 years ago

well this explains http://goo.gl/JLPkyi!

pma8sb• 12 years ago

Fuck URL shorteners.

https://docs.python.org/3.3/library/turtle.html

You're welcome.

8_hours_ago• 12 years ago

Logo was the first programming language that I was exposed to as an elementary school aged child. I remember thinking that it was neat to draw something on the screen, but I didn't really understand enough geometry/trigonometry to draw anything interesting... Logo requires more math skills than I had at that age. I had better luck with QBASIC.

I really like the idea of hardware devices to teach programming, and unlike when this paper was written, now there are lots of different (and cheap) devices which are designed for that exact purpose. I wish they had those when I was growing up.

sdg1• 12 years ago

Cynthia Solomon (the co-author of the memo) maintains a collection of interesting documents and videos from and on the early days of Logo: http://logothings.wikispaces.com/ (especially: http://logothings.wikispaces.com/Readings)

abecedarius• 12 years ago

"The kids became teachers to the math educators attending the conference. The kids were incredible. Rumors spread such as Seymour could teach anybody anything. When it was discovered that I did the teaching, the rumors changed to we bribed the kids with candy."

hudathun• 12 years ago

So, turtles all the way then ...

Tyrannosaurs• 12 years ago

Ah, the naivity of predictions.

Play "Space War"? As if games on a computer will ever catch on - we're all too busy making turtles and drawing men with them...

valarauca1• 12 years ago

Honestly one thing I feel Star Trek got 100% correct (or will be 100% correct) is holodeck, and holodeckaddiction.

I can definitely see people being treated psychologically for hating the real world. Especially with current advances in VR. It already happens with the internet, and that's barely immersive.

stinos• 12 years ago

BIRD TURD

gotta love that one

For the rest: this is actually quite good and way more thorough and interesting than what I ever got in school ('let's make a class' style stuff). Especially the links to real-life physics etc.

Twenty Things to do with a Computer (1971) [pdf]

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