On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Kevin & Masako Ollivier wrote: Hi!
Hello everyone,
1) Are there any "best practices" about how to teach programming? What works, and what doesn't?
I'd like to have an answer to it! My personal experience is that it doesn't matter how to teach programming, what to use (a programming calculator or a supercomputer), when to teach (at what grade from 6 to ...), etc. What really does matter is: your student must be highly motivated to learn! If the motivation remains for some time (from 3-12 months, this differs for different people), s/he will suddenly realise that s/he is able to program. After this, the teacher has to treat such person differently: instead of feeding her/his motivation, he must supply good problems to empower student's intellectual muscles, and, at the same time, try to make student's skills/knowledge as systematic as possible. Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi -- - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd@onego.ru -