Re: [Edu-sig] editor for children (was Re: explaining functions [Possibly OT])
In a message of Tue, 07 Dec 2004 06:02:47 +0430, "Lee Harr" writes:
Does anybody have any recommendations for an editor for children? In th e days I was speaking, I used an editor called 'brief' but I don't think t hey are in business any more.
What attributes are needed in a "for children" editor? (or is a list of attributes what you are looking for?)
Not really. I taught the after school club emacs, which meant we spent a lot of time 'learnng how to use the editor'. They were bright, heavily motivated, and what was best, _only 5 of them_. And they got there by being very curious what I was doing to present stuff to them. But the next proposed summer lot will be a group of 30, and I don't think I will have enough individual instruction time. So I wonder if there is an editor they are likely to know -- perhaps unsurprisingly, most kids I know use Microsoft Word to edit things, and that's a _rotten_ editor for programming -- of if there is one that is known for the speed at which it is learnt. Laura
I run an all OS X lab, which gives me the freedom to run SubEthaEdit. It's a kid-friendly editor in that it does decent syntax coloring for a whole host of different code styles, will spell check in desired (useful for the text sections of our text adventures) and is otherwise simple and WSYWIG. If you're working with students under 18 at this point, asking them to use something other than the mouse and arrow keys for cursor control eats far too much of the hour. Andrew Carle MS Technology The Hamlin School
Vi/ vim and emacs are great editors for programmers that have the time to learn all their functionality. However, the learning curve for both of these editors is steep. They are extremely different from anything most students are familiar with (namely Microsoft Word, Notepad, Text Areas in web apps, etc...) It's especially disturbing when you open one of these for the first time and can't seem to quit! I mean, ESC-:q and C-x C-c – pretty intuitive, huh? Nedit is a pretty good editor (http://www.nedit.org/) in several respects. It has syntax hilighting for many programming languages, uses the mouse and arrow keys, has menus, and uses familiar keyboard shortcuts such as Control-C (copy) Control-V (paste), Control-X (cut), ^S (save), ^O (open), ^W (close), ^Q (quit), ^P (print), etc... There's basically no learning curve at all, but there are lots of advanced features that are easy to get to. The downside is that it's not straight-forward to install on non-linux machines (on most linux machines, just type nedit into a terminal and it should launch. On Windows, it can be installed using Cygwin. Nedit has a native binary for OS X and it can also be installed using Fink. My 2 cents, Reuben Grinberg P.S. I'm a 4th year CS major at Yale. For the record, I use emacs, pico, nedit, and xcode to do most of my coding. Every once in a while I'll use Eclipse for a project, but I find it really annoying to set up. On Dec 7, 2004, at 4:39 AM, Laura Creighton wrote:
In a message of Tue, 07 Dec 2004 06:02:47 +0430, "Lee Harr" writes:
Does anybody have any recommendations for an editor for children? In th e days I was speaking, I used an editor called 'brief' but I don't think t hey are in business any more.
What attributes are needed in a "for children" editor? (or is a list of attributes what you are looking for?)
Not really. I taught the after school club emacs, which meant we spent a lot of time 'learnng how to use the editor'. They were bright, heavily motivated, and what was best, _only 5 of them_. And they got there by being very curious what I was doing to present stuff to them. But the next proposed summer lot will be a group of 30, and I don't think I will have enough individual instruction time. So I wonder if there is an editor they are likely to know -- perhaps unsurprisingly, most kids I know use Microsoft Word to edit things, and that's a _rotten_ editor for programming -- of if there is one that is known for the speed at which it is learnt.
Laura
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participants (3)
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Andrew Carle -
Laura Creighton -
Reuben Grinberg