[Edu-sig] Turtle

[kirby urner]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 12:13 AM, Marcin Wojciechowski <
marcin.wojciechowski at goleniow.edu.pl> wrote:

>
> Hello, I teach computer science in elementary school. Looking for
> information on turtle. I like very much and would like to apply it in the
> classroom.
>
> Marcin Wojciechowski
> http://marcinwojciechowski.edu.pl
>
>
Yes, there's a great deal of turtle literature out there.  Python3 has a
built in turtle module that plots to the native canvas object, as you
probably know.

https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/turtle.html

Out-of-the-box Python3 might not be appropriate below a certain age
naturally.  What reading and writing skills do they have, and what patience
for math?  The original vision was to make math more fun ("hard fun") and
use LOGO as a modality for imparting math concepts.

These days the emphasis seems to be on splitting math from computer science
even at the elementary school level, count me a skeptic this will be the
best way.

Those learning code + mathematics in tandem, along an integrated course of
study, will likely pull ahead.

Our schools in Portland (both public and private) seem to favor using MIT
Scratch before introducing a lexical language, if doing programming with
kids as young as 3rd or 4th grade.

I'm not convinced there's a need to start that early, not that one size
fits all (but in a traditional school, it kind of has to).

The specific pilot program I'm involved in once a week (after school
program, elective, costs extra) shifts them over to Codesters coming from
Scratch.

Codesters, like Scratch, is available in the cloud through a browser, so
used with Chromebooks with Wifi in our case).

If got links to some embedded examples from earlier this month, if
curious.  One of them (Hexagon) uses the built-in turtle.

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2017/01/embedded-codester-apps.html

The Martian Math one (appended) is deliberately way above their reading
level but the challenge was simply to take printed sheets with the source
code and match them with the corresponding applications.  Connect the dots,
so to speak.

Eyeballing source just to pattern match is arguably a useful first step. I
also get into some line-by-line analysis.

Picture of white board from last class:  https://flic.kr/p/RLSj5H

Glad to see so many others chiming in.

Kirby
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