Supercard 4.8 public beta

[Richard Gaskin]

Richmond wrote:

 > Thank you, Richard Gaskin, for clarifying that.
 >
 > What that does do is confirm my view that teaching children stuff
 > such as Scratch at school has little or no value in the sense that
 > it is NOT a programming language.

I would caution against using the rants of a programmer as a substitute 
for sound pedagogy. :)

And in all fairness, even in my ignorance of good teaching methods for 
kids I know just enough about Piaget to have included:

    Scratch is an undeniably valuable tool for young minds.

There's a place for very simple tools in the early stages of introducing 
kids to algorithmic thinking.  Many times such exercises begin quite 
well on paper, only later graduating to things like Scratch.

Scratch is accessible because it has well-defined boundaries.

After a series of exercises, those boundaries will become walls.

And that's the moment to introduce scripting.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com