A BASIC education
I just read this article on Salon written by computer scientist and
novelist David Brin. He talks about his 14-year old son who was
confronted with a dilemma in his math textbooks. Apparently, after
teaching the concepts and then presenting practice problems, there were
instructions to test out the concept in BASIC, the now ancient (but to
many of us warmly regarded) computer programming language.
As an aside, when I took my first biological modeling course in
1981, I was able to model the respiratory system (very superficially)
using BASIC. I was even able to generate graphs of simulated data to
demonstrate the principles I was trying to understand. And, coolest of
all, I handed in my project on a floppy disk!
Brin is frustrated because while the instructions
to test this all out was in the textbooks, he and his son could find no
way to work in BASIC since machines do not use it anymore and there
were no adequate software emulators.
Here is what they ended up doing:
Instead (for various reasons) we bought a Commodore 64 (in original box) for $25. It arrived in good shape. It took us maybe three minutes to attach an old TV. We flicked the power switch … and up came a command line. In BASIC.Uh. Problem solved?I guess. At least far better than any other thing we’ve tried!We are now typing in programs from books, having fun making dots move (and thus knowing why the dots move, at the command of math, and not magic). There are still problems, like getting an operating system to make the 5141c disk drive work right. Most of the old floppies are unreadable. But who cares? (Ben thinks that loading programs to and from tape is so cool. I gurgle and choke remembering my old Sinclair … but whatever.)
Responding to input that the problem he and his son faced is with the textbooks, which should not be publishing “outdated” BASIC teaching tools, Brin says:
The textbook writers and publishers aren’t the ones who are obsolete,out-of-touch and wrong. It is people who have yanked the rug out from under teachers and students all across the land.
Let me reiterate. Kids are not doing “something else” other than BASIC. Not millions of them. Not hundreds or tens of thousands of them. Hardly any of them, in fact. It is not their fault. Because some of them, like my son, really want to. But they can’t. Not without turning into time travelers, the way we did, by giving up (briefly) on the present and diving into the past. (I also plan to teach him how to change the oil and fix a tire!) By using the tools of a bygone era to learn more about tomorrow.
My point is this: isn’t this exactly what we are talking about with using the Read/Write web with our students? Aren’t we trying to use technology to learn “ancient” skills like reading critically and writing competently and collaborating?
Why Johnny can’t code | Salon Technology
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