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Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

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Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#21

Post by objclxt »

ollysb wrote: post #3
CGamesPlay wrote: post #2

My gut reaction is that this is a good idea. It will definitely help develop logic and mathematics skills. I am concerned by the focus on "web and mobile", though. It seems like it would be better to focus on raw computer science for a program like this.

I'm sure that children are going to be more interested in what they can create using programming rather than honing their computer science skills. The web and mobile provide great opportunities for children to play with programming and make something fun.

I sort of agree with you, and sort of don't. The web and mobile do provide fantastic opportunities for children to play with programming.

However, I don't think the languages we use do. Bear in mind I'm talking about young children here - I believe the best approach is to provide ways to abstract away programming complexities (i.e, typing stuff) in the same way we abstract away other complex subjects.

I'm a huge fan of Scratch, which is developed by the MIT Media Lab and is influenced by Logo (http://scratch.mit.edu/) - it's a visual programming language, but one that's coupled with online sharing to encourage people to engage and respond to programs people have created.

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#22

Post by jkaljundi »

timc3 wrote: post #18

Skype as far as I know was started by a swede and a Dane. The Estonian connection I think comes from having a large engineering office there.

Actually the whole idea was brainstormed from day one together with 4 Estonian founding engineers. Those 4 together with Janus and Niklas had worked together already for years, first on Tele2 Everyday portals, then Kazaa and Joltid.

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#23

Post by EliRivers »

mmahemoff wrote: post #15

It's not a country-wide mandate. AFAIK no country/state has compulsory programming classes for any level in the same way they require maths etc ((please tell me if I'm wrong!). If so, that's rather surprising in 2012.

Was it also surprising that no school ever had compulsory classes in agriculture/electricity/plumbing/electronics/medicine/all the other things that cause such changes in society, or is programming somehow special?

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#24

Post by malandrew »

arkitaip wrote: post #11

As a developer I like the idea. As a citizen I wonder why a nation should prioritize programming before any other skill set? Why not rhetoric, drawing or dancing? What are the underlying assumptions and goals of teaching programming at such a young age? Is any of this evidence based?

Like someone else commented, it's most certainly being done for economic reasons. The advantage is that when you can automate a bunch of work and earn a lot of money doing so, you you're left with lots of time and money to spend on other pursuits like rhetoric, drawing and dancing.

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#25

Post by randomdata »

EliRivers wrote: post #23
mmahemoff wrote: post #15

It's not a country-wide mandate. AFAIK no country/state has compulsory programming classes for any level in the same way they require maths etc ((please tell me if I'm wrong!). If so, that's rather surprising in 2012.

Was it also surprising that no school ever had compulsory classes in agriculture/electricity/plumbing/electronics/medicine/all the other things that cause such changes in society, or is programming somehow special?

Penmanship is something I recall being a compulsory subject in elementary school. Even though I haven't written anything on paper since I left school, it was a skill that was necessary to get through to that point.

Programming is useful for engaging in many scholarly subjects. Like penmanship, it may simply be that the schools see programming as a tool that will be needed in order to teach subjects in later courses, and not due to any connections to industry.

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#26

Post by randomdata »

dsrguru wrote: post #7
beambot wrote: post #5

Stop with the "firsts". This is clearly not the "first time programming was taught to first graders" -- especially since we were introduced to programming back in Kindergarten (20+ years ago). This doesn't need to be a "first" in order to be an honorable pursuit. The link-bait HN title is really annoying and detracts from the message.

The HN title is unclear, but the point is that this would be the first time programming is taught to all first graders in a country. At least that's what the article's title claim implies: "Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren." The article itself doesn't seem to suggest a mandatory curriculum change at the national level, though.

I'm not sure where to dig up historical curriculums to verify my memory, but I'm fairly certain that programming was a mandatory subject when I was in first grade. I remember the whole class going to the computer lab and using BASIC. Education is not handled at the country level here, so it was unlikely to be country-wide, but the local population served by said school system would exceed the population of Estonia.

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#28

Post by todsul »

EliRivers wrote: post #23
mmahemoff wrote: post #15

It's not a country-wide mandate. AFAIK no country/state has compulsory programming classes for any level in the same way they require maths etc ((please tell me if I'm wrong!). If so, that's rather surprising in 2012.

Was it also surprising that no school ever had compulsory classes in agriculture/electricity/plumbing/electronics/medicine/all the other things that cause such changes in society, or is programming somehow special?

Agriculture was compulsory at my high school for the first four years. We learned to drive tractors in the first year, managed our own vegetable allotments in the second, administered injections to animals in the third, and pregnancy tested cows in the forth. No, this wasn't decades ago, this is still the case at my school today.

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#29

Post by ThomPete »

arkitaip wrote: post #11

As a developer I like the idea. As a citizen I wonder why a nation should prioritize programming before any other skill set? Why not rhetoric, drawing or dancing? What are the underlying assumptions and goals of teaching programming at such a young age? Is any of this evidence based?

Because programming in itself is a language and now a fundamental language that you will need to understand to talk to "things" in the future?

Re: Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren

#30

Post by jws »

arkitaip wrote: post #11

As a developer I like the idea. As a citizen I wonder why a nation should prioritize programming before any other skill set? Why not rhetoric, drawing or dancing? What are the underlying assumptions and goals of teaching programming at such a young age? Is any of this evidence based?

I wonder if the goal is not to create programmers? Much like teaching geometry isn't to prepare students for a career of proving the congruency of pairs of triangles.

The mental skills one uses to give unambiguous instruction to an computer may be valuable in communicating unambiguously with humans or decomposing seeming intractable problems.

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