From: dal3@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (dale.e.parson)
Newsgroups: sci.edu,comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: Children's Comp. Sci. education
Date: 28 Aug 92 17:19:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbfsb.1992Aug28.171907.12964
Organization: AT&T

In article <LEBOWITZ.92Aug28084334@krypton.Mankato.MSUS.EDU> lebowitz@krypton.Mankato.MSUS.EDU (Robert J. Lebowitz) writes:
>On the suggestion of a friend, I've begun investigating the possibility of 
>offering courses to 3-6 year-olds on how to use a computer.  Part of the idea
>is to expand upon the success of the IBM program Writing to Read which dev-\
>eloped the idea that kids whose mechanical skills are still less developed 
>and are unable to write properly can still acquire good spelling, writing and 
>reading skills through the use of a computer keyboard.  
>
>Can anyone suggest any publications that discuss an appropriate curriculum
>for kids in this age group?  Please e-mail and post your responses to this
>group.
>--
>Robert J. Lebowitz           Internet         lebowitz@krypton.mankato.msus.edu

I don't know about worthwhile publications, but we're homeschooling our 6
and 3 year old kids & computers are an integral part of our lifestyle, so
I'll make a few observations.

A big issue for us has been preference for sense crunching over symbol
crunching. What do I mean? Well, at the ages you mention, kids are more ready
to paint, draw with crayons or markers, bang on pots and shout into
cardboard tubes than they are to read Shakespeare (or even Dr. Seuss).
By ready I mean eager to jump into these activities spontaneously without
adult prodding. I do NOT mean willing to submit to badgering and other forms
of coercion in order to satisfy adult egos. Our kids have certainly been
happy listening to Dr. Seuss and even J.R. Tolkien (we haven't tried
Shakespeare), but the 6 year old's motivation to read has grown at its
own pace over the last year, and I doubt that automated coercion would
have sped or eased her efforts. There are ways, though, for kids in this
age range to have spontaneous interactions with computers.

The essential element is for the adult to respect the kid's drawings and
other creations as written and oral communications in their own right,
rather than as something cute or as precursors to 'real' language. A
kid's picture is written communication. Rather than trying to adapt
a 3-6 year old to the medium, adapt the medium to the 3-6 yr. old.

Our 3-6 have no problems manipulating a mouse to draw pictures & otherwise
manipulate geometric shapes. Software should use color, let them mix their own
palettes, let them move their creations around, save to disk & dump to
printer. You can fold some geometry into this. For instance they can
define circles using center & radius with a mouse, supply two foci for
and ellipse, and so on. You can use words like 'radius', 'foci', etc.,
if you like, but more important is the way in which a program lets kids
manipulate these fundamental parameters of the geometric objects they
define DIRECTLY, without resorting to a lot of symbol crunching. Kids
are ready for geometry before they're ready to talk about geometry, so give
them fluid, electronic geometry to play with.

One of the difficulties I've found with Logo at these ages is that it
requires symbol crunching. I'd like a Logo with a graphical front end that
let's the kids capture template procedures by moving the turtle around
with a mouse, but I haven't had time to do it (check comp.lang.logo if
you're unfamiliar with Logo). What HAS been useful for the 6 year old
have been some Logo procedures for doing things with the turtle that take
parameters she can understand. She experiments with or plans the results that
a combination of parameters will produce. For example we have

closed :spin :lines :length

abbreviated to

c :spin :lines :length

that will draw a closed figure where the turtle spins :spin times
(:spin * 360 gives total turn degress) in :lines steps, drawing
a line of length :length each step. You can get lots of shapes--squares
triangles, circles, five-pointed stars, spirograph-like shapes--
by varying the parameters. A structured way to use "c" is to extend
"c" so it also plots little hints. I have a "c" that tags a little
arrow at the end of each line segment, a few steps beyond the turtle's
stopping point, each time the turtle completes a line segment. It also
tags a big arrow, a little further away, each time the turtle goes
through a west (270 degrees clockwise from north) heading. She can count
the big arrows to find the :spin parameter value, the little arrows to
find the :lines parameter. Thus she explores the parameter space without
having to do all of the symbol crunching required of programming. An
unstructured approach just lets her do what she wants with the parameters.
Interesting shapes become coloring book pages to color later.

Be advised that 3 year olds will detect bugs you never imagined. When our
son was 2 & learning to use the mouse he managed to repeatedly crash a 
program we had been using heavily for 5 years. Turns out he sat and repeatedly
clicked the mouse at a single point when drawing a polygon, when everyone
else (including his sister at 2) caught on to slide-and-click, slide-and-click
as intended. My polygons blew up if they consisted of multiple clicks on
a single vertex. From that lesson he learned that he can find bugs & we
can fix them.

Sounds are good too. I built a cheap Heathkit voice card and the major
attraction is seeing what mispronounciations it can produce. I do most
of the typing for this so far, although they like to do simple words,
numbers & jumbled text. I DON'T recommend it as a way to learn proper
pronounciation or spelling. I DID put 'Sheep in a Jeep' into it but that
wasn't as much fun as mispronounciation.

My daughter & I have just started to explore picture scaling, translation and
rotation on my sparc at work. Its' fun to turn Yoda on his head and stretch
his ears sideways, and there is some linear algebra in there as well.

I don't have any canned programs to recommend because we have non-standard
graphics at home, and there are no standards on other sensory media for
PCs, so we roll our own. They're pretty rustic as software goes (although
software is often pretty rustic compared to products of REAL engineering),
but the popular ones get used. Check out Logo if you haven't, although
I feel that the 6 yr. old is just approaching the stage where bare bones,
Logo procedure writing (graphics at back-end only) won't be a nuisance to use.

Have fun.


Dale Parson, Bell Labs, dale@mhcnet.att.com

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|    "These words are too solid, they don't move fast enough           |
|     to catch the blur in the brain that flies by, and is gone..."    |
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|     Suzanne Vega                                                     |
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