[Edu-sig] Graphical Programming and OOP

[Jeffrey Elkner]

While your analogy may be out in left field (if baseball is the game we
are thinking of), it is still very much in the ball park ;-)

The only thing I would add is that the "traditional sense of what
teaching a subject has come to mean" is in the process of changing.  I
am actually only trying to do what I was told to do when I began
teaching math 13 years ago.

All the math teachers in my school system had a two week long workshop
by Discovering Geometry author Michael Serra.  I left that experience
with two ideas that I think about often:

1. Students learn best by doing, not by hearing.
2. Given 1, the teacher needs to move from being the "sage on the stage"
to becoming the "guide on the side".

"Guide on the side" sounds a lot like coaching to me ;-)

On Sat, 2005-03-26 at 09:21 -0500, Arthur wrote:
> I know this perspective is a little out of left field (as they say), but...
> 
> Can't help seeing some analogy between programming and athletics.  Won't
> draw it out except to say that having seen Jeff and his students at PyCon in
> the past years only seems to validate my sense of things here.  I see a team
> and their coach.  Programming is hard, and it takes an interest and aptitude
> as a starting point, and perhaps one can only coach, not teach in the more
> traditional sense of what teaching a subject has come to mean.
> 
> Art