Being at high school (around 1988/89), I had my first computer science class. In the first semester, around 40 students participated. After one semester, the number dropped to around 10. Why? Our teacher really taught as the basic of algorithms and programming (already back in 1988!), and not just “how to use a computer” – and this was not what many had expected. I like it!
For the final assignment, we had to programme a small piece of software – anything we liked. So together with a friend, we transferred a board game called “Cybernetics” to a computer game. This was a lot of fun, and a cool experience, as we really managed to present our computer game at the end.
I find this to be great pedagogy – activating, participatory, constructive, self-regulated, and meaningful.
Elske
Hello Elske,
Thank you for sharing your experience. I had a similar experience in college when I tool introductory to computers 101. In the early 90s, I was using HTML code to create a computer-assisted program, unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was called. I do remember that my floppy disk got corrupted and I had to start it over again! It amazing, it started so early!
Hello Mary,
if I remember corretly, we used Basic or Pascal at that time … and yes, I remember well the floppy disk problems at that time!
Elske
Hey Elske,
That sounds like the teacher did an excellent job. I bet the conceptual understanding it helped you developed has been very beneficial throughout the years.
I remember my junior high computers class, we were taught about bits and bytes, RAM and CPU’s. We were expected to know how the parts of the computer worked, and how computer programs in general functioned. The goal was then to figure out how to best use the programs.
With my students today…if the program isn’t as simple as the average iPad app, they claim it’s broken and call it “dumb.”
There definitely was a huge benefit to teaching basic algorithms and how the hardware works. We were used to things not working and forced to solve problems.
Hey Caleb,
indeed, today, students are used to a broad availability of stable and cheap technology … In earlier times, we had to be careful with memory space and disk space, but today, you put everything in the cloud or on a server … But I think this helps our students to focus more on the more interesting problems such as how to make a computer do what they want it to do 🙂
Elske
Hi Elske!
When I read your title and it included the year 1988 (the year I was born), I had to explore your post. Could the tech learning from 1988 be applicable to today? The answer is yes! I love your comment about good pedagogy. I am going to keep those descriptors in my back pocket.
Ally