A colleague asked about Computer Programming Classes in Middle School. I found this compelling given a recent conversation I had regarding the lack of classes at our Middle School along with a need to adjust how we assess our students in the Upper School. The ideas here are generated from a listserv I belong to and while it is Creative Commons material, I have taken out the names of folks due to issues related to publishing of material that some folks think is private. The schools mentioned are all private schools.
I am using this more as a collector of information. I guess I could use my wiki as well.
School 1:
We do HTML and CSS in 7th grade (though as stated these are not programming languages), and an intro to Processing in 8th grade- this is
an MIT lab IDE. We continue with Processing in the US. For more information try: www.processing.org Also, my colleague Michael B. did a workshop at NEIT this year called Processing
School 2:
We offer a two week unit in Python programming to all of our 8th graders and another to all of our 9th graders. It’s not a course, by any stretch of the imagination, since by design we’ve left out most of the formal discussion in favor of examples and experiementation, but it could be extended into one without too much work. Our current state of play (due for revision, I might add).
School 3:
We teach Perl starting in the sixth grade. There is a very good book “Learning Perl” which has the classes set out for use. Perl has
several advantages. first unlike HTML Perl is a real programming language. HTML is a markup system. second Perl run on our three types
on computers (Windows, Mac, Linux) and the programs work the same on each kind. Third Perl is a widely used and useful language which the
students will not out grow. That is it is not a “teaching”language but rather one that has real practical value.
School 4:
Here at the L… Schools, we’re teaching programming using Logo(Microworlds) in the 5th grade, Scratch in the 6th, and Runtime Revolution
in the 8th. (Runtime Revolution is a successor to the old HyperCard — for those oldtimers like me — and is a terrific multi-media environment with a powerful yet easy-to-understand scripting language behind it. Infinitely better than HyperStudio.)
Other Suggestions
http://www.greenfoot.org/index.html
I will continue to add to this post as the data comes in.
To be fair, I have installed Alice on the computers in the Middle School and hoped to do a club using students. One student is the son of a Computer Science teacher at Duke University who conducts Alice Training. I had to cancel it since there was demand on the computer labs to run a TV Commerical and Stock Market Club along with a Lego Mindstorms Club that I sponsor. In addition, I am offering camps on Scratch, Lego Mindstorms and Alice this summer.
I am amazed and jealous at times at what some schools are able to fit into the school day.
