make a quick video where i showcase a
discussion topic that has been amazing
on font and for the discussion topic is
about teaching programming to children
and to teachers that have no prior
experience with teaching programming
specifically from for forum is a
discussion forum that is normally
private for patrons of fun fun function
but recently me and the moderators have
felt that some threads are just amazing
so we are going to make them public and
put them in a special spotlight category
which makes them accessible to everyone
that watches from our function and we
also decided that hey MP J’s should do a
video showcasing how great these threads
are and how awesome our members are that
participate in this these threads topics
they are called topics in this course
keep saying that in my old forum days
everything was called threads and
vbulletin and stuff oh people it was
such a dreadful piece of software but it
still makes me feel mmm good mmm
nostalgia’s all right let’s jump to the
thread here on Fonfon forum I just want
to give you some highlights I’ve linked
the thread in the topic in the episode
description so Stefan here asked that I
am NOT by no means a rockstar programmer
but I have heard on many occasions that
I do have an ability to explain
complicated matters in a simple and easy
to understand terms in order to grow as
a developer and as a person I’ve decided
to take some time off in the the
evenings and set up an introductory
course to programming with JavaScript in
school I was talking to was very
enthusiastic apparently as of next year
programming will be included in the
curriculum for all schools across Sweden
and they offered me the opportunity to
introduce it to children and their
teachers which is a very interesting
challenge so this is actually the super
interesting
I’ve been thinking a lot about this
myself
with me being in Sweden and it’s such a
big opportunity and such a big impact
that it has been decided and mandated
that programming should be taught in in
schools but of course this presents a
huge challenge in the sense that how do
we teach children programming
traditionally programming something that
we’re used to teaching to adults that
know about math and computer science and
or maybe they but you know you get the
drill like how do we teach this to a
small child and also how can we also
fashion this in a system that is
systematic fashion
in teaching how do we teach teachers how
to teach programming if teachers have no
prior experience in programming there
are some really interesting insights in
this discussion topic Stephan talks
about how you approach a complex project
a problem teaching a complex problem by
breaking it into simpler parts which is
something that I spend a lot of my time
doing I just take like oh my god this
very overwhelming complex problem and
just what are the essentials of the
problem this problem can we isolate them
and attack them one by one that is one
of the fundamentals of what I do with
fun fun function Erik new orlean points
out that you don’t have to be a rock
star developer in order to teach others
and I think this this is extremely
important it’s so easy to think that you
must be like very successful or have a
very long track record in order to have
the authority of teaching programming
but in my experience teaching as my
primary way of learning because it
forces me to really really make sure
that I understand the the concept so
it’s kind of like teaching is kind of
like my litmus test to see if I actually
know something and especially if you do
it in a form of YouTube videos then you
better have all the
six correct or people will call you out
on it
Eric also points out that it’s very
important to understand why when you are
teaching something I spend a lot of time
on this and a lot of people I I
sometimes get for it like people
all just get to explaining how it works
but I think it’s extremely important to
understand why you are learning
something in order to be motivated to to
do it because learning is hard and you
need to have a clear sense of why you
are spending this time otherwise you
will get bored or it like just oh why am
I doing this and you will feel like your
motivation falling falling falling
Pedro Martin’s who has been on the phone
for forums since the start he talks
about a quote about Richard fit from
Richard Feynman that says if you can’t
explain a concept to a layman you don’t
understand it well enough
and I think that it’s so succinct by the
way I just have to give you a tip about
hang on rich Feynman names this is
completely different
this is unrelated but this video from
Richard Feynman a little small interview
with Richard Feynman we talks about how
names and and knowledge are not the same
but people tend to confuse the two it’s
like it’s just two minutes long you
should really check it it’s just so
insightful
this this man is amazing but that’s not
what we were talking about we were
talking about teaching programming and
petro puts it very succinctly he says
that define what you want to teach
what’s concepts understand those
concepts to the deepest level and then
understand the why of those concepts and
when you’ve done that you should
identify the target audience and then
you should identify analogies and common
references amongst the target audience
like how can you bridge the knowledge
gap using knowledge that they know like
how what what what
their knowledge and how can you build on
top of it and it wasn’t makes it point
that explaining something that’s mainly
and it like an empathetic empathic and
patek is how we say empathic y’all you
need to understand someone and put
yourself into the other person’s mind
and skill and then follow from there and
better also say like we have such
amazing people on the forum really
really fine people Petro worked
alongside Linda Lucas when at coding
Academy I did not know this and like if
you don’t know who live a wrote this
it’s hello Ruby
but it’s a you Ruby because it’s it’s in
Swedish and it’s a children’s book to
teach children programming and it’s so
cool yes like characters has Snow
Leopard and Firefox and the the penguin
and even like it says so so nice I
really like teaching programming and
identic getting people like children
excited and introduced to it and encode
Academy is also like such a great
project to bring to the world I could
say I tend to point people there when
people ask how do I get started with
programming so it’s like ah such nice
people
Steven talks about using ingredients
like a recipe as an analogy for
explaining explaining algorithms and
then he plays around a little bit but
what if we create like he used to do
this to create a muffin class with a
cook
I constructed with some white flour and
baking powder and salt properties and
then having methods with preheat whap
sorry preheat oven and butter pan and
mixing bowl and balance them from side
that’s a good an interesting idea that
analogies sounds like a good teaching
tools but he points out that
jumping from like a recipe to a written
class that it lines up functions like
it’s a very big jump for most beginners
and Vladimir even points out that work
introducing object-oriented programming
is probably something that you should
stay away completely from when you are
introducing a new program because that
is that is actually an abstraction on
top of programming where we use that to
organize code and they like compose
things together and that makes me think
about the fact that object orientation
is often we kind of feel like oh we’re
an object-oriented code for the benefit
of the computer but stuff like object
orientation is actually for the benefit
of the person that is to organize code
like this is just compiled down to some
byte code garble or something that the
learning programming is to learn to
think a little bit like a computer like
how do we explain things to a computer
I’ll be turning the programming is more
like how do we structure code in a way
that is maintainable now I’m of the
opinion that object-oriented code isn’t
really all that maintainable but that’s
a completely different discussion and
then Brian C jumps into the Fed and he
is a teacher that it’s evident that he
teaches a programming to people like
probably it seems like he’s doing it on
a full-time basis and he has so many
fantastic insights he talks about how he
starts to teach by having people having
the students approach a problem like
they would in a natural way and then
have them translate that to computer he
mentioned that analogies and metaphors
like work but you need to point out the
flaws in them because a students tend to
get very specific which I and it says
that oh he inventions that he hated the
the cooking and recipe example and I
asked him why and he talked like
elaborated a lot on this and it was
really the problem with
King example the cooking and recipes are
that they are very ambiguous like a
computer would not be able to follow
these recipes and even humans make a lot
of mistakes for examples there are many
recipes I use there that say put your
style stove on high heat or medium heat
that is not very specific
or for example stir until smooth what is
smooth so cooking cooking and recipes
might actually be more useful as an
example of of a bad way of implementing
an algorithm and its recipe is exactly
the kind of thinking that you want to
move the student away from Brian even
talks about how he uses a similar
example in exercise that he describes in
detail with balloons and stuff and
students standing back-to-back having to
explain things to each other
in order to explain why you can’t talk
to a computer in natural language why we
have programming languages and this is
something I find myself explaining to
people a lot that people think that we
have programming languages too like just
for the benefit of the computer but we
have programming languages because it is
a tool to express things extremely
specifically and that is why we don’t
have visual programming languages or if
that we don’t have programming languages
like that you can write in English
because those languages are not specific
enough if you are interested in teaching
programming you should really check this
right out and his instructions for the
for the exercise it’s bang-on so cool
anyway this topic is open to the public
you can check it out read it if you want
to join the fun for forum and I have
access to all the other threads and
stuff you can just become a patron of
fun fun function it’s it’s
it’s developed all patrons even if you
just pledged $1 which is actually half
of what I paid for this pack of gum so
if you’re interested in having
interesting conversations with me and
other programmers consider becoming a
patron and joining one fan forum it’s
it’s also a really great way of
supporting the production of this show
because this is my full-time job now and
that is it I hope you have a great
weekend
I am mpj until Monday morning stay curious