Re: Procedures are our friends

[Kathy Boyle <boyle@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Great discussion topic.

The end of year is breathing down my neck, so my writing this is more work 
avoidance than intelligent discourse.  

At what point in their instruction a student starts to use procedures is a 
complex constellation of many things, including the learning style of the 
student and how long they have been studing Logo.  Logo is a lanuage.  I find 
I keep saying this.  It takes time to get confortable enough and have a large 
enough vocabulary in any language to get truely free and creative.  A 
procedure is a way of "teaching" the computer to do something.  It is a 
recipe.  I've had plenty of 4 year olds give me a series of directions they 
want to see me follow.  What little child doesn't relish being bossy, and the 
computer is a perfect thing to be bossy to -- it can't talk back and it does 
exactly what you tell it to do.  And, of course, there's the rub.  You have to 
know how to tell it just right to get out just what you want.  

A large part of motivation is finding a project that the student cares about.  
This is true of adults as well as children.  I've known many adults who have 
totally ignored what a computer can do for them until they find a reason that 
motivates them.  

Our job as educators is to create the environments and situations that are 
motivating and nurturing;  a space where a student can explore and make 
mistakes on the way to mastery.

As to Wendy's questions:
1. there is no one answer here.  I've introducted procedures to pre-schoolers. 
 I give a more full blown lesson to 1st graders and up.  I've had a variety of 
results, again depending on the student, their learning styles and interest, 
and how long they've been using "talking" logo with me.  more on this in 
another email
2. A few years ago, I would have said that most students start with long 
strings of commands -- almost nonsence.  Lately, I've been seeing more 
variety.  I think this is partly because of being able to make objects 
"clickable".  Maybe I'm doing something different.
3.I've seen both.  I do encourage students to play and see where small changes 
might lead them.  This often leads to more bottom up type programming.  But, 
most of my students are also working on large group projects when top down is 
most likely the over all approach.

Back to end of year stuff.

Kathy

-----Original Message-----
From: Wendy Petti <wpetti@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: May 5, 2005 11:49 AM
To: mwforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Procedures are our friends

Hi Folks,

Here are some thoughts from Daniel about procedures (shared with
permission):

* * * * *

In my view, and I don't know how this could be conveyed to
children, a *procedure* is an abstraction tool: a tool that
helps you think at a higher level, a tool that allows
you to overlook the little details.

So for example, when you put these instructions in
a "square" procedure:

fd 100 rt 90 fd 100 rt 90 fd 100 rt 90 fd 100 rt 90

you can forget about the details involved in the
creation of the square and can concentrate in using
the square for a higher purpose: eg. making a house.

With a "square" procedure you can rotate the square
or move the square, and think about the square as
a unit, and with that, you are allowed to forget
about the specific turtle motions that draw
the square.

Now that I think about it. Putting things in procedures
helps the programmer do unit testing :)

The programmer can debug each procedure individually
instead of a whole hodgepodge of instructions.

Hey, procedures is what enables the "divide and conquer"
problem solving strategy!

* * * * *

I like Daniel's thoughts, and I have some additional thoughts about
procedures that I'll be sharing (in another message).  I hope you'll join in
the discussion.  Here are some related questions:

1) How soon do you introduce children to procedures, and how do they react?

2) Do your students tend to write small procedures and use them as
subprocedures of larger procedures, or do they tend to write longer
procedures ("a whole hodgepodge of instructions")?

3) When your students are developing their own projects, do they tend to
start with a big idea and break it into small pieces as they work on
implementing it, or do they tend to start with a small idea and then keep
building onto i

Wendy



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