[IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Interesting
More on visual and text programming languages
http://www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/10072/24250/1/52212_1.pdf

Tony


Quoting "K. K. Subramaniam" <kksubbu.ml at gmail.com>:

> On Tuesday 28 Sep 2010 2:59:57 am Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote:
>> The 5th graders took pretty well to Etoys. It is the drawing piece that
>> hooks them, and then the scripting part that really challenges them. And
>> the 7th and 8th graders love Scratch. It is interesting to me because they
>> also do plenty of "painting" of sprites and backgrounds, but something
>> about the bricks seems to match their thinking process.
> This could be due to Stroop Effect.
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
>
> 5th graders may prefer to doodle with colors, shapes, icons and "physical
> models". They can spend more time with manipulating morphs directly and
> creating patterns in Etoys. 7th graders, with their language dominant modes,
> look upon this as "kids stuff" and would dive right into   
> "programming". For the
> literates, Scratch is much easier than Etoys.
>
>> I am getting ready to introduce my current 7th grade classes to Scratch and
>> am looking forward to that
> I came across some cases where this "doodling" actually helped boost learning
> levels (across the board). So don't give up on Etoys yet :-). Dual modes
> (visual/textual) may be a good thing.
>
> Subbu
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