[IAEP] Another article on evaluation and learning to code

[Walter Bender]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 9:16 AM, Sebastian Silva
<sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:
> Hi iaep,
> Was reading an interesting article today:
> https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-study-shows-success-different-learning-styles-computer-science-class
>
> With all the reflection data in our Journals, perhaps these machine learning
> algorithms can tall us something about ourselves?
>
> I found it very interesting how there are clearly many paths to acquiring
> mastery in programming.
>
> It makes sense that the computer be assessing and feeding back to the
> learner.
>
> Rather interesting I found as well were the sink-holes (so called "walls" of
> learning, where student's bump and find it hard to continue without undoing
> some steps). I definitively know the feeling. "They open the door for
> developing systems to encourage students to go down more fruitful paths
> before they become lost in the programming weeds."
>
> If I may comment one more thing.
>
> Perhaps one area often left out in this kind of discussion, is the
> importance of social values, pointed out by the Free Software movement of
> which we are a part, and many volunteers such as Flavio. What is the purpose
> of learning to program? What is the responsibility of one who knows these
> techniques?
>
> I venture that having a bunch more of proprietary startups with crappy apps
> and (especially) abusive business models, is *definitively*, not the way to
> go forward as humanity.
>
> _______________________________________________
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Good observations, Sebastian.

As we continue to debate the future of Sugar, I posit that the culture
of software freedom has to stay at the core of our activities (what we
do as a community and what the users of our software do). Writing
vanilla Apps for Android might be a good business model, but it is not
going to have any lasting impact. We need to aim higher and, while it
maybe a slower path of growth, not compromise on the values that make
us relevant to learning.

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org