26 Feb
2013
26 Feb
'13
3:42 p.m.
On 26 February 2013 23:33, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
I don't know how that got sent half-done!
To a child born in the developed world this century,
the Web is part
of life, always there at megabit speeds, as ubiq
... as ubiquitous as air. Computers have GUIs, windows, taskbars etc,
and come with a web browser, as does even a cheap basic old phone or
pocket music player. Games are real-time 3D, even ones on a cheap 2-
or 3- generation old games console such as might be given to
preschoolers to play with.
No, a BBC Micro or anything from the 1980s is not a suitable teaching
tool. It is a flint axe when the kids grew up with sliced bread. It is
a dugout canoe when grandad and grandma go yachting at the weekend.
The mere idea is laughably unrealistic.
If you are teaching a kid to drive, you don't teach them how to build
the car first.
If you're teaching them to maintain a car, you don't teach them how to
design and construct an engine first.
So, no, actually, tools like BASIC and assembly code have no
relevance today, not really. Because the days when a BBC Micro was a
computer are so long ago that these kid's *parents* don't even really
remember them.
A BBC Micro is not a computer any more, because it is 2013 now. People
live in space and have a Dynabook containing the entire Hitch-hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy in their pockets - it is normal for them to have
access to basically the entirety of human wisdom, wirelessly - because
even their parents don't remember phones that attached to *wires
coming out the wall* - because these are things so cheap that even the
kids in India and China are getting them now.
Assembly code is equivalent to how to chip a sharp arrowhead from a
piece of flint.
BASIC is equivalent to learning how to smelt iron.
And the Raspberry Pi is a kids' computer that is cheaper than giving
them that old dusty Pentium 4 in the attic, because [a] you'd have to
get the P4 working again and install software on it, [b] it's a huge
noisy ugly piece of *office equipment* and not something a kid would
want to play with, and mostly because
[c] The Raspberry Pi costs less to buy than the electricity used by
that P4 running every evening for a significant chunk of a year.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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