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K-12 Programming Education and AI Education

Materials shown

Everyone: do you think these materials are of good quality? What can be improved?

Discussion topics

  • For most high-schoolers, is the Zhejiang new-gaokao IT exam (IT part) too hard or too easy? Could it be promoted to more provinces as a gaokao subject?
  • How to implement the 2022 new curriculum standard? Many IT teachers don't know "how to teach" — why, and what to do?
  • Can the GESP framework validate children's learning? Will teaching directly by such a framework spark children's interest?
  • How to view the current "children's programming boom"? Sustainable?

Popularization for middle-schoolers

  • "Do children need a 'special keyboard' to learn typing?" (from Ender's Game), raising thoughts about teaching design for children/K-12.
  • Activity: "if I were to popularize my course to high-schoolers with no programming background, where would I start?"
  • Data structures: use something like Scratch visual programming to present basic algorithms like sorting.
  • Computational thinking: this course needs little change — already for students without a programming background; visualization matters; can use AI for live explanation/demos — today's high-schoolers can generate more complex programs with AI than we did as freshmen.
  • Computer culture basics: data-processing content, e.g. analyzing high-schoolers' grades with visualization/natural-language; data analysis connects to high-school statistics; let students try software, simple Python/R.
  • Digital-logic lab: students with a programming background may not be interested; first explain the foundational nature of hardware knowledge (build a digital-circuit game? Turing Complete).
  • Computer networks: "type an address in the browser and press Enter, what happens?" — sharable at any depth.

Further reading

  • Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas — invented Logo, vision "let children learn math by programming a computer, rather than the computer controlling children."
  • 落日间's game-making course for high-schoolers.