{"id":3792,"date":"2016-05-10T03:54:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T08:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=3792"},"modified":"2016-05-11T03:48:50","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T08:48:50","slug":"it-takes-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=3792","title":{"rendered":"It Takes Balls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/a>I like [easyazon_link keywords=”Sphero” locale=”US” tag=”neweasyazon-20″]Sphero[\/easyazon_link] and am impressed by their ability to execute as a company. Their customer service is terrific and their ability to attract the Star Wars license, publicity, and this recent New Yorker profile<\/a>\u00a0are unprecedented.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sphero\u00a0makes terrific toys. However, companies\u00a0and reporters would be well-served by speaking with educators who understand learning and have paid some dues before making grand pronouncements about education. Simply comprehending the differences between teaching and learning would be a welcome first step.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The article’s ad-hominem attacks on Logo in favor of C for god’s sake shows just how profoundly misguided the “Coding” newbies happen to be. History does not begin with them. Every thought they have, no matter how unimaginative or unoriginal is not automatically superior to the work done by those of us who have taught kids and teachers to program for decades. David Ahl told me that Creative Computing Magazine<\/em><\/a> had 400,000 subscribers in 1984. Thirty years ago, my\u00a0friend and Constructing Modern Knowledge<\/a> faculty member, Dr. Dan Watt, sold more than 100,000 books of [easyazon_link identifier=”0070685703″ locale=”US” tag=”neweasyazon-20″]Learning with Logo[\/easyazon_link]. Tens of thousands of educators taught children to program in the 1980s and then again after laptops were introduced in the 1990s. This was not for an hour, but over sufficient time to develop fluency.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It takes real balls for every other startup company, politician, and Silicon Valley dilettante to advocate for “coding” with a macho certainty suggesting that\u00a0learning to program is a novel\u00a0idea or accomplished\u00a0in an hour.<\/div>\n
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