Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
tant to let them experience first at least two such environments, as is laid out
in what follows.
• Stage A: Exploration of object-oriented program visualization and anima-
tion, work in pairs
The students are asked to explore applications which are based on visual-
ization and animation. Two such applications are Jeliot
6
and BlueJ
7
.
The students are asked to explore these environments with one of the
tutorials available on the Web. Specifically, the students can be asked to
analyze these environments from a pedagogical perspective (that is, when
and how these environments can be used for teaching purposes) and to
think about advantages and disadvantages of these environments for learn-
ing purposes.
• Stage B: Class discussion
The class discussion that follows this exploration should address topics
such as the following: advantages and disadvantages of program visualiza-
tion, the fitness of such environments to divers/all learners, concepts that
their learning is supported by these environments, and misconception that
such environments may create.
• Stage C: Read a paper, homework
The students are asked to find, read, and submit a critical report on one of
the research papers that deals with novice learning of the object-oriented
paradigm with one of these environments (see Chap. 4 for additional details
about assignments that deal with research on computer science education).
Activity 67: Visualization- and Animation-Based IDEs
Visualization- and animation-based IDEs use visualization/animation to sup-
port learners' first programming steps, by allowing learners to work with more
concrete objects in their first learning steps of computer science. Here are sev-
eral examples of such IDEs
8
(listed here alphabetically): Alice,
9
Greenfoot,
10
Karel J. Robot,
11
MicroWorlds,
12
Scratch,
13
Squeak,
14
Starlogo.
15
It is notable,
though, that many of them are inspired by Papert's Mindstorms philosophy
(Papert
1980
).
6
Source: http://cs.joensuu.fi/jeliot/.
7
Source: http://www.bluej.org/download/download.html.
8
See TOCE special issue on Initial Learning Environments (November 2010, vol. 10(4)) for a
broader discussion of IDEs.
9
Source: http://www.alice.org/.
10
Source: http://www.greenfoot.org/.
11
See: http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/KarelJava2ed/Karel++JavaEdition.html.
12
See http://www.microworlds.com/.
13
See: http://scratch.mit.edu/.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search