And They Were Thinking? Basic, Logo, Personality and Pedagogy - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 115

to program certain processes, the student necessarily shows a through understanding
of the process” (p. 27). Both these themes run through computer education to the
present day.
Understandably, Kemeny and Kurtz devote most of their various publications to
Basic itself and the ground-breaking time-sharing system shared between two com-
puters that went with it. Written by sophomore Michael Busch and junior John
McGeechie [3 p5], this system was the element which made the project economically
possible and educationally viable, an example of what can be achieved by enthusiasts
too young to know that what they were doing wasn't supposed to be possible.
Basic was an acronym for 'Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.'
Dartmouth, where its originators taught, attracted students who were “not generally
interested in the Sciences,” so it was designed for those studying the liberal arts [9
p518 & 522] “as an extremely simple language that can be quickly mastered by a
novice” [3 p3]. They considered that Fortran had “many disadvantages for the novice
and occasional user,” meaning largely there was too much fussy detail to remember,
and “decided that we would improve it” (p3). Considering other languages available
or planned, they thought the Algol compound statement introduced too many com-
plexities for beginners [9 p538] and wanted something much smaller and more gen-
eral then Cobol. As long as the user is content with real numbers (which Kemeny and
Kurtz considered removed the need for typed variables), and happy with two-
character variable names (forced by the exigencies of the computers), Basic can be
said to express mathematical ideas generally as well as Fortran. Indeed, it has the
added power of matrix operations, and with the extension to string handling it came
much closer to being truly 'general purpose' as well. It has also shown remarkable
longevity, widespread use in commercial applications and a capacity to accept exten-
sions gracefully.
Perhaps the best expression of the benefits of teaching students to program comes
from Thomas Dwyer [11-14]. Dwyer extended Dartmouth Basic to make it a better
language to teach with . This may sound contradictory and clash with the educational
ideas of Basic's creators, but actually it was designed to reinforce them.
Kemeny and Kurtz discuss the advantages of having a student teach the computer.
Papert's Mindstorms [15] can be seen as an extended plea for learner control. Dwyer
considered that students learn best when they are teaching other students , so he
wanted his students to write programs for others to learn from . Hence his characterisa-
tion of educational programming as having two modes: Dual and Solo. Dual mode
consisted of using a computer to learn with something programmed by someone
else—what today would be covered by courseware and information retrieval and
processing. Solo mode was, initially, writing programs for your own use, but then
going on to write programs to teach different parts of the curriculum to others. Here
he was picking up Kemeny and Kurtz's ideas on needing to understand a process if
you are to write a program for it. Dwyer [12 p220] explained this as:
a learning situation which develops advanced cognitive and motor skills for
students of quite varied backgrounds, and which also involves many affective
elements, but which relies heavily on technology for achieving these ends.
While it is clear that dual instruction is essential (one does not recommend
that a student immediately go out in an airplane and 'do his own thing') it is
equally clear that the student will optimise his benefits from the dual mode if