Easy as Pie? – Teaching Code Literacy by Sarah Allen.
A very entertaining presentation on teaching programming to children.
One of its key points was the need for immediate gratification. (Suspect that is probably the case for adults as well but don’t tell anyone.)
The presentation made me think that one of the barriers to teaching topic maps (under whatever guise or name) is its delayed gratification.
That is it is all fine and good to talk about the issues that interest us as topic map specialists but users are really more interested in results that are of interest to them.
I don’t have a specific game or scenario in mind but wanted to point out this presentation as a starting point for discussion of subject-centric gaming.
Your suggestions and comments are always welcome but especially here. I don’t know what interests/motivates other adults, much less children.
PS: Sarah mentions that the “computer science” classes in SF are teaching Word and PowerPoint. Says “…having a class in Word is like having a class in pencil.” Thought you would appreciate that. 😉
From the description:
Sarah Allen talks on how to introduce children to the basics of programming, presenting a new related language called “Pie” along with lessons learned from creating a DSL in Ruby.