From ... Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!news.tele.dk!129.240.148.23!uio.no!Norway.EU.net!127.0.0.1!nobody From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Can I use Lisp? Date: 27 Oct 2000 17:39:58 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software; vox: +47 800 35477; gsm: +47 93 256 360; fax: +47 93 270 868; http://naggum.no; http://naggum.net Lines: 39 Message-ID: <3181657198223789@naggum.net> References: <16savskpras2on0vjcfmq2km962sbtcian@4ax.com> <8t44r6$3pc$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3181391107929417@naggum.net> <3181477127456574@naggum.net> <8t7ecv$tir$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3181518131621435@naggum.net> <8t9d55$f3k$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <9dlgvskf0q2aia8hlitt6e5jja8a3vuji7@4ax.com> <3181592819799881@naggum.net> <3181612466221729@naggum.net> <39F9A384.90FDB896@cadvision.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: oslo-nntp.eunet.no 972685330 27479 195.0.192.66 (27 Oct 2000 22:22:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@eunet.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Oct 2000 22:22:10 GMT mail-copies-to: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.7 Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.lisp:2749 * Wade Humeniuk | Would this problem->solution approach be a good teaching method? | Leave the discussions about recursion, iterations, conditionals, | hash tables till later. Focus on getting your ideas to work on the | computer. I have seen this in how my kids learn. It works best for | them when they wish to accomplish something and then they learn | things they need on the way to getting it done. They learn much | more effectively when what they are learning is pertinent. Focus on | how Lisp does not get in the way but can be an effective tool in | accomplishing things. The teacher is there to guide the way that | has been travelled before. The student is there to find the way. This sounds very much like the Problem-Oriented Learning methodology now popular in many medical schools. Due to the enormous mass of knowledge to learn and sheer amounts of information to memorize (more or less), many ways to motivate students have been tried. Bringing attention to problems that a (good) teacher can pose in such a way as to fit the students' expected level of understanding and skills, means that there is a feeling of mastering problems all the time. It is reported harder work than the older styles with lectures and mainly reading several thousand pages of literature, but that seems to be because students actually do the work, as opposed to skipping the incredibl boring parts. I keep thinking the level of attention to detail and the necessity to learn a tremendous amount of "stuff" for modern programmers is closer to very established professions like medicine and law than some of the undereducated punks would dream of in a nightmare. Most of the CS education I have come across, both my own and what I have read about elsewhere, has been in uninspiring theory and too little actually rewarding work, especially as the theories get more and more advanced and the poor student has _no_ idea whence they all came, simply because of lack of programming experience. No wonder today's dot-com coders think they need no education. *Sigh* #:Erik -- Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? -- George W. Bush