alice-teacher Parameters and Algebra

[Sandy Graham]

This is fascinating information, Don. I have a student who completed the Alice book and has moved into learning straight java now. Here I thought I had prepped him so he'd have an easier time now. I'll keep in mind that the transfers that I had thought would be automatic and easy will not be and will work to specifically point out the comparisons.

Sandy Graham
Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 29, 2013, at 8:55 AM, Don Slater <dslater at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Good question. I do not know of any specific studies that have looked at how working with Alice can support learning in other domains.
> 
> I think what has been studied is the idea of mediated transfer of learning. I discussed this briefly in Alice blog posts of Feb 22 and Feb 26 (http://aliceprojectcmu.blogspot.com), and the ideas of bridging and hugging. There I was addressing specifically how we were trying to incorporate these ideas into our software and pedagogy in learning Java, but I suspect the same ideas apply here.
> 
> If your goal is to have students develop a stronger understanding of variables in algebra, I think you would develop a "bridge" from Alice to algebra. Find an algebraic word problem that would serve as an interesting world in Alice, and then specifically show the students how the problem in Alice is the same as the problem in algebra.
> 
> Then you "hug" by specifically showing the role of the variables and parameters in Alice, and how they are exactly the same thing in algebra.
> 
> The mistake to be avoided is thinking that students naturally and automatically generalize from one learning context to another. I believe studies show that they do not. Students, like all of us, are efficient managers of the energy they expend on any task. They focus on learning what is in front of them, because that is the task. They do not go looking for work, in other words, they are not going to ask themselves, "How does understanding this help me in understanding ides in other domains?" It never occurs to them that this is a possibility, and so as teachers, it is our responsibility to show them it is possible, and to make it part of the task.
> 
> I always tell the story that when I started teaching programming, I used Karel the Robot, and we would learn about loops. I would then go to Pascal, or some other language, start talking about loops, and the students would act as if this was a completely new idea that they had never seen before. And I was staying in the programming domain! But a loop in Karel looked different enough from loops in Pascal, that as far as the students were concerned, this was something new.
> 
> I do believe that Alice, because it tends to be engaging for students, and its emphasis on visualization, can be an effective tool for supporting learning in a wide variety of domains. But the lessons have to be specifically and intentionally constructed to support the learning.
> 
> All the best,
> Don Slater
> 
> 
> 
> On Mar 29, 2013, at 8:57 AM, Sandy Graham <sandyg at gvtc.com> wrote:
> 
>> I have two 7th grade boys who are struggling hard to understand parameters. In working with them, I keep thinking that, if they can understand parameters, then understanding variables in algebra will be much easier for them. Has this benefit of Alice ever been studied?
>> 
>> Sandy Graham
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Mar 29, 2013, at 7:51 AM, Sandy Graham <sandyg at gvtc.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Thank you, Don! I'm glad to know that the language usage has meandered around and it's not me going nuts! I used to teach pascal, stopped teaching for a while when my babies were born, and am now back to teaching homeschoolers once a week at a class day I founded and direct. So I went straight from Pascal to Alice 2. I like the new usage of the words and can't wait for a book to come out to go with Alice 3! Thank you again for the great explanation!
>>> 
>>> Sandy Graham
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> 
>>> On Mar 29, 2013, at 6:19 AM, Don Slater <dslater at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> If you look at any of our Alice 3 materials, you will see that we refer to that panel of the Alce IDE as the "methods" panel, and that we tend to refer to the tabs as the list of "procedural methods" or "functional methods".
>>>> 
>>>> One of the first computer languages that I taught was Pascal. And if you are familiar with the language, there is a very specific and intentional differentiation between procedures and functions, procedures being programming sub-routines that "do" something, and functions being programming sub-routines that are expressions, evaluating a statement and returning the result.
>>>> 
>>>> But then C came along and all sub-routines were called functions, and then OOP came along, and everything became a method. As a teacher, I always had problems with terminology with my students, often using phrasing like "void functions" or "non-void methods". When I discovered and started using Alice 2, I was thrilled that it gave me helpful terminology, "methods" and "functions". with the different terms in the IDE.
>>>> 
>>>> As we were designing Alice 3, we decided to make the tabs "procedures" and "functions" in the "methods panel", and talk about "procedural methods" and "functional methods". Then as we transition to Java, we can show the students in the code that those methods that have the void modifier are procedures, and if the modifier is anything else, those are the functions.
>>>> 
>>>> The students now have an understanding of what procedures are and what functions do because they can see procedures do something in Alice and have used functions to access information, and so the terminology is not a problem, and it is just easier for me to talk about in class.
>>>> 
>>>> Of course your mileage will vary, and many of you have found other ways to talk about this, but this decision makes the most sense for us in the context of the Alice IDE and how Alice works as a visual representation of a program.
>>>> 
>>>> All the best,
>>>> Don Slater
>>>> 
>>>> On Mar 28, 2013, at 4:23 PM, Sandy Graham <sandyg at gvtc.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I "grew up" referencing procedures and had to work hard to change myself to reference methods. Now I see Alice 3 is back to using the term procedures. Can anyone explain the etymology of those two words?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sandy Graham
>>>>> Sent from my iPhone
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