[REBOL] Re: teaching rebol
From: gerardcote:sympatico:ca at: 31-Mar-2003 11:45
Hi Graham and Gregg,
> I'm looking to teach my child how to program in rebol (
> for Duke of Edinburgh awards ).
>
> Does any one have a set of lessons for absolute beginners?
>
> I've given her Rebol for Dummies to read pro tem.
>
> --
> Graham Chiu
Maybe we should write some up. My son is just getting interested as
well. He and some friends set up AltME worlds and I think that
inspired him. :)
One of the best intro books I had (loaned out now it seems), though
not REBOL oriented, was 'How Computer Programming Works' by Dan
Appleman. Trouble is that REBOL doesn't quite match its "standard"
explanation I'g guess. Still some good concepts in it though.
-- Gregg
That's the reality and while this was also my first motivation to begin writing some
beginners course also, I am always reviewing
some material as to what would be most useful to include for this first course. I also
got Appleman's bok by last december and I
agree with you Gregg. I also learned a bit about other start-up books about doing multimedia
with Squeak that is using a
constructivist approach - which I think is the best in town but seems that REBOL core
doesn't qualify for this kind of view since it
doesn't support much about sound like Squeak does. I also considered to start something
in the way Dr. Scheme does it or even the
way Brian Harvey does it too in his Computer science Logo style 3 books series first
book since generally these People don't use a
numeric apps only approach to programming which I particularly like and I think that
goes hand in hand with the way REBOL can help
programmers resolve their problems.
And now I think to include an object oreinted part as soon as possible as I will be able
in the cursus since it seems the most
natural approach to begin thing in the right manner and for being able to encapsulate
always bigger and bigger systems while keeping
small the number of details to manage at any one time.
So I have yet to figure exactly what I will consider as the first material to include
but this should permit my 2 sons and other
students at large to concretely use their new knowledge in any other programming tasks
later in their learning.
Since I just completed yesterday at 17:00 the last activity in my course to become a
massotherapist, I will now be able to find some
time but there is a lot of REBOL details to master for me before becoming fluent with
such a course.
Nevertheless this will not stop me and I will soon embark on some teaching material -
even if I am not very good with my english and
I thought to first get in in french for validation by my 2 sons, I think that may be
we could collectively establish a learning
sequence to include for strict beginners and think about some programming examples to
feed the new learners about some way to think
about doing real thing using REBOL and then asking them to modify the original code to
get some other interesting results - that's
the way constructivists use Dr. Scheme, Squeak and Logo in their way of teaching programming
and algorithms.
What do you think about it ? Can we consider to start first some self thought about
this project and then start an AltMe World
about Teaching REBOL for beginners to put together interesting pieces coming from each
one of us and eventually start something that
the community or a small interested group could go with ?
