“Do what you do best and link to the rest” ~ Jeff Jarvis (http://www.buzzmachine.com/)
I am an educator. Once, I lived a life of teaching and evaluating, and it was a journey I would never forget. I still am.. but my year on Letran was very fun & very informative- and I’d like to share with you a summarized version of my short roller-coaster ride there. With videos =D
When it was confirmed that I’m going to teach Introduction to Programming (Fundamentals of Programming, for the non-Letranites out there) to the first year students, the first thing I did was to look for other lectures. I knew that someone, somewhere, there is a great professor teaching the same subject, and I was hoping he recorded it.
Watch it on Academic Earth
Prof. David J. Malan from Harvard University, is the star I decided to shoot for (The entire series can be watched on Academic Earth). At least if I failed, I’d land on the moon. But as I was teaching, I realized that Letran’s methods and Harvard’s are not the same. I asked myself, should I teach Python to this kids, considering that their next subject is C++? My co-teachers told me that the disconnect might hurt the students- and relying on their better judgment, I revised my plan and taught C instead.
In hindsight, I think I should have stood my ground. I should have pushed against teaching C, because the language is, fundamentally, a low-level language (just a step above assembly). It is primarily used for close-to-the-metal applications where performance is a priority. A 1st year professor shouldn’t care if the program takes 1 minute slower, coz as long as it runs, then the student understood the concept/algorithm. Teaching an easier language, something more like natural language (english-like) would make the freshmen understand stuff better. Python is perfectly good example of this, but there are languages actually designed for this, such as SmallBasic.
Another thing: If the students know C, then you start teaching them C++, then they might mix them up. They might accidentally use C-only syntax or a C library instead of the C++ counterpart. Would it help if they know some of syntax beforehand? Maybe. Would it hinder them? Maybe. In my opinion, it’s a 50-50 deal, gambling that C would help the students learn C++.
Why not just teach them something easier but still introduces the same concepts & algorithms?
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