Grant, please also see http://www.bootstrapworld.org if you want to start with middle-school age children. -- Matthias
On Aug 1, 2013, at 9:03 PM, Daniel Prager wrote: > Hi Grant > > My son is in the target demographic, I've been teaching him a bit of Racket, > and he's a Minecraft fiend. > > If a new tutorial was available, especially one which is cross-platform as > well as R. Pi, we'd give it a whirl. > > Meanwhile, you're Montessorians might enjoy my Turtle graphics in Racket: > > https://github.com/danprager/turtlegraphics > > > Cheers > > Dan > > > On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Matthias Felleisen <matth...@ccs.neu.edu> > wrote: > > Grant, > > I read your building tower's tutorial and I really like the idea of > motivating programming for children with something like Minecraft, which seem > to like. Since we already have a decent outreach program for this level, > please consider creating a Minecraft-Racket bridge. Our approach to teaching > programming emphasizes transfer of skills between programming and math. > Traditional programming skills do not transfer, because of low-level > obstacles ('x = x + 1' just isn't an equation and when you solve it you get > '0 = 1') to high-level obstacles (what's a 'while' loop in mathematics). > > So we prefer a functional approach because it definitely benefits children > and it scales all the way to serious software. > > One way to go about this is to hook up Minecraft to what we call the > 2htdp/universe teachpack, specifically the world form. There are two > strategies: > -- modify 2htdp/universe so that handlers can output Minecraft commands (and > the world-universe library interprets it for them) + add a handler that can > deal with signals from Minecraft > -- leave 2htdp/universe alone but set up a world that communicates with a > local universe that can receives S-expressions from the students' world and > interprets them and turns signals from Minecraft into messages for the world > I have used the second strategy to connect a brain-wave headset with world > (big-bang). > > Another way to go about it is to connect Marketplace (a Racket-embedded > programming language) to your Minecraft API. See the package server. > Marketplace is available from there. This is probably easier and it is good > enough for one of us to do the rest. > > Let us know about your progress and we can also help evaluate your > World/BigBang tutorials. > > Nice work!! -- Matthias > > > > > > > > On Jul 30, 2013, at 2:34 PM, grant centauri <gcenta...@lincolnix.net> wrote: > > > hello all, > > > > i wrote a programming tutorial which connects Common Lisp to the Minecraft > > Pi edition, attempting to illustrate recursion through the process of > > building a tower. > > > > after publishing it on my personal site, I realized no one was likely to > > ready it, and even if they did, it seemed unlikely that CL would be a good > > choice for my audience. > > > > I have been considering rewriting the tutorial in Racket (someone from this > > list pointed me to an already written library for the API), but I am pretty > > isolated in my pursuit of programming. I work with children at a > > montessori school, and have been learning programming as a hobby in the > > hopes of offering rudimentary skills to kids who might be interested. > > Minecraft + Raspberry Pi seemed like a good option to try something out. > > It would be nice if some of you programmers and educators out there > > wouldn't mind reviewing my current article and maybe offering some critique > > so I can improve on it? This list seems to be the best programming > > community I can find so I thought I would ask. Sorry it is in a foreign > > dialect, but it is fairly simple. > > > > here it is on the web: > > > > http://www.lincolnix.net/gcentauri/build-tower.html > > > > thank you for considering! > > > > -grant > > ____________________ > > Racket Users list: > > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users > > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
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