About three weeks ago, I shared a brief update on how the turtle
graphics was going in my programming class.
Since that time, I have had a number of students ask if they could get
the "turtle" to run on their computer at home. The first kid who asked
me for the necessary files really surprised me. Since then, a number of
others have asked. I guess that means they liked it, then, corny and a
throw-back to the 80's or not.
Of course, we have also been doing quite a bit of programming that did
not involve the turtle. As a matter of fact, at this point in the class,
non-turtle programming outweighs turtle programming, and probably will
from this point on, although I plan to revisit the turtle for a couple
of topics, such as parameter passing to procedures and recursion.
The students seem to be enjoying the course. Although it is an AP
course, I have a wide range of student abilities in the class. Some of
the students finish the programming assignments lickety-split, while
others take a few days to write one simple program that I thought
_could_ have been finished in a single day. I find that I need to allow
the students (at least the slower ones) many more practice programming
opportunities before they can successfully internalize the rules of
programming and write a successful quiz or test on a given topic.
Sheila
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