Hi Bob,
-> I don't know how I missed Ron's message, as I've been nervously
-> watching the echo sense the plot was posted. But miss it I did
-> I hope he reposts his responce.
You seem to have missed my two long responses as well, since you never
replied to them. Ron has already mentioned that he no longer has copies,
but I have both his post(s) and mine here and will save them off to a
text file. I can repost it if necessary, but would prefer to send it to
you privately, either FidoNet netmail, or EVEN BETTER by Internet
e-mail. Please advise. If you do have an e-mail adress but don't wish to
post it here publicly, you can mail it to me at cking@cyberg8t.com.
-> Yup, old donated 286s and 8088s to learn on.  Also.. I'm thinking
-> that using the text commands to compress and decompress files is easy
-> to learn and the understanding that results in doing that might make
-> the graphical interface understandable when they have occasional
-> (perhaps at home on more advanced machines) to use it. But then, I
-> hope to have some machines capable of running html programs, the
-> question is how many (not many at first I'd guess) and whether or not
-> the learning that takes place on those machines will be focused on
-> internet use and document creation.
Wow. If you're using such old machines (wish you would've mentioned this
in the previous post) then I would definitely NOT make any point of
teaching operating systems at all. Students learn computer tasks best by
actually doing, and if you won't have ample facilities for all students
to have lots of hands-on time on the various machines, then I would
focus on the applications.
As far as HTML and so forth, without sufficient facilities, I'd probably
scratch it.
Well, another idea is to break the class up into groups (6 or so,
whatever works best) and have different activities for each group: one
doing word processing, one doing HTML, one doing keyboarding, etc... for
a few weeks on appropriate hardware, then everyone switches and repeat
until they all rotate through all the stations.
-> ....so, now I'm sitting here thinking of a management bad dream ...
-> each computer type, with it's own things to share..... well,
-> September is awhile away still, It will have more shape by then, I
-> pray.
Personally, were I in your situation, I'd do the following: Assign each
kid to a computer and that kid stays with that computer throughout the
year. Then try to find the same or similar software for each of the
platforms, so that everyone is doing the same activity.
-> Wonderful idea. This brings up another point though,programing. The
-> utility of batching in dos is self evident, but what about other
-> kinds of programing.....say in qbasic, or, logo ? Should they be
-> exposed in the 6th grade? and if so why? I didn't include programming
-> in the syllabus because when I was asking people who taught Junior
-> high computer what kinds of skills they'd like to see incomming
-> students have, none of them mentioned programming. Yet it has come up
-> several times talking with other people. (also, I don't know much
-> about it myself, though I do plan to learn ) I wonder what other's
-> think.
Programming is an excellent idea, IMHO. Problem solving. Using the
computer as a TOOL not the end in itself. And I can point you to LOTS of
references on the Web that will give you excellent justifications for
teaching programming to 6th graders and YOUNGER. Also, there is a free
version of Logo put out by UC Berkley (I just downloaded it yesterday).
It will even run on old DOS machines in only 640K, although this does
sacrifice some of the performance.
So, let me know if you'd like me to send those text files, and by what
means. Or, if you like, I can repost them here to the echo.
Sheila
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