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0 pointsteach11y ago0 comments

That's helpful. I agree that engaging content works no matter your aptitude.

And I now see that you're saying that teacher "touch" time was 20 hours. Which seems doable if they're able to teach themselves with proper tools.

> "with the help of the compiler, they were able to ace those questions. (i know you don't get a compiler on test day, but it seems silly to cripple them when learning.)"

Oh. This is where we're going to have to agree to disagree. For the AP exam students must write code on paper with a pencil, with no computer in sight. It's been my experience that students that don't have quite a bit of practice doing that without any training wheels crash and burn on the exam.

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christinac11y ago· 2 in thread

yeah, i now spend 2 days/week in an AP CS classroom at a public school with TEALS (http://tealsk12.org), and the dynamic's very different. after 30 classroom hours, we're at loops and conditionals!

i suspect you're right about needing to hand-write code -- especially if you're used to things like code snippets and autocomplete. i suppose i feel about hand-writing code the way i feel about understanding compilerish: you'll probably have to do it at some point, and it's a skill worth practicing, but i don't think it should come first.

teachOP11y ago

I do agree with that. I don't have them hand-write code for quite a while.

And I think we agree more than we disagree; teaching kids that they can code and how to think algorithmicly are far more important than getting them ready to pass a single exam.

christinac11y ago

yep. very much agree!

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