Iconic Programmer A Visualization Tool for Teaching Concepts without Context

Overview  A Brief History of Science  Needs – food, clothing, shelter  Ideas – customs, tools, artistic creation  Improvements – rules, measurements, engineering design  Formalizations – mathematics, theory

Education  Fundamentals and Foundations First  Math before engineering  French grammar first  Algebra before MCV (MathWorlds)  Code before algorithms

Outline  Computer programming  Teaching programming – current practice  The Iconic Programmer  Using the Iconic Programmer  Research Issues

What is Programming?  Computer programs you interact with…  Non-computer “programs” you do…

Concepts  Series of actions / instructions  Algorithm  Actions  Decisions  Objects  Inputs/Outputs

Implementation public class Account { private Money balance; public deposit (Money amount) { balance.add(amount); }

Pedagogy  What is at the start of a text/course?  What is a computer  How to input text into a file and compile  Programming syntax  Details…stuff that changes

Issues  Programming (processes) are important  High anxiety / attrition  Students get lost on context

Concepts  Processes  Actions and decisions  States and entities  Algorithms  Logical organization of ideas

The Iconic Programmer  Pure graphical programming interface  Minimalist  Real  Visually intuitive  Interactive

Programming Concepts  Actions  Sequence  Decisions  Branching  Repetitions  Looping

Programming Context  Data manipulation  Basic math Number games Telephone menus  Input and output

Actions  Declare  Processes work on “objects”  Assign  Random, mathematical, input  Output  Text or data

Program 1  I have a number, try to guess it…  Actions  Creation of my number  Your attempts to guess

Decisions  Feedback and interaction  Need to allow multiple paths / actions

Program 2  You have three guesses to get my number…  Decisions  Correct guess – yes/no  Actions/paths  Guess again or stop

Repetition  Concept  Guess, repeat  Repeat  do the action/path over again  Repetition is based on a decision

Program 3  Repeated guessing  Linear search

Program 4  A complete program  Binary search

Iconic Programming  Supplement to introductory high school or university programming courses  Three-week general science module  Computers are pervasive  Programming is a general skill

Research Issues  Kinesthetic thinking  Modes of interaction  Visualization models