Programming languages at schools

Why is good the students know how speaking to a computer.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo. Photos Courtesy by Iván Rotta Saavedra.

 

SULLANA, Peru – The first time I sat down in front of a computer was in 1986. Actually, it was in front of some Atari or Commodore keyboard plugged to a 14-inch white-&-black TV during a vacation class.

It was the time when Michael Knight spent speaking with a Pontiac car’s computer in an emblematic TV series, apparently science-fiction that time. Today, many time later, I speak to my smartphone’s computer when I need verified answers about specific topics which I even write this article.

We are not talking about artificial intelligence only. Before it, the process to manage orders and have results have to do with programming the device for it gives me a product or result.

In a free etimology, programming means writing or outlining with anticipation, and amid the computation world, it means setting up a set of orders and instructions inside a logic sequence for achieving a result. The definition is mine, by the way, but it has to do with something called logic thinking – our ability to understand our surrounding world, how all this relates because it is similar or different.

 

Buddy, wax the floor

Think of your dog. If the concept of bone or toy comes into your head, or perhaps something relatively abstract like pet, and all the realities and sentiments it causes, we go on the right way.

Even, you can program your dog to follow right orders. And if you don’t give them to it,the dog programs to react before right situations so solving problems. Of course,if you set up a dialogue, and unless the science points us out another thing, the dog gets to these levels asking its instinct and intuition.

Something similar happens wit your lap-top, your cellphone, or even your appliances. Obviously, you couldn’t take your vaccum-polisher out to walk at the park but one of my brothers has got one at home which he can manage with voice commands in person or via an Internet application. The device uses low-power laser rays to scan around, it goes saving it in its memory. So, when the user asks it, it knows where removing the dust by and leaving the floor like a mirror.

 

The classroom in an app

To reach these results, it requires to create and set up a link with your device. “The programming languages are the mean how I talk to a computer,” Sullana-based systems engineer Iván Rotta Saavedra explains me. We are not talking about vanguard but, at least, eight decades of fast development until reaching the automation concept, that has spread slowly through the planet.

Specialists warn as much as we adapt not only to that reality but we cross over the user dimension to the contents creator’s one, it’s probable our professional future is guaranteed.

That’s why the actual education is betting to teach programming languages to boys and girls since kindergarten, not with the complexity of undergraduate studies or upper, but someway the generation that just reaches our waist is digital-native, so it can engage to this knowledge fastly, pretty aside if it is urban or countryside.

What remains is assuring them the access to high-performance technology & connectivity.

 

What does it serve me for?

“However, I find it is not following a methodology,” Iván Rotta criticizes. “Teaching a programming language not having a special purpose makes no sense.” In fact, his undergrade thesis was about how to apply robotics and augmented reality to achieve useful results in educational environment.

At the moment, ElectroNorOeste announced it is training 300 teachers in Piura and Tumbés about the use of Scratch, a more-gaming-style programming language that allows to create little applications which can improve the teaching/learning experience.

The pass we might take who are not students or teachers  is how to join the experience of learning, understanding, doing, creating,and sharing. So, we could jump up almost quantic in the technology issue beyond the government policy is, or where your professional vocation goes through.

 

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