What do children learn about programming? What is programming thinking? How to exercise programming thinking?

  The purpose of writing a program is to accomplish a goal: to implement an electronic greeting card, for example. In order to achieve the goal, planning and design of the goal itself and the method to achieve the goal is required. Consideration and design are required when implementing e-cards: What roles exist in the card? What background pattern to use? Do you want to play a piece of music? Does the character have actions and behaviors? How to implement the action of the character? How to coordinate the behavior of multiple roles and so on. This process of design and planning completes target decomposition, deductive reasoning and creation, and is also a process of applying critical thinking, logic and computing power.

 

  In order to make the action of the greeting card character more realistic, it is necessary to use mathematical knowledge to calculate the movement path, and to use physical knowledge to simulate the movement mode to make it more natural and reasonable; at the same time, it is also necessary to design the character's modeling, dubbing, etc. through art and music knowledge. . Therefore, programming is also a comprehensive application process of mathematics, physics, language, art and other knowledge.

 

  By learning programming, children can not only learn logical concepts, improve their reasoning, solving and computing skills, but also gradually learn how to apply knowledge of other disciplines in the process of programming, and actually understand the role and value of these knowledge points. In this way, on the one hand, it can consolidate and deepen the understanding of the knowledge that children have mastered, and on the other hand, it can promote children's willingness to learn knowledge of different subjects. Therefore, learning programming is a good way to promote basic subject education.

  Programming is the "design and implementation" of a specific goal, which is the repeated use of information, materials and knowledge points. This process mainly revolves around two aspects. On the one hand, it is necessary to determine which information and materials to use, what problems and knowledge blind spots exist;

 

  Information material is a component of programming, so through programming, children can be guided to give full play to their imagination and initiative, and flexibly use information material to achieve different goals; at the same time, in the process of programming, gradually learn the correct way to identify and obtain information material, improve information and media literacy.

 

  What’s more valuable is that the purpose of programming is to achieve a specific goal and objectively provide a real scene for practicing, learning and verifying knowledge points. Therefore, children are more interested in learning about the knowledge blind spots in the programming process. , easier to understand and master. That is to say, programming can effectively enhance the willingness to learn, gradually improve the ability of self-learning and self-direction, and form the habit of active thinking and learning.

  Compared with developed countries, our innovation ability and pioneering spirit are obviously insufficient. In addition to social environment and other factors, the existing domestic education model is the main reason for this problem.

 

  Compulsory education and higher education in China are completely one-way indoctrination education driven by textbooks and test-taking. From elementary school, children began to accept the input education of "clear and consistent content" and "clear and consistent scope", and the output is only standard answers, and even the use of idioms are standard answers. Continuing to accept this form of education for more than ten years, the students' way of thinking is seriously solidified, so they will be superstitious in authority, lacking innovation ability and pioneering spirit.

 

  In developed countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, there are only syllabuses and no textbooks in the compulsory education stage, and the specific teaching content is completely determined by teachers. At the university level, the content and format of teaching are more flexible. From primary school to university, the teaching form has two main characteristics: one is "propositional" education; the other is a lot of reading reference books. The so-called "proposition education" is to ask questions for a certain "problem area", and students can consult materials and reference books by themselves and give their own answers. Continuing to accept this form of education for more than ten years, students' self-learning ability will continue to be strengthened, and there will be no psychological fear of unfamiliar knowledge fields, which is precisely the foundation of innovation and pioneering spirit.

 

  On the other hand, in China, people generally have a sense of fear of unknown areas. Adults generally lack the ability to start from scratch, and minors have a particularly strong sense of frustration, and they are easy to retreat in the face of difficulties.

  Programming is essentially a "proposition education". For example, the goal achieved through programming is a proposition. Children need to complete the design and planning by themselves, discover and solve the problems and difficulties, such as what materials are needed, define roles and behaviors, and realize logic and control. For the knowledge blind spots in the programming process, children should learn how to obtain answers through reference books, the Internet, and asking others for advice, so as to help children gradually accept and adapt to the active learning method with clear goals.

 

  One of the important functions of "proposition education" is to cultivate the awareness and habit of active learning. In addition to improving the quality and efficiency of learning, active learning can also greatly improve the ability to "think and discriminate". The reason is that in the process of active learning, there will be a variety of ways to solve problems. In many cases, there is no single "standard answer". ", requires "thinking and discernment"; and even if there is a "standard answer", it needs to be obtained through the process of "thinking and discernment". More importantly, through active learning, it can improve the openness of thinking and independent thinking ability, and dare to question and challenge.

 

  In addition to the role of "proposition education", learning programming also has advantages that other forms of education are difficult to have: highly creative and highly interesting; you can make full use of fragmented time; the process is more challenging; there is enough depth of learning (because programming target range is very large). Therefore, learning programming can effectively make up for the serious defects of the "one-way indoctrination" of the existing test-oriented education, encourage children to use their imagination, dare to think and question; improve their interest in learning, cultivate the ability of self-learning and active learning; master more effective study method.