LiveCode Forums.

Probably . . .
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But here I am in my villa in the Rhodopes, away from all my jazzy computers, making do with
a 32-bit Mac Intel iMac running MacOS 10.6.8 running LiveCode 8.1.10 . . . not half as bad as it seems!
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Anyway . . . to cut a short story long . . . some silly prawns (read "naive 10-11 year olds I teach")
made some fairly off-colour remarks about not being able to produce a 2D map-based game
with LiveCode without a game engine (which is, of course, a load of cack) . . .

Controlling a deep-seated urge to smash their teacher at the Maths school in the "mush"
(he teaches these kids C++ and Visual BASIC and says that Linux and Macintosh are
"also rans" compared with Windows), I told them I'd produce a proof-of-concept this
weekend (and a very dirty weekend it has been, too: mainly because
Karen Armstrong's "A History of God" is far, far more interesting than moving
silly icons round a screen).

Each silly icons contains this script:
and the script of the backGroundImage is this:
Rocket science it ain't: but it is a good 15 minutes work.

And the button "reset" goes like this:

Currently stealing Warcraft sprites:

https://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_co ... warcraft2/

Ahaha. Well these are really baby stuff

ardyy77 wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:07 pm

Ahaha. Well these are really baby stuff

And your point is?

While this may, indeed, be "baby stuff", LiveCode should wake up
and realise that all around the world children both in classrooms and
at home both want to and are required to program "baby stuff" and
are doing so using other methods than LiveCode because LiveCode
is not doing anything whatsoever to promote its use to do "baby stuff"
and help those "babies" get up off the floor of babyhood and into
the swing of full-blown computer programming.

Doing baby stuff with nonsense such as the block-programming toys
does those babies no favours at all.

My silly parents thought they could help me learn to swim by giving me flippers.
So, I learnt to swim with flippers.

Took the flippers off and I sank like a stone.

So a year of "swimming" lessons with flippers basically constituted:

wasted money

wasted time

wasted effort

and a traumatised wee boy who was fixated on flippers.
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richmond62 wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:57 am

While this may, indeed, be "baby stuff", LiveCode should wake up
and realise that all around the worl children both in classrooms and
at home both want to and are required to program "baby stuff" and
are doing so using other methods than LiveCode because LiveCode
is not doing anything whatsoever to promote its use to do "baby stuff"
and help those "babies" get up off the floor of babyhood and into
the swing of full-blown computer programming.
...
...

Richmond62, I agree 100%.

I am a graduated educator and work as a teacher in an elementary school with kids up to the age of 10 or 11 years.
Everyday I am horrified about how little these kids know about how computers work. They have no idea about programming and they don't even come up with the idea of creating little apps by themselves.
The idea of a generation with computer literacy simply by playing with their phones and tablets is a myth. Actually these kids know nothing about computers and programming. They are not even able to work with a simple text or word processor.

I tried several things in the past. Among others the by you mentioned SCRATCH "programming language".
I agree that the kids do not really learn to code this way, but they get at least a faint idea of how a computer "thinks".

I also agree that LC could be a great help with teaching programming and computer science in schools.
Unfortunately LC is - at least here in Germany - hardly known to teachers and I am pretty sure that not a single student of my classes has ever heard about it.

The question is: What can be done to make it better?

I would like to offer my help with this. Since I am not a professional programmer I could help with the educational and pedagogical aspects and in any case with translations into German.

Let me know if I can support such a project in any way.

richmond62 wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:57 am

While this may, indeed, be "baby stuff", LiveCode should wake up
and realise that all around the worl children both in classrooms and
at home both want to and are required to program "baby stuff" and
are doing so using other methods than LiveCode because LiveCode
is not doing anything whatsoever to promote its use to do "baby stuff"
and help those "babies" get up off the floor of babyhood and into
the swing of full-blown computer programming.

Three questions define any business proposal:

- What do you want them to do?
- How much will it cost to do it?
- How much will that make by doing it?

With any request of any business, answer those three questions, where the last answer is compellingly large, and you'll likely see what you're looking for.

- What do you want them to do?
- How much will it cost to do it?
- How much will that make by doing it?

I'd add a question between 1 and 2. Do they want to do it?

jiml wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 12, 2021 2:42 am

- What do you want them to do?
- How much will it cost to do it?
- How much will that make by doing it?

I'd add a question between 1 and 2. Do they want to do it?

I would think that would depend on the answer to #3.

at least here in Germany - hardly known to teachers and I am pretty sure that not a single student of my classes has ever heard about it.

Part of the reason teachers, kids, and parents don't know about LiveCode is that educators who DO know about it
are not telling them.

I agree with Richmond

While this may, indeed, be "baby stuff", LiveCode should wake up and realise that all around the world children both in classrooms and at home both want to and are required to program "baby stuff" and are doing so using other methods than LiveCode

We need more "baby stuff. The way to adoption is to make it look easy for them to get started and provide pathways to do games and apps on their own. Now that kids are home and on their computers so much, we have that chance.
If we look at other languages that came from nowhere to be used in the schools (i.e. Pilot, Logo/turtle graphics, Scratch) they were all easy for a teacher to get started with or for children to pick up on their own. Children and teachers were not intimidated. It looked easy and fun to get started
---
We can not depend on LiveCode because, as FourthWorld said

Three questions define any business proposal:
- What do you want them to do?
- How much will it cost to do it?
- How much will that make by doing it?

It is difficult to make a business case for LiveCode to expend resources and money for the educational market. There are more lucrative markets for them to go after. We can ask them for help but we have to do it ourselves.
-----

I also agree that LC could be a great help with teaching programming and computer science in schools.
Unfortunately LC is - at least here in Germany - hardly known to teachers and I am pretty sure that not a single student of my classes has ever heard about it.

There is the reality that it is very difficult to get LiveCode even considered, much less accepted as a programming language in schools.

- from Administrators, teachers: "We need staff and training." "We do not have the budget" "We need curriculum"
- from Parents: "Who uses it?", "What has been written in it?", "What university uses it?", "What jobs are there using it?"
- from IT staff: "I never heard of it. What has been written in it? Who uses it?, etc."
- from CS teachers: "It is not a mainstream language" and most of them have their own favorite language that they promote and teach with.

On the plus side, there is a void in CS programming langs. We have an opportunity to be the stepping stone between Scratch and Python in the schools (if not replace Scratch or Python entirely)

----

Part of the reason teachers, kids, and parents don't know about LiveCode is that educators who DO know about it
are not telling them

Not true. I think all of us teaching with LiveCode are also evangelists and promote LiveCode at every chance we get.

I am active in many organizations - CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Assoc), ACM, etc and In large Facebook Groups (Computer Science Educators - 2,000 members, AP CS A Teachers - 3,200 members, Computer Science - 33,400 members, CS Education discussion forum - 2,800 members) and I take advantage of every opportunity to talk about LiveCode.

Despite my successes in the classroom - (My LC and AP classes were the most popular classes in the school - I had over 220 students a day and our school became the primary feeder school for CS students at the Univ. of Maryland)
and my students winning awards - (US Congressional App Challenge - 1st/2nd/3rd places for 3 years), hackathons (writing apps in 24 hours), no other schools, teachers or even the school district could be convinced to adopt LiveCode anywhere else. When I retired, the classes died.
----

The question is: What can be done to make it better?

I was successful with it in my school because I made it look easy to make games and apps and was there to show them the way and foster their creativity. What we need to do is make it look easy to get started and look fun to do on our own.

I suggest that:
- we start collecting code samples, projects, ideas, curriculum and building a collection of resources for teachers to use
- we design a simplified starter interface for younger students to use
- we create simplified directions for teachers, parents and/or students
- we create a sampling of easy games/apps for students to write, providing working, starter code. Then have suggestions for making the games better, more fun, etc.

Our goals:
1. Provide more support to entice teachers to teach with LiveCode. Maybe even Lesson plans and some different curriculums
2. Create a "Getting Started" roadmap for Teachers (non-programmers who want to include some programming in their classes)
3. Create a "Getting Started" roadmap for Parents (many of whom are now working from home and somewhat tech savvy)
4. Create a "Getting Started" roadmap for Students (who are bored with Scratch, want to learn programming or create fun games)
5. Create a list of "What you can create with LiveCode" games and apps with directions

Maybe LiveCode could provide us webspace to create and host an "Educational Resources", "Getting Started" or "Fun Programs, Games and Apps Using LiveCode" I would be willing to devote some time to help out.

Anyway, that is my take on LiveCode and what we could do.

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ENTRY (a block coding interface from South Korea) has an interface where, as end-users set up
things with blocks the equivalent (underlying ?) Python code is shown in a window to the right.
This works on the theory that children are able to make the cognitive leap from block coding
to Python.

Personally I find this idea questionable.

As my brief forays into Python gave me a slightly bad taste in my mouth
(probably "traumatised" by adventures with PASCAL 5 in 1985: face facts, Python looks like a PASCAL knock-off)
I wonder how in blazes children of 5,6,7,8,9 are going to manage things.

HOWEVER . . .

I do wonder about some sort of similar interface for LiveCode . . .

For the sake of argument, if we wanted we could "steal" the ENTRY images (all open source) and use
its interface with LiveCode:

https://github.com/entrylabs/entry-offline

We can not depend on LiveCode because

they have indicated by a large patch of silence that they are not interested in this at all.

I have been belting out the "education" and the "grab them while they are young" mantra for years.

But, Hey, I guess:
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richmond62 wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:52 am

they have indicated by a large patch of silence that they are not interested in this at all.

You may not remember when they devoted an entire year to the education market. That was when LC was adopted as the teaching language by all lower level schools in Scotland (in the US we call them "grade schools" or "elementary schools".) They made some inroads in other countries too but that's as far as it went. Most teachers resisted teaching anything other than their own pet language.