The Prime is just an Expensive Toy

[Claudio L.]

(12-16-2019 07:34 AM)parisse Wrote:  Python programming is replacing algorithmic in examinations. I believe that this move was really a bad idea. I hope things will change in the future.

I agree, in my opinion it's better to be "language agnostic" than being tied to a specific language (which will evolve or be replaced eventually). Algorithms and logic should be taught in pure form, I think for example a graphical block representation would work so much better for both educators and students.
There's plenty of "coding" apps (more like games) for kids on the Android market that are like that: graphical representation of an algorithm using blocks, so the kid focuses on the algorithm and not on any particular syntax (it's like the old LOGO tortoise, except the code is not text, but blocks). Those apps worked great on my kid, the interest in coding was almost instantly awaken, and in only a few hours had already progressed to learning loops to do repetitive tasks (not that my kids would have any genetic predisposition to code, of course... but I think it works really well). For educators it would be a lot simpler to learn AND teach too.