Teaching Tech Together
teachtogether.tech
teachtogether.tech
> Never hesitate to sacrifice truth for clarity.
My initial thought is that it is saying that it is OK to omit some details if they would only serve to confuse learners based on what they currently know?
for example - I volunteer with CodeNation teaching HTML/CSS/JS to high school students and we don't explain that `$` is an alias for the `jQuery` object, or any other details about it - because they don't need to fully understand that to start working with it.
Their mental models aren't sufficiently complex enough to truly understand the truth, so don't bother peeling away the layers of abstraction, just teach them what they need to know to be successful. Eventually, as they advance, they'll gain a more complex understanding, and get closer to the truth.
When teaching physical computing I use a python library called gpiozero (https://gpiozero.readthedocs.io/en/stable/). This lets kids write code such as:
from gpiozero import LED
red = LED(17)
red.on()
When/if they go on to learn more, the layers of abstraction can be removed and they can learn more about what is going on under the hood.
My experience volunteering in an AP CS class makes me wonder if something similar is happening in K12 CS at the moment. The students knew by heart the JavaDoc for String.format but struggled with loops. The teacher also struggled with simple nested for loops. Kind of made me want to throw away the damn laptops and just spend some time solving problems on pencil and paper...
Apply the lessons in the book anytime you need to teach people then you'll realize how much time you wasted before. Many of the lessons are not limited to technical subjects either.
Building a concept map, for example, forces you to distill what you're trying to teach instead of trying to cram as much knowledge as you can into a lesson.