There are some people working on this. The creator of Alice recently talked at my school. Alice is a syntax-free programming language used to tell stories using 3D models. The idea is to teach children computing concepts early, in a fun way, before throwing syntax at them. Right now Alice is used in many CS 1 classes and some high schools, but it could really be taught much earlier if public school bureaucracies weren't so inflexible. A person's first introduction to computing should come well before they enter college.
Alice's creator hopes that it will encourage more women and minorities to enter CS. His thesis is that telling a story is something that is natural and interesting to these groups, moreso than, say, solving the Towers of Hanoi.
Our intro class at UCSD uses Java and the intro professor hates it - being a leading researcher in CS pedagogy. She does do some interesting things with her class though. The earliest programming projects they do are not things like the fibonacci sequence, rather they do cool media projects such as sampling and modifying sounds, using a green screen to put themselves in images, and other fun projects. The students respond enthusiastically when their creativity is allowed to run wild and as a side-bonus, cheating is near-impossible.
The creator of Alice said he was struck one day when interviewing a female who had taken a CS 1 class and she said "Sure, I can figure out how to sort a list of numbers. But why would I ever want to?" CS pedagogy has a long way to evolve, but it is making improvements.
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There are some people working on this. The creator of Alice recently talked at my school. Alice is a syntax-free programming language used to tell stories using 3D models. The idea is to teach children computing concepts early, in a fun way, before throwing syntax at them. Right now Alice is used in many CS 1 classes and some high schools, but it could really be taught much earlier if public school bureaucracies weren't so inflexible. A person's first introduction to computing should come well before they enter college.
Alice's creator hopes that it will encourage more women and minorities to enter CS. His thesis is that telling a story is something that is natural and interesting to these groups, moreso than, say, solving the Towers of Hanoi.
Our intro class at UCSD uses Java and the intro professor hates it - being a leading researcher in CS pedagogy. She does do some interesting things with her class though. The earliest programming projects they do are not things like the fibonacci sequence, rather they do cool media projects such as sampling and modifying sounds, using a green screen to put themselves in images, and other fun projects. The students respond enthusiastically when their creativity is allowed to run wild and as a side-bonus, cheating is near-impossible.
The creator of Alice said he was struck one day when interviewing a female who had taken a CS 1 class and she said "Sure, I can figure out how to sort a list of numbers. But why would I ever want to?" CS pedagogy has a long way to evolve, but it is making improvements.