Last week, 30 Second Rule was asked to speak at a conference of Arizona educators. I. along with Aaron Post and Dan Ritz, spoke on current Web development trends to an audience of about 35 High School teachers who are trying to teach their students Web design and development.
I consider myself fortunate the get the ear of such influential people. Long story short, I talked about (among other things) Ruby and agile development, and had a chance to explain their benefits.
Ruby wasn’t the only language I suggested students use; I was more interested in making an important general point than dogmatically pushing a particular preference.
But I do think there is a reasonable chance that Ruby could find its way into High School curricula (even if informally), along with agile techniques in general and an appreciation of open, rapid, lightweight tools.
It can’t happen too soon; one teacher told me he’s using Visual Basic.
And here I thought there were laws about contributing to the delinquency of minors.
Ha! That sounds so similar to the class I took in high school several years ago.
My teacher said FrontPage was the gold standard of web design. (grin)
"My teacher said FrontPage was the gold standard of web design. (grin)"
The audience was eager and interested, and well aware of many of the problems with the current tools and resoruces. Of course, there may have been a self-selection process here; teachers who simply don't give a crp are unlikely to attend such conferences. But I'm optimistic.
I am glad they picked you to do that presentation.
Also, I'm glad schools do not go for some "school" programming language, nor "never-get-your-hands-actually-dirty" ones. Wait a minute: they do. This session talk of yours was timely and necessary.
Onwards - showing students that polyglot programmers have more fun. (To ponder: How is programming "polyglossia" related to academic and democratic freedom?)