Enter D'Apps I'm using this site to gain competence with technologies that I intend to utilize in the classroom. My college is doing a pretty good job teaching traditional methods, however, I only have one instructional media class and I believe that 21st century students should learn with 21st century technology. When I begin my teaching career, I want to integrate technology starting on the first day, and the only way I'll be able to do that is to start practicing now. I'll use blogs in the classroom for communicating with parents and daily roving reporting by students. Students will also have the option to write on their own blog. Over the next couple of years I'll model how I'll use use blogging in the classroom on this site. Please check out my other sites concerning Handhelds and Podcasting.


Saturday, June 17, 2006

 

Well.....There's This Program....

For the past few days I've been playing around with freeware called SMALLBASIC. It allows the user to fiddle around with old BASIC code and run it directly on the handheld. Since I've never coded anything before all of it was new to me, but I managed to come up with a program that quizzes on basic math facts. While that type of program certainly isn't needed it was really quite a fun exercise to figure out. The addition and multiplication were fairly straight forward while the division and subtraction presented some issues. I had a little help from a 1982 BASIC book that I checked out from the library, but for the most part I came up with everything myself. The result was something that, while not pretty, worked.

Here are a few screen shots.



The code is certainly old, but are the concepts that it employs outdated? Could 5th graders use this and would they want to? Would it be valuable? I find the ability to have instant access to an environment that allows you to employ these type of logical skills intriguing.

Comments:
I think that there is a place for using these "old" codes in the classroom...Another oldie is Logo (the one with the turtle) that I believe is great for developing logical thinking.
 
Here's the website for Tinylogo which is freeware that runs on PalmOS.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~lipetz/TinyLogo/TinyLogo.htm

I knew I should have picked up the old Logo book sitting next to the BASIC book at the library.

Thanks for stopping by, Ian. I enjoy reading what your doing in Australia.
 
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