Social discussion of CS in K-12

[George Reese <reese AT illinois.edu>]

Friends,

Noted technology skeptic, Larry Cuban has a very compelling piece in his
latest blog post
http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/cursive-writing-and-coding-confli
cts-over-school-goals-part-1/ 

It includes some history of Logo and its challenges. 
Here is a quote to which we should be able to respond.

"Failure of transfer-of-learning and school after school changing Logo to
meets its institutional imperatives led to the demise of Logo in public
schools.

I believe that those current advocates for teaching children to code have
ignored this history, the power of schools as institutions to adopt and
transform innovations and, most important, the limits of
transfer-of-learning."

For sure we have NOT ignored this history. The EtoysIllinois group has been
reading it for some time, and we've been challenged by the issues. But we
are we doing enough to articulate what is different in our efforts? 

I would like to craft a blog post that responds to Cuban. I hope you'll help
me with it.

George

George Reese
Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education (MSTE)
505 East Green St. 
Suite 102
Champaign, IL 61820
217-333-6604