Algorithms for kids

I recently gave a talk about algorithms to a 6-th grade class. My slides are below (an English version and a Hebrew version).

What I believe worked very well was going through the execution of the algorithms step-by-step and having the kids take turns at saying in advance, before I switch to the next slide, what the changes they are expecting see are – where the instruction pointer arrow will move, what variables will change their values and what new output will be emitted.

English version

Hebrew version

About learning

I have spent my childhood and adolescence implicitly believing in ideas about learning that in later life I have come to disbelieve. It appears to me that those ideas are quite common in our society, including among schoolchildren. These false ideas cause significant harm to many of those who believe in them and, being widespread, to society. I therefore think it is important to disabuse students, and particularly children, of these ideas.

The false ideas about learning maintain their hold in the mind of the public mainly because they are rarely examined. One of the false ideas is that the nature of learning is self-evident and needs no examination. This, of course, makes those ideas self-reinforcing.

This essay is a brief description of those erroneous ideas about learning and of an alternative view – in my opinion, the correct view. To make things concrete, I start by listing a set of practical implications of the rejection of the false notions and adoption of the alternative view. These are things that can and should be done by the various people involved in education – students, teachers, and managers of education systems.