1980s

This is the fatal page from the 2010 Barbie book I Can Be a Computer Engineer. Barbie goes on to give her sister Skipper’s computer a virus, get some boys to help her fix it, and finally take individual credit for the whole shebang (including the robot puppy game that the boys programmed). At no point does Barbie do any coding at all. You can read the original blog post that brought this controversy to light here.

2434262975_079aec8640 — Oh the Nostalgia! That peach gown was my favorite. http://goo.gl/XBhYad

I never really identified with Barbie. Sure I played with her, but what little girl in the 80’s didn’t? However, I wasn’t blonde or skinny. I didn’t care to drive a pink corvette, wish to own a “dream house”, or marry my very own Ken doll. I didn’t want to be Barbie, and didn’t care what kinds of new careers she was trying out. I mostly liked to dress her up, which might have had a slight impact on my love of costuming and fanciness, but that is the extent of her influence.

She was fun, but never any real impact on my life (or so I like to think…) Continue reading →

I received a comment on one of my posts, suggesting I take a look at Logo.

howardat58 says:

“You should have a look at LOGO, the turtle graphics language. Here is a link to a very good site for this, with interactive action”: http://turtleacademy.com/index.php (Comparing Logo to Ruby, he goes on) “The Logo turtle graphics is more fun, and will develop your understanding very quickly. It will do arithmetic, but its main purpose is to move a “turtle” around the screen, drawing or just moving, by specified amounts. the tutorial stuff is excellent.”

This is why I love crowdsourcing! I never would have thought of Logo, but I remember it! I think I was exposed to it sometime in middle or high school the 90s. I can’t remember too many details, but the memory is enough to give me SOME kind of reference point for this thing called coding.

I took the advice and started playing with this little tutorial, and realized this was perfect because it really taps into interest-based learning for me.

First of all, it’s “vintage”.

Continue reading →

Teacher Learns to Code

Thanks Barbie, for another reason NOT to want to be you!

Logo: Something to Get Excited About!