{"id":7252,"date":"2020-01-07T20:49:48","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T20:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7252"},"modified":"2020-01-07T20:49:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T20:49:48","slug":"codecademy-vs-the-bbc-micro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7252","title":{"rendered":"Codecademy vs. The BBC Micro"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The <em>Computer Literacy Project<\/em>, on the other hand, is what a bunch of producers and civil servants at the BBC thought would be the best way to educate the nation about computing. I admit that it is a bit elitist to suggest we should laud this group of people for teaching the masses what they were incapable of seeking out on their own. But I can\u2019t help but think they got it right. Lots of people first learned about computing using a BBC Micro, and many of these people went on to become successful software developers or game designers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve just discovered <a href=\"https:\/\/twobithistory.org\/\">Two-Bit History (0b10)<\/a>, a series of long and thorough blog essays on the history of computing by Sinclair Target. One essay is on <a href=\"https:\/\/twobithistory.org\/2019\/03\/31\/bbc-micro.html\">Codecademy vs. The BBC Micro<\/a>. The essay gives the background of the <a href=\"https:\/\/computer-literacy-project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk\/\">BBC Computer Literacy Project<\/a> that led the BBC to commission as suitable microcomputer, the BBC <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/BBC_Micro\">Micro<\/a>. He uses this history to then compare the way the BBC literacy project taught a nation (the UK) computing to the way the Codeacademy does now. The BBC project comes out better as it doesn&#8217;t drop immediately into drop into programming without explaining, something the Codecademy does.<\/p>\n<p>I should add that the early 1980s was a period when many constituencies developed their own computer systems, not just the BBC. In Ontario the Ministry of Education launched a process that led to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ICON_(microcomputer)\">ICON<\/a> which was used in Ontario schools in the mid to late 1980s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Computer Literacy Project, on the other hand, is what a bunch of producers and civil servants at the BBC thought would be the best way to educate the nation about computing. I admit that it is a bit elitist to suggest we should laud this group of people for teaching the masses what they &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7252\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Codecademy vs. The BBC Micro<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,10,71,26,80,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","category-computers-and-education","category-digital-archives","category-education-and-administration","category-history","category-history-of-computing-and-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7253,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7252\/revisions\/7253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}