(Continuation from yesterday)
To nurture a child with a programming skill, not for Japan, but for children themselves, I think that it is a technology of "good job for food".
Anyway, I think that programming does not require special tools (at least PC), and it is an efficient work because of small initial investment.
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I have one proposal.
I am afraid that the framework of "programming education" will be on the same path as CAI at this stage.
So, why do not we focus on "spreadsheet education"?
Spreadsheet is, in short, spreadsheet software such as "Excel".
You can use "Libre Office" in Linux distributions, and "Google spreadsheet" for free.
And, for the first time using a spreadsheet, any child should be surprised.
They can see that numerical values including the process, appears on the display and the values can be graphed in a moment.
And, just by changing the number in the column, the values of all the columns are also going to be changed at once, and the shape of the graph is also going to be moved instantly.
This tool is much more entertaining than the "programming development environment", which pretty characters appears and the child gets tired of in less than three minutes.
Above all, the spreadsheet has the biggest advantage in that "programming is unnecessary".
In any case, it is enough to simply put a calculation formula in the column and repeat copy and paste as necessary.
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Of course, I do not think Excel is sufficient for calculations that I need (for 100 million people or 100 years) however, I think there are no subject that Excel can not handle for everyday calculations,
(Above all, I tried simple logical calculation of global warming with Excel)
Especially, I think that Excel will show its power in fields of mathematics and physics.
The result of differentiation and integration can be tried even with real numbers, and the accuracy of the outgoing solution also changes with one parameter difference, are going to tell children about the risk of calculating by a computer.
(To be continued)