
Creativity is a great motivator - motine
http://tomrothe.de/posts/sketchbook.html
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unabst
Creativity but also productivity. The problem with a lot of school work is
that it produces nothing. Class notes, homework assignments, and marked exams
all are trash because no one wants to look at those things again and the
content has no unique value. But building things and pouring our hearts into
things and having a vision for something we could possibly create... these are
the activities that we really need to be practicing, and that have value in
the real world. It's not surprising they're also highly motivating as well.
Most of the work I kept from my school years is from art class.

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MIKarlsen
That's too rational. You need to have all the notes and stuff as well. You
need to learn and expand your knowledge before you can go into practicing
something. Even though I agree that I'll never look at my old university-notes
again, they did serve a very real and important purpose in the proces towards
teaching me how to build something. Reflecting upon what you're going to
build, holding meetings and taking notes are important processes in mastering
something. Even though it might seem a bit dull or not worthwhile compared to
building stuff.

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raihansaputra
I agree with you. But I think what needs to be emphasised is that the teaching
should be geared towards creating something throughout the semester or at the
end of semester, instead of just culminating in an exam that in the end that
nobody wants to see. I know some subjects still needs the exam approach, but
it would be nice if more classes are designed in a way to build something.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
Great article. You really are a great teacher - not content just to teach
facts and techniques - but wanting your students to really develop a passion
for programming.

I liked the example where you said the student painted pixel by pixel. If it
was a forced assignment it would have been intellectual torture, but because
it was something the student came up with as an outlet to their creativity,
something tedious became enjoyable.

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motine
thank you very much!

For me also, the moment when I saw my student creating something so cool was
breathtaking. It also proves so many of my fellow colleagues wrong, who keep
going on that today's students don't have the motivation as they used to in
the past.

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khedoros
Some of my earliest motivation to learn programming was to build games. That
proved too challenging to learn very quickly, but I had great fun drawing
things on the screen and making the PC speaker play music (simulating
polyphonic sound by switching between notes very quickly).

Seeing the results pop up on the screen was certainly a highly-motivating
factor (and satisfaction with text results from algorithms came later ;-) )

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brudgers
Repository: [https://github.com/motine/sta](https://github.com/motine/sta)

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macco
Reminds me of how to design programms second edition and their world programms

Working with shapes to learn programming makes a lot of sense to me.

