Woaaaaah. That makes my locker look clean, orderly and professional. That’s just… a mad scientist’s lair.

Love the random things … are the peppers & herb pots your shopping, or do you have exciting lunches at work?
Also, from the first view (lady scientists [i also have them & Olivia’s Invention Workshop on my desk) – do you speak German, or has someone just sent you the mag?

We got a gift basket today from a charity award Eben did some judging for – those were the things I filched from it. I speak a bit of German – my brother lives there, and I can read the magazine, but I’m not very good at talking!

We do also have exciting lunches here: we use a Pi to cook stuff sous vide, we have office butchery deliveries, and a whole cupboard full of ramen…

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” – Albert Einstein

I once worked for a company that set great store in people having a clean desk at the end of the day. My solution was an empty drawer to shove everything on my desk into. Next day, take it all out again. Probably cost the company at least half an hour of my time per day.

At least you have a Mac! :)

I had a head of department who said to a colleague “The state of your desk reflects the state of your mind.”, To which he replied “Then I assume your desk is empty.”

Untidy Desk == Untidy Mind
Is that the physical Desk or the Virtual Desktop.

My physical desktop looks like a landfill site in progress. But touch my icons and folder arrangements and you may die..sloowwly

Pesonally I follow the Empty Glass philosophy..
“OOh look a full glass, {Slurp slurp}, Problem solved”

I’m much the same: my virtual desktop is as clean as a whistle.

The saying goes: “If a cluttered desk means a cluttered mind, what then does an empty desk signify?”
Although… every once in a while it helps to go beyond excavational activities and clear up the mess. Last time I did this, I happened to find several micro USB chargers, loads of breadboard cables, a resistor and a micro SD card with a long forgotten Raspberry Pi project.

Not sure where to start with this TBH, it’s very misinformed. You don’t have to “unlearn anything” and as for “more difficult than just typing” the whole point of Scratch is that it removes syntactical barriers and allows young people to tinker and create and to learn computing *concepts*. It also has a powerful collaborative aspect.

I suggest reading “Scratch: Programming for all” (http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/Scratch-CACM-final.pdf) to start; then glancing at some of Resnick’s other stuff (http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/); then maybe some of the educational research on Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/info/research/).

Thank you Clive for replying even though this discussion on Scratch is off topic. I have read the article “Scratch Programming for All” and would like to point out “Learn to Code Code to Learn” from the same website.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/L2CC2L-handout.pdf

The idea that Scratch allows beginners to be creative sooner is exactly a purported advantage of using the initial teaching alphabet in primary school. However, the ease of learning has to be weighed against the disadvantages of learning something that doesn’t extend to practical use cases. To quote the first article,

“For some Scratchers, especially those who want to pursue a career in programming or computer science, it is important to move on to other languages.”

At the beginning of the microcomputer age many systems booted up with a programming language called Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. BASIC provided an easy way to get started with programming, but was also used by adults to write accounting programs and worse. Since it could satisfy the needs of adults as well as children it is all that many people needed.

These early microcomputers were real computers in exactly the same was the Raspberry Pi is a real computer. To continue quoting from the article,

“But for many other Scratchers, who see programming as a medium for expression, not a path toward a career, Scratch is sufficient for their needs.”

Except for professional artists, most adults wouldn’t consider programming as a medium for expression. Where are the Scratch programs written by adults that do practical things grownups are interested in?

It would appear, and I may be wrong about this, that Scratch can’t even be used for the practical things a child might be interested in such as algorithmically building a maze in Minecraft, controlling a Pi-powered robot or monitoring a weather-vane anemometer. Maybe it would be better to start with Python. It is more likely to be of practical use to both children and adults who are not professional programmers.

“It would appear, and I may be wrong about this, that Scratch can’t even be used for the practical things a child might be interested in such as algorithmically building a maze in Minecraft, controlling a Pi-powered robot or monitoring a weather-vane anemometer.”

It can do the latter two and *much* more, it’s not the toy it might first appear :).

You’re right, this conversation belongs elsewhere (our forums!) but I’ll just say that I’m approaching this as an ICT/computing teacher of 12 years, including several years using Scratch as a teaching and learning tool with thousands of kids (and Python, Java, BASIC etc with hundreds of others). I’m going to take a guess that you are a professional engineer /scientist / academic – who uses computing as an everyday tool – and not a teacher. This is not to denigrate your arguments off-hand but I *know* that if you were a classroom teacher of computing you wouldn’t be saying what you are.

It’s hard to step back as an expert in something and understand that kids don’t have your worldview, dexterity, reasoning skills or experience. This is a good teacher’s super power ;)

You’re right, we’re way OT. Feel free to contact me direct if you want to talk pens without boring everyone else! My writing style suits a stiffer nib, but I do have an old Parker Slimfold with a flexible left-oblique nib (I’m left-handed) which is a delight to use, but it’s too small in my hand for sustained writing so I don’t use it often. My goddaughter is a secondary school deputy head, and I gave her a dozen or so old pens for her students. Apparently they went down well. I hasten to add that none had flexible nibs! We’ve probably bored everyone else enough by now, I feel, so thanks for your replies, and keep the faith!