Well, maybe this is a sign that I read this article too late at night, but I don't know what the hell this article was trying to get at. I was torn between whether it was trying to talk about how to learn about the Internet, information retrieval in general, teaching through experience, or mental models. In fact, I wasn't quite sure what a "mental model" is, as they define it.

One thing that I do agree with is that trying to relate new concepts with concepts that people already are comfortable with is a good idea. CS seems to be taught with lots of analogies, because at some level many concepts in CS are just models (such as class relationships, all of cs51, etc.). However, coming up with an analogy which is widely understood by people and also close enough to correct can be rather difficult.

One example of that problem is that when I took cs15, the analogy was used that a link (a.k.a. pointer, or reference) was akin to a telephone line. There was a fairly large example with telephone lines, and telephone poles, and houses, and phones, and a bunch of stuff. But the example was somewhat confusing, and also the analogy wasn't quite right, since a telephone line is a two-way connection, while a pointer is a one-way message (an important distinction, in my opinion). While for the most part this example is right on, it has problems that can confuse students.

So, whatever the article was trying to get across about strengthening mental models, it kindof escaped me. But I think I may agree with what it's saying, if I just knew what that was. :-)

MY COMMENTS

I just wanted to agree with Jon that the telephone line analogy was really bad. I didn't understand what a link was until after Tetris. Summing up: telephone lines bad.

Snakes were worse. I still don't understand what they were trying to get across... Summing up: apples good, snakes bad.