I enjoyed the easy way Foundation linked the concepts of physical objects, numbers and variables using automatic colouring and drag and drop manipulation. Dragging a number on top of a dot and creating a pattern on that many dots, as was shown in one of the videos seems simple but is a really powerful way to give a new learner control over so many ideas of quantity. The story of his grand daughter creating a 3 digit number bigger than 100 (which was the biggest number she could think of) and then being amazed at 545 dots can fill several screens, is learning in one of its most joyful forms.
I think that the visual interface when properly constructed allows the user to shift their cognitive effort from trying to manipulate the concepts within their head to focussing on the easy virtual manipulation of objects, in turn allowing experience of the concept by exploring the rules as you play. This was summed up by one student's reaction of amazement that they had learned math, but that their head did not hurt. I am surprised that Don Watson, in the quote below thought that teaching had been neglected with J. Within the lab section of the environment I see many 'Livetexts' that reveal a teaching tool that is both expository and exploratory. I don't see the language itself abandoning the teaching aspect as much as I see many of the practitioners focussing on facility of the language over developing instruction for others. Perhaps that is a tide that is beginning to turn...slowly. In any case, thank you Chris for providing us with Don's ideas. Very stimulating stuff. Cheers, bob On May 13, 2014, at 6:51 PM, chris burke <[email protected]> wrote: > When he moved on to J, a > powerful nature was his priority and Mathematics teaching was left behind. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
