On 4/16/07, Michael Tobis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: << SNIP >>
> Mostly, I'd like to hear what you think I've left out (or anything > I've gotten wrong). > I think there's plenty that's right in your draft. In addition to Seymour Papert and Alan Kay, Kenneth Iverson is another important figure vis-a-vis CP4E as his thrust, like mine, was to make Math Notation (MN) come alive in an interactive environment (per APL & J in his case, more Pythonic in ours). http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu/~mgr/404/burks/language/apl/camnweb/camn.htm Although Iverson somewhat disavowed Wolfram's status as his protege and/or acolyte (per correspondence I saw on a J list), Mathematica *does* dramatically illustrate the role of computer software in the domain of math learning and modeling today. Python isn't Mathematica, but nor is it a "just a calculator" either. You can use it, in combination with add-ons, to study cellular automata, fractals, plus traditional basic math topics such as polynomials, polyhedra, group theory, trigonomety, matrix algebra etc. etc. Plus OOP gives a way to supply missing concreteness to math objects, without sacrificing their status as abstractions. Once you get passed the considerable barriers to putting Python in front of a student, ready for action, you come up against the question: what is it we're wanting to learn with assistance from our charming snake? Why do we care about turtles, robots and such? What's the bigger picture? The Shuttleworth Foundation (kusasa.org) writes in terms of developing "analytical thinking". Or call it problem solving abilities. And what are the problems? They're very "real world" for one thing, involve energy and opportunity costs (doing more of this means doing less of that). I'll through out "model view controller" (MVC) as still an important design pattern. I think you get into that when you start talking about developing for the web. HTML provides a view. There's often a database in the picture, maybe several. http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/geoquiz.html Rather than repeat myself endlessly, I'll just trail off by saying Python needs a context, doesn't necessarily supply one all on its own. Nor is Sugar (the GUI) nor a laptop computer in and of itself sufficiently "contextual" to guide our choices of emphasis and focus when it comes to curriculum writing for the emerging shared future. The questions go deeper than that e.g. "what is school really *about*?" The positive spin here is this question really is pretty open ended. I'm not trying to close down discussion by leaving it here. However, per my own CP4E curriculum writing it's quite certain that students are learning Python because they're wishing to develop their analytical and problem solving skills around specific content and/or real world challenges. Mathematical techniques and algorithms, pivotal concepts, remain a proper focus for these investigations, always have, always will. And the positive spin here is: lots of backward compatibility with pre-computer texts, even if they're out of print and/or just get shared around in electronic format. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
