On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 4:30 AM, Maria Droujkova <droujk...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I am new to this list. I am working on an algebra course where teens will > create their own learning materials and share them as open educational > resources (OERs).
Welcome. I am working on a project to create free and freely licensed learning materials on every subject, with appropriate software integrated everywhere. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Creating_textbooks We would invite you to join in. > I'd like to organize the course around a computer > environment. I have three candidates for it so far: Scratch, Geogebra and > Python. I like these three because they all have robust communities of > people sharing open source code. Indeed. I'm focusing my own efforts on Turtle Art for elementary school math and Computer Science. We have several implementations, and I am working on extending them to cover more topics, as is Walter Bender of Sugar Labs. o Turtle Art in Sugar on the OLPC XO, written in Python, able to output Logo. o Kturtle o UCBLogo, written in C > Scratch has the immediate multimedia appeal, is equally loved by boys and > girls, and is very easy to get into. Minus: it's rather limited when it > comes to a bit more advanced math. We tried to create fractals on it this > Spring in a homeschool coop, and it was cumbersome. How so? Turtle Art now comes with some fractal examples, so I don't think it should really be that hard in Scratch. > Geogebra was created specifically for the type of projects I want to run. It > is easy enough to start, for kids. I find its specialization to be a > limiting factor, though - it would be nice if kids saw the environment's > potential beyond math. > > With Python, I have more questions than answers, because I am just starting > to learn it. Do you think it will work for my purpose? Do I need to get a > real programmer involved, or can I learn enough Python in a few months to > help kids well enough, without being a specialist? What questions do I not > know to ask? You can do as much math in NumPy and SciPy as you know. You may need some help from Pythonistas from time to time, but the whole idea is to let people program what they know without having to make the investment of time that C++ and other "professional" languages require. > I would appreciate any pointers. > > > > -- > Cheers, > MariaD > > Make math your own, to make your own math. > > http://www.naturalmath.com social math site > http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
