[Edu-sig] diSessa's "computational media", and Boxer

[Fred Yankowski]

I recently read diSessa's "Changing Minds" book, based (if I recall
correctly) on a recommendation by someone on this edu-sig list.  The
book is excellent, with an extended argument for the value and
possibility of "computational literacy" and "computational media"
which should interest most edu-sig participants.

diSessa's practical experience comes from using software called
"Boxer" to teach elementary and high school students principles of
math, science, and (secondarily) programming.  The stories of how
students and teachers used Boxer form a convincing demonstration of
the value of the "computational media" approach as well as the design
of Boxer itself.

Boxer is a successor to Logo and is coded internally in Lisp.  It was
originally available only on Lisp workstation machines (I think), but
was later ported to the Macintosh.  Unfortunately, it is not available
on PC/Win32 other than as an unreleased alpha version.

All this has nothing to do with Python, per se, but I have pondered
whether a Python version of Boxer makes sense.  The user interface of
Boxer is at once brilliant, and awkward and unfamiliar.  Boxer
applications are structured as a hierarchy of "boxes" (hence the name)
which are displayed as nested windows on a GUI screen.  Boxer's
command language, which appears as text statements inside boxes, is
based on Logo.  The user navigates around in the tree of boxes,
zooming in and out to change the focus.  Both programming and
operation are done through this same interface, directly editing the
contents of boxes.

I haven't been able to use Boxer much because I only have means to
use the PC version (no Macs around) and the PC version is alpha
quality and has some pretty big problems.  But I am fascinated by the
Boxer model, and I'd like to use it myself and make it available to my
7-year-old son.

So, if there's a point to this message, it's
  1) I recommend diSessa's "Changing Minds" book to this group.

  2) I'm wondering if anyone else here has a similar interest in
     Boxer, and would like to explore the possibility of getting a
     Boxer-like system working on the PC, perhaps using Python as the
     implementation language and a system like VPython for the
     graphical component (which I haven't discussed).

-- 
Fred Yankowski           fred@OntoSys.com      tel: +1.630.879.1312
Principal Consultant     www.OntoSys.com       fax: +1.630.879.1370
OntoSys, Inc             38W242 Deerpath Rd, Batavia, IL 60510, USA