<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 12/17/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">kirby urner</b> <<a href="mailto:kirby.urner@gmail.com">kirby.urner@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
These "Prosperos Books" (some from O'Reilly?), could be used in a
community college setting, sometimes in testing situations i.e. under
controlled conditions that measure student performance in some
pre-agreed-upon way.</blockquote><div><br>
For example, under the heading of "useless Python" we have:<br>
<br>
>>> N=100<br>
>>> sum([i+j for i,j in zip(range(1,N+1), range(N,0,-1))])/2<br>
5050<br>
<br>
OK, lots of fun syntax, but deployed in a surreal fashion i.e. no one would want to really write a function that way right?<br>
<br>
Surreal is a key word here. I think we've learned from the Head
First experiments, among others, that humans crave bandwidth. One
reason kids tune out, get bored, and therefore perform poorly, appear
stupid, fall behind, is they're busy day dreaming. Anything to
compensate for the tedium of low bandwidth classroom pedagogy.
There's a reason we call it "pedantic" (the pace of foot soldiers --
trudge trudge trudge).<br>
<br>
What I'd like to provide is high bandwidth, over-the-wire learning
experiences, preferably on big plasma, with sensurround sound, that
fully leverage our capacity for imagination. Purists will whine
about all the "irrelevant noise" stuffed into our pipelines, but
perhaps they're just not attuned to all the cultural allusions, sidebar
tributes, cameo appearances.<br>
<br>
Like, the above Python fragment ain't so useless in a dynamic worksheet
context, wherein we have an embedded movie re-enactment of Baby Gauss,
chewing on 1+2+3... 100 i.e. the 100th triangular number, and deriving
101 + 101 + ... 101 (100 times), with thought balloons showing "as if"
he were thinking in Python (two ranges, one reversed, zipped to pairs,
then pairwise, then globally summed -- then divide by two to elimate
the doubling).<br>
<br>
And for the Nth triangular number:<br>
<br>
>>> def tri(n):<br>
return sum([i+j for i,j in zip(range(1,n+1), range(n,0,-1))])/2<br>
<br>
>>> tri(9000)<br>
40504500<br>
<br>
Which is of course completely ridiculous as we've already shown we don't need the memory-intensive range bit:<br>
<br>
>>> (9001*9000)//2<br>
40504500<br>
<br>
>>> def tri(n): return n*(n+1)//2<br>
<br>
</div></div>Triangular number: the number of one-on-one
handshakes or dialogs betwixt N participants, this time using N(N-1)//2
i.e. every "me" (N of us) times "everyone who ain't me" (N-1 others)
divided by 2 (because one handshake works both ways as a
greeting). Dynamic workbook: phones ringing, fragments of
dialog.<br>
<br>
Consecutive triangles pile as tetrahedra, leading to more animations
and more fill-in-the-blanks (using tri, already defined, define the
Python function tetra). <br>
<br>
You could have real human teachers, even in real time, doing some of
the teleprompting. A dynamic book doesn't presuppose everything's
canned. There's room for dynamism even of a noncomputable sort,
given the human element.<br>
<br>
I think that early Python Love Story out of Yorktown HS is
prototypical: real human actors engaged in role playing,
interspliced with dryer fare.<br>
<br>
With millions of kids growing up on Hogwarts etc., the demand for
something a bit more engaging than Everyday Math ("Jimmy buys six eggs
at .39 apiece, if he breaks two coming home..."). We're doing our
kids a disservice if we plan around these dry-as-bones text books as
our only mode of delivery. <br>
<br>
I'm not against text books per se. I *am* against text books as the only option.<br>
<br>
I think the publishers with compassion will pioneer the newer
options. From what I've learned at OSCONs, we have every reason
to expect more from XUL etc.<br>
<br>
There's this instinct to force junior to buckle down and learn hard
stuff the hard way, i.e. it can't be serious if it's not dry-as-bones,
anything glitzy is pandering/spoiling. I question that instinct,
distrust it. It smacks too much of "we never had that much fun as
kids, why should you?"<br>
<br>
We're not just teaching "mathematics" or "Python" or "programming" in a
narrow sense. We're showing off what multimedia might do for us,
encouraging students to emulate and then improve upon the workbooks
themselves. We're teaching art, not just science, and maybe
in that order for a welcome change.<br>
<br>
Kirby<br>
<br>