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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/7/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">David Reed</b> <<a href="mailto:dreed@capital.edu">dreed@capital.edu</a>> wrote:</span>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">All a number of us are saying is that one size does not fit all. I<br>suspect what you do works well for the students you teach, but it may
<br>not work well for other groups of students. That's what keeps<br>teaching fresh for me - I adjust what I'm doing until I see that the<br>students are getting it. That's why I like teaching at a small school
<br>with relatively small classes (20-30 students typically). I can get<br>immediate feedback from a good percentage of the students and<br>determine if I need to try a different technique for explaining the<br>topic. That's next to impossible if you have a classroom of more than
<br>50 students.<br><br>Dave</blockquote>
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<div>My 8th grade PPS class @ Winterhaven involved no pre-screening as</div>
<div>to math skills, but neither was it as math-intensive as my Saturday </div>
<div>Academy classes, which require no pre-reqs other than algebra, but </div>
<div>*do* assume motivated students willing to give up Saturdays to do </div>
<div>something geeky. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>In both groups, some are precocious, others more average in terms </div>
<div>of skill. My goal as a teacher is to impart enough skills to make some</div>
<div>kind of self steering investigation possible, i.e. they get lectures, but</div>
<div>also a lot of "try stuff" time, with me walking around and helping. We </div>
<div>use such as stickworks.py, and/or the native VPython API, in addition</div>
<div>to core Python.</div>
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<div>As many have noted here, students love graphics, and when it </div>
<div>comes to bang for the buck, I find VPython vastly more motivational</div>
<div>than a Tk canvas. I agree with the late Arthur Siegel that VPython </div>
<div>is critical to Python's competitive advantage. Ruby is very </div>
<div>OpenGL aware, right out the box, and will likely supersede Python</div>
<div>in many educational arenas if VPython, or packages of similar </div>
<div>capability, are allowed to lie fallow. I understand why he wanted </div>
<div>VPython added to the Standard Library. On the other hand, the</div>
<div>Standard Library is something of a graveyard/junkyward as well.</div>
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<div>Anyway, the feedback I'm getting is that the pipeline whereby new </div>
<div>geeks get born and nurtured through to a professional real world </div>
<div>career (doesn't mean in computer science necessarily) is severely </div>
<div>broken right now except in a few relatively utopian settings. </div>
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<div>The CS faculties tend to blame HS experience, as so many students</div>
<div>are already turned off and/or ready only for remedial numeracy courses</div>
<div>by the time they enter college. CS0 courses, rather than serving an</div>
<div>exciting recruiting function, may serve to further dull the material, </div>
<div>turning off even more students (especially the most curious).</div>
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<div>One prof at a recent Willamette U. panel on this: "whatever you're </div>
<div>doing in high school, please stop it" (except he didn't say please).</div>
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<div>What I call (he's too modest to call it that) "the Mark Shuttleworth </div>
<div>Pipeline" (which you've been reading about over the last year, if you've </div>
<div>been reading my posts) assumes only a normal average healthy </div>
<div>curiosity, not any kind of special genius.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>A lot of students in South Africa are in open revolt against a </div>
<div>"business as usual" education, when it comes to developing their </div>
<div>analytical (problem solving) skills. They know, from being close to</div>
<div>the bottom of TIMMS, that their only hope of participating as equals </div>
<div>in the emerging global high tech economy is in "leap frogging,"</div>
<div>more than simply imitating. A lot of other countries feel the same </div>
<div>way.</div>
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<div>My investments in screencasting and mathcasting companies </div>
<div>(including my own 4D Studios) are in alignment with the peer teaching</div>
<div>and home teaching models. CS0 *could* be a helpful puzzle piece,</div>
<div>but in many cases it's merely a backwater, something to bypass</div>
<div>because too dumbed down, just like the USA's K-12 more generally.</div>
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<div>I probably sound like a militant compared to most college professors,</div>
<div>but I assure you many of my private sector collegues are far more </div>
<div>polemical than I, when it comes to pointing out shortcomings in the </div>
<div>current curriculum.</div>
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<div>Kirby</div>
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