Mailman 3 April 2000 - Edu-sig

CP4E : some fragment of thoughts
by Sin Hang Kin April 7, 2000

April 7, 2000

To Guido and all: The reading of the "Computer Programminf for Everybody" is a exciting experience. During the process, I have the following fragments of thoughts : Education: 1. CP4E will benefit more than programming skills : Like arithmetics, (OO) programming will give the brain the training for think and thought. The student will be exposed to problem (understanding, description, representation, analysis, solving, evaluation and validation). 2. Paradigm is (important | danger). This will create mind setting of student. (improve | limit) their problem solving ability. 3. Cultural independancy should be respected. The promotion of a good education would always bordand the gap between the wealth and the poor. When python is bound to a english like syntax, it will enlarge the gap. It would benefit if different language versions of python can be developed to allow localized wording in teaching. Computing: 4. Python can be benefit from acquisition (Zope like oo storage) and visualize presentation (WEB? 3D?), by which visualize benefit the understanding / improving thinking Central / emit (the brain ; tree) like (non-linear) organization of code Aspect oriented programming can be archived through acquisition Index / xref of code help reading understanding compile upon input versioning upon input help trace the through which can benefit the research and teaching Turning the buttom - top programming reading into leaf / root reading I may need to explain no. 4 more in details. It just a feeling now that organizing the code in a zope like structure with acquisition. The interface would compile the code on the fly, create variables and assign the initial values. Versioning can benefit the teacher and student to review the process instead of just read the resulting code. A greate project, I especially like the 3D environment. However, in education cognitive is more important than computing. Rgs, Kent Sin

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Kids and Computers
by Stephen R. Figgins April 6, 2000

April 6, 2000

http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/special/score/score2200-2000mar30.htm This is a quick little article on how computer savvy kids in the valley are becoming. Looks like getting computers early is helpful as are involved and savvy parents. Stephen R. Figgins fig(a)oreilly.com

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Re: [Edu-sig] Beyond 3D
by Dirk Heise April 6, 2000

April 6, 2000

> Von: John A. Miller <jmillr(a)umich.edu> > An: edu-sig(a)python.org > Betreff: Re: [Edu-sig] Beyond 3D > Datum: Dienstag, 4. April 2000 19:45 ... > * simulations > > by which I mean the gestalt implied by complex adaptive systems, agents, > neural networks, genetic algorithms, cellular automata, and embodied by > such diverse programs as StarLogo, Swarm, AgentSheets, and others. There > are a number of elementary scenarios that could be used to introduce the > concepts, such as Conway's Game of Life, Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, > Foxes and Hares, El Farol Bar Problem (and the related Minority Game), > Sugarscape, and many others. These make for wonderful programming > exercises, besides being fun to explore. > > One big question in my mind is how necessary it might be for specialized > libraries for facilitating these explorations. In other words, Swarm, > StarLogo and AgentSheets are especially adapted for creating these kinds > of simulations, and remove much of the 'bookkeeping drudgery' involved > with managing lists of agents and their interactions and their display and > their behaviors and the world in which they exist and ... I don't know of > any similar libraries for Python (but I haven't looked either :^) I guess > 'reinventing the (simulation) wheels' makes good pedagogic sense if your > primary aim is teaching programming, but using tried and true simulation > libraries makes more sense if your primary aim is to teach simulation > skills. Maybe we could have two groups of students with one group > providing such simulation libraries, and another group using them? Programming something like a cellular automaton is real fun. Learning to use a specialized library for the problems you mention is an absolute turn-off. (Steep learning curve, and you're learning a much too specialized thing. You can't even reuse it for a job (Ok, not much of a surprise for students)! When you program a thing like that yourself, you're the creator; when you learn how to push the controls of a specialized lib, you're feeling much more like a (Loo)user. That's okay for an expert, he has the experience and attitude to go through that, but i think it's demotivating for a beginner. Re-inventing wheels is not a bad thing in education, i think, and when the new wheel has less vertices than the old one, it's even a good thing in real life.) When we're talking about kids here, i can tell you what will happen: - They'll crank out their cellular automaton in Python - They'll see that it's too slow. - They'll extend their Python interpreter with a C module to do the things that need speed. - Eventually they'll quit Python and only use C++. I think before they drop into step 4, somebody should tell them that it's a fine thing to have the speedy things in C or C++ and keep the control logic in Python. (But one could also argue: when they leave Python to pick up a nifty C++ compiler & IDE, like the Borland Builder, CP4E has reached it's goal anyway.) Same thing happened before, somewhere around '82, when we got some CBM 4040s in school, learning BASIC, and quickly optimized our games using pieces of machine code. It was great fun, BTW. And the delegation of tasks between the two languages was absolutely the same like between C and Python, we're just 2 paradigms ahead. (Ok, 20 years makes two paradigms. One decade, one paradigm.) (We're re-inventing a wheel, it seems - though, in 1982, it wasn't really invented, it just happened) Dirk

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Walky-talky help
by Arthur Siegel April 5, 2000

April 5, 2000

My idea for 'building a radio' has evolved into one for doing a walky-talky - the simplest possible skeleton of a chat function implemented in Python. I do not see this as an alternative to some of the other good ideas put forth - games, simulations, etc. , but as a step toward playing with a possible implementation of these kinds of ideas - just adding a multi-user dimension. My problems are: I have more projects started than I can finish. I don't know whether this is a little thing or a big thing I don't know where to start. The good part: I'll learn some fundamentals by giving it a shot. Any clues to get me started are appreciated. ART

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From Turing machines to programming languages
by Gordon Worley April 4, 2000

April 4, 2000

This weekend I read Neal Stephenson's /The Diamond Age/ (a good book if one hasn't read it). In one chapter on pages 385 to 391 in my niffty Bantam paperback edition (sorry, chapters are unnumbered). In it, the story is detailed how Nell goes from learning to program simple Turning machines (described in an earlier chapter) to complex turing machines to using programming languages to control Turing machines. The point of describing this is to point out, what I believe to be, an excellent method of teaching programming. Obviously, the average person does not have the patience to learn how to program a Turing machine (especially since it will just return numbers), but the method of teaching is sound. Rather than teaching Python outright, why not start by using a game like system where beginning programmers learn how by changing the flow of events with commands can affect desired results. For example, a puzzle game where a pipeworks is broken and must be fixed could begin the process of learning how to find bugs and fix them. With some time, the programmers will learn the games system and be ready for something more complex. The next step would be to create a game involving more math and more abstract, distant controlling of events. I'll leave the number of steps and their implimentation as an exercise for the reader. :-) Anyway, eventually the programmers will be controling events in systems remotely enough that they will already understand the concepts necessary in learning to program, so all that will be left is to teach them Python. A rather grand scheme, I admit, but I think it is doable. Also, in the book Nell's only resources are sample code she looks at and huge manuals. While most learners don't have the level of commitment to learn to program by such a method, anyone who has learned by it can atest to the fact that it produces quite good programmers. Well, I guess that's it for now. I've unleashed these ideas, so let's see what is done with them (hopefully something good). -- - Gordon Worley http://www.rbisland.cx/ mailto:redbird@rbisland.cx

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Re: [Edu-sig] Beyond 3D
by Kirby Urner April 4, 2000

April 4, 2000

>Anyway, I just wanted to add these broad topics to the mix. > >John Miller I think these are all good ideas, and if the Python libraries don't exist yet, they probably will, given the number of people gravitating to Python. >From a pedagogical point of view, I like to take the "Python as working pseudocode" idea and just do sketchy stuff in code that gives the _idea_ of how simulations work (for example). Code up some objects and have them talk to each other, making them species plus environments with various parameters. Maybe subclass a few species (because they all eat, replicate, die), tie them together with a bunch of rules (Conway's Life give the idea as an abstraction -- cellular automata and all that). All this could be done rather simply and transparently -- not a lot of fancy graphics or time squandered on doing a cool GUI (which isn't to say cool GUIs are a waste, just that we're not assuming these students are trying to learn all these skills -- simulations are the topic here). Give students a sense of the territory. Then migrate to some more sophisticated simulation that's already been implemented (SimCity even -- lots of students will come in already having experience with that one). So for the thrill of using a simulation, they get a professional package done by career programmers -- lots of bells and whistles. But for insights into what makes simulations tick, they get simple Python "cave paintings" which impart core concepts in an accessible manner. Kirby

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Re: [Edu-sig] Beyond 3D
by John A. Miller April 4, 2000

April 4, 2000

> From: "Arthur Siegel" <siegel(a)eico.com> > > There seems to be general agreement that the use of simple, dissectable 3D > Python stuff could make an appropriate and potentially interesting and > exciting > context in which to introduce younger folk to programming. I and many others > have espoused that basic position here, with disagreement (sometimes > vehement) over only > the details. > > There has been less discussion (there may have been some early on that I > could have missed) about > doing simple communications stuff. The circa 2000 equivalent of building > your first radio by wrapping > wire around a coil, etc, and hearing some faint music through an earphone - > which I and probably others > remember fondly (and which kids are still doing today). > > Pinging a remote url, and retrieving something etc. Sending and picking up > E-Mail,etc > > I know as a young programmer (in a not so young body), getting access to > this kind of thing can generate a lot > of interest, immediate gratification and sense of being introduced to the > mysteries behind the scenes. > > Beyond presenting the concept, I am totally unqualified to speak on it, as > it is an area about > which I know little to nothing. But does anybody have any ideas along these > lines? > Well, yes... I've been following this list with some interest since the beginning, and this is a useful growth point. I'd like to help identify more of these broad, general areas. So far we have: * 3D representations and visualizations (static and dynamic) * communications, in all its myriad computerized manifestations to which I'd like to add: * simulations by which I mean the gestalt implied by complex adaptive systems, agents, neural networks, genetic algorithms, cellular automata, and embodied by such diverse programs as StarLogo, Swarm, AgentSheets, and others. There are a number of elementary scenarios that could be used to introduce the concepts, such as Conway's Game of Life, Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Foxes and Hares, El Farol Bar Problem (and the related Minority Game), Sugarscape, and many others. These make for wonderful programming exercises, besides being fun to explore. One big question in my mind is how necessary it might be for specialized libraries for facilitating these explorations. In other words, Swarm, StarLogo and AgentSheets are especially adapted for creating these kinds of simulations, and remove much of the 'bookkeeping drudgery' involved with managing lists of agents and their interactions and their display and their behaviors and the world in which they exist and ... I don't know of any similar libraries for Python (but I haven't looked either :^) I guess 'reinventing the (simulation) wheels' makes good pedagogic sense if your primary aim is teaching programming, but using tried and true simulation libraries makes more sense if your primary aim is to teach simulation skills. Maybe we could have two groups of students with one group providing such simulation libraries, and another group using them? A fourth broad area might be defined as: * web-based database programming where students learn to store and retrieve information from mysql or gadfly (perhaps using zope) or maybe lore <http://www-db.stanford.edu/lore/> if we want to focus on oodbm systems. Finally, a fifth broad area might be: * games which probably incorporate skills from all or most of the areas above. These could be standalone or network based, (did someone mention an online version of Pokemon? I think that was the zope-edu list...) and perhaps could be educational in nature, but certainly any game would stretch students' programming skills, just as game design stretches their imagination. Anyway, I just wanted to add these broad topics to the mix. John Miller

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Re: [Edu-sig] Update: Python & the "Math Wars"
by Arthur Siegel April 4, 2000

April 4, 2000

Kirby - Welcome back - truly. Kirby writes - >Numeracy and computer literacy should be convergent goals in the early grades, >when our concern is to not overspecialize. I'm with the >reformers when they say "curriculum integration is the name >of the game". As usual (with our notable exceptions) I'm in fundamental agreement with you. I was in fact planning to post up here an excerpt from one of your posts to the Math-Ed list (linked from your site) where you press this point. My goal in doing so would not have been so much to make your specific point (which I happen to agree with), but to try to stimulate some discussion here about the context in the curriculum where learning programming fits. A math extension? (seems right to me) A science extension (Let's 'build radios', maybe). Standalone? I do believe this is a fundamental issue to address. ART

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Beyond 3D
by Kirby Urner April 4, 2000

April 4, 2000

> Beyond presenting the concept, I am totally unqualified to speak > on it, as it is an area about which I know little to nothing. > But does anybody have any ideas along these lines? > > ART I think it's a fine idea. Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam >>> import socket >>> socket.gethostbyname_ex("microsoft.com") ('microsoft.com', [], ['207.46.130.149', '207.46.130.45', '207.46.131.137', '207.46.131.30', '207.46.130.14']) is an example of a first step. Kirby

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Beyond 3D
by Arthur Siegel April 4, 2000

April 4, 2000

There seems to be general agreement that the use of simple, dissectable 3D Python stuff could make an appropriate and potentially interesting and exciting context in which to introduce younger folk to programming. I and many others have espoused that basic position here, with disagreement (sometimes vehement) over only the details. There has been less discussion (there may have been some early on that I could have missed) about doing simple communications stuff. The circa 2000 equivalent of building your first radio by wrapping wire around a coil, etc, and hearing some faint music through an earphone - which I and probably others remember fondly (and which kids are still doing today). Pinging a remote url, and retrieving something etc. Sending and picking up E-Mail,etc I know as a young programmer (in a not so young body), getting access to this kind of thing can generate a lot of interest, immediate gratification and sense of being introduced to the mysteries behind the scenes. Beyond presenting the concept, I am totally unqualified to speak on it, as it is an area about which I know little to nothing. But does anybody have any ideas along these lines? ART

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