[Edu-sig] Teaching Middle-School Math with Python

[Steve Litt]

I've heard excellent things about logo. Is there a Linux port?

Steve


At 12:24 PM 10/6/00 -0400, Randy Latimer wrote:
>I know it's an old old language, probably in the ancient
>"has-been" status, but Logo was a nice intro programming language in a 
>style other than the "standard" way of programming (fortran, basic,
>pascal, c, c++, java etc) that almost took off.  
>I still like it, but I'm
>an old guy. 
>Randy Latimer
>
>On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Fred Bartlett wrote:
>
>> Has anyone had any success in changing public-school math curricula at
>> the middle-school level?
>> 
>> I've been busily learning Python while my daughter has been busily
>> learning 6th-grade math. The contrast between the two experiences is
>> considerable: I can learn Python in a clear, clean, organized way; my
>> daughter can't learn math that way -- well, she _could_, but her
>> textbook militates against it.
>> 
>> Her textbook takes a "problem-solving" approach and teaches "high-level"
>> thinking. By this they mean, I think, large numbers of word problems.
>> That would be fine, of course, if they did it right. But they seem to be
>> teaching heuristics rather than algorithms -- that is, each kind of
>> problem is treated as if it were sui generis.
>> 
>> I was especially saddened -- and motivated -- when she asked me, "How
>> could anyone ever be interested in this stuff?"
>> 
>> I began to muse that an introduction to programming could both help kids
>> see the connections among types of problems and provide a salutary dose
>> of rigor to the curriculum. (Donald Knuth said somewhere that one can't
>> really be sure that one understands something until one can teach a
>> computer to do it.)
>> 
>> The only other languages I found in my web searches used below the
>> college level were Java, C/C++, (Visual)Basic, and Scheme -- none of
>> which would be appropriate at the level I'm contemplating. But Python,
>> for all its virtues, is a relatively obscure language. It's a good bet
>> that no one at the Board of Ed has heard of it!
>> 
>> Meanwhile, I found out about our "technology" curriculum from middle
>> through high school: It's all Microsoft, so we're paying tens or
>> hundreds of thousands of dollars for license fees. (I'm sure no one here
>> will defend that practice!) I would like to change that, too.
>> 
>> Kirby Urner has done some interesting things with algebra and beyond;
>> but I didn't find any pre-algebra math at his site.
>> 
>> Hans Magnus Enzensberger's _The Number Devil_ contains the kind of math
>> I'm looking for: simple -- but interesting! -- applications of basic
>> arithmetic on the integers (and, soon enough, the reals).
>> 
>> So -- any hints for me out there?
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> Fred
>> 
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