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

[Randy Latimer]

I'm teaching in a linux envrironment now, I'll check around for a linux
logo, but I think unfortunately it's only part of the windows/mac world.
Randy

On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Steve Litt wrote:

> 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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> >
> >
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