[Edu-sig] re: diSessa's "computational media", and Boxer

[Fred Yankowski]

On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 02:02:18PM -0600, Arthur_Siegel@rsmi.com wrote:
> Found chapters 1& 2 online in pdf at:
> http://www.soe.berkeley.edu/boxer/papers.html

Thank you for that URL.  I completely forgot to provide any references
in my original message.

The first two chapters of the book outline diSessa's thesis and give
some very brief examples of Boxer, but miss some compelling stories of
how kids used Boxer.

> But I do tend to resist any approach that is GUI intensive.

I think I understand you.  I have similar preferences:

  good:  Linux /etc/whatever.conf files
  fair:  Win32 control panels, preferences, tabs, advanced options, ...

  good:  Hacking Java code in Emacs, working directly on files
  fair:  Editing methods in a VisualAge for Java GUI

  good:  Hacking Python code in Emacs, running from bash
  fair:  Editing Python code in IDLE or PythonWin

  good:  Working directly on web application script files
  fair:  Editing Zope "methods" "thru the web"

But, then again, I've been programming for over 25 years.  (Back then
we coded everything on punch cards, and we LIKED IT!)  I suspect that
my preferences for using Emacs, grep, diff, CVS, etc, might stem a
great deal from my background and not such much from any essential
superiority of that style.

Anyway, I'm looking at what might work best for absolute novice
programmers, and children in the K-8 grade range in particular.  As
much as I like Python, I'm not convinced that most students in that
range could handle it well enough.  diSessa provides convincing
evidence that Boxer does work well for such students.

I communicated recently with a teacher who has used Boxer a lot in his
classes, and he related that his son, who now does Java programming in
his job, first learned programming in Boxer and feels that it gave him
an excellent introduction to programming that made it easy to learn
Java later.

> And this is all 95% about getting kids motivated and excited.

I agree, and I think diSessa would as well.

> Feeling grown-up is certainly one such thing.

diSessa intends Boxer to be useful to "grown-ups" as well as kids.  I
think he's on the right track, and Boxer does seem to scale pretty
well, but it's currently got shortcomings -- like an unconventional
and somewhat spartan GUI -- that make it less attractive for such
ongoing use.

> So it is difficult in my mind for a Python educational curriculum to
> pick up much from what came before, because in doing so one will be
> tending to dilute what Python somewhat uniquely brings to the party.

Could be.  A Boxer-like system could be done in any implementation
language, and I don't know that Python itself would work well as the
user command language.

-- 
Fred Yankowski           fred@OntoSys.com      tel: +1.630.879.1312
Principal Consultant     www.OntoSys.com       fax: +1.630.879.1370
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