[Edu-sig] creating an interface vs. using one (Michel Paul)

[kirby urner]

On 9/25/06, Peter Chase <pchase at sulross.edu> wrote:
> Is that ALL you have been fighting about these many months?  My
> goodness.  Well, thanks for filling me in.
>

I thought you meant just in the last few days.

No, that's not all we've been fighting about, plus Arthur and I agree
sometimes e.g.:

* Crunchy Frog is kwel
* VPython is kwel
* raw_input moving to sys isn't the end of the world (even for teachers)

Where Arthur and I overlap is in not wanting lose the "hard fun"
(Seymour Papert's term) and devolve to mere "fun" -- in the sense that
we stop challenging students with the hard core stuff and just
entertain them with fuzzy wuzzy mind-rotting stuff, e.g. mere eye
candy, meaningless toys and geegaws that don't adequately prepare them
for the hard fun of potential adulthood.

We're both fans of stark and austere approaches, kind of like those
old fashioned mathematicians and their nostalgic cries the good old
days of "pencil and paper".  Instead of pencil and paper, I point to
the Python shell + text editor as a starting point.  No need for drag
and drop, ala Lego Mindstorms, by the time they're up to the Python
level.

As background to all this:

Arthur honed in on Alan Kay and his Squeakland project as
representative of the kind of geegawing and eye candy he thought'd
lead to mind rot, and so Alan became a kind of metaphor for the
antichrist around here.

Then our Benevolent Dictator was invited by Mark Shuttleworth to
attend a London summit with Alan, representatives from Scheme
community, top educators in South Africa, including government
ministry types.

I was given our Python Nation's Minister of Education portfolio and
sat at Guido's side (opposite Alan) as we hunkered down for two days
of intensive brainstorming, the upshot of which is Project Kusasa,
which plans the following pipeline for 8-18 year olds:  Logo | Squeak
| Python.

As a result of this brainstorming, edu-sig heated up with a lot of
recent cross-talk between Pythoneers and Smalltalkers (Squeak is
written about Smalltalk) regarding what features of immersive
environments might be moved to Python.  This might include actual
pieces of software engineering at the C level -- that was a thread
Alan and Guido started at the summit itself.

Again, Arthur, suspicious of Croquet and Squeakland (aka "Ninja
Turtles") pushes back against any "dumbing down" of the potential
Python curriculum.  However, I don't see that as a problem, as the
Shuttleworth Pipeline follows the grain of the maturation process in a
natural way:  motor skills & avatar control (Logo-like); immersive
fantasy worlds and role playing (Squeak-like); under-the-hood
investigations of what makes it all go (Python as your guide in the
"tunnels under Disney World").

Of course by age 18, many are ready to go deeper, in which case we
have many pathways to choose from.  Python -> Java -> private sector
cubicle, is one popular option.  I also suggest Python -> C (study
Python's core) -> C# -> IronPython (i.e. come back to Python but by
way of immersion in the C family).

Basically, the "basic motor skills" -> "immersion" -> "contributing to
the guts" sequence gets repeated over and over at different levels in
life.  I doubt Arthur disagrees.

There's also another theme woven in, which is that before my Minister
of Education stint, I was already a top dog in what's called the
Fuller School (e.g. bfi.org), a pirate ship captained by R.
Buckminster Fuller (Applewhite as quartermaster).  I bring that
experience with me to edu-sig, e.g.

http://tinyurl.com/lqbhc
http://tinyurl.com/legbp

Kirby