[Edu-sig] education as Python's killer app

[kirby urner]

On 4/16/07, Michael Tobis <mtobis at gmail.com> wrote:

<< SNIP >>

> Mostly, I'd like to hear what you think I've left out (or anything
> I've gotten wrong).
>

I think there's plenty that's right in your draft.

In addition to Seymour Papert and Alan Kay, Kenneth Iverson is
another important figure vis-a-vis CP4E as his thrust, like mine,
was to make Math Notation (MN) come alive in an interactive
environment (per APL & J in his case, more Pythonic in ours).

http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu/~mgr/404/burks/language/apl/camnweb/camn.htm

Although Iverson somewhat disavowed Wolfram's status as
his protege and/or acolyte (per correspondence I saw on a J list),
Mathematica *does* dramatically illustrate the role of computer
software in the domain of math learning and modeling today.

Python isn't Mathematica, but nor is it a "just a calculator" either.
You can use it, in combination with add-ons, to study cellular
automata, fractals, plus traditional basic math topics such as
polynomials, polyhedra, group theory, trigonomety, matrix algebra
etc. etc.

Plus OOP gives a way to supply missing concreteness to math
objects, without sacrificing their status as abstractions.

Once you get passed the considerable barriers to putting Python
in front of a student, ready for action, you come up against the
question: what is it we're wanting to learn with assistance from
our charming snake?  Why do we care about turtles, robots and
such?  What's the bigger picture?

The Shuttleworth Foundation (kusasa.org) writes in terms of
developing "analytical thinking".  Or call it problem solving abilities.
And what are the problems?  They're very "real world" for one thing,
involve energy and opportunity costs (doing more of this means
doing less of that).  I'll through out "model view controller" (MVC)
as still an important design pattern.  I think you get into that when
you start talking about developing for the web.  HTML provides a
view.  There's often a database in the picture, maybe several.

http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/geoquiz.html

Rather than repeat myself endlessly, I'll just trail off by saying Python
needs a context, doesn't necessarily supply one all on its own.  Nor
is Sugar (the GUI) nor a laptop computer in and of itself sufficiently
"contextual" to guide our choices of emphasis and focus when it
comes to curriculum writing for the emerging shared future.

The questions go deeper than that e.g. "what is school really *about*?"

The positive spin here is this question really is pretty open ended.
I'm not trying to close down discussion by leaving it here.

However, per my own CP4E curriculum writing it's quite certain that
students are learning Python because they're wishing to develop their
analytical and problem solving skills around specific content and/or
real world challenges.

Mathematical techniques and algorithms, pivotal concepts, remain a
proper focus for these investigations, always have, always will.  And the
positive spin here is:  lots of backward compatibility with pre-computer
texts, even if they're out of print and/or just get shared around in
electronic format.

Kirby