[Edu-sig] Using objects early was Procedural front end for Zelle's graphics.py

[kirby urner]

On 2/7/07, David Reed <dreed at capital.edu> wrote:
<<snip>>

All a number of us are saying is that one size does not fit all. I
> suspect what you do works well for the students you teach, but it may
> not work well for other groups of students. That's what keeps
> teaching fresh for me - I adjust what I'm doing until I see that the
> students are getting it. That's why I like teaching at a small school
> with relatively small classes (20-30 students typically). I can get
> immediate feedback from a good percentage of the students and
> determine if I need to try a different technique for explaining the
> topic. That's next to impossible if you have a classroom of more than
> 50 students.
>
> Dave


My 8th grade PPS class @ Winterhaven involved no pre-screening as
to math skills, but neither was it as math-intensive as my Saturday
Academy classes, which require no pre-reqs other than algebra, but
*do* assume motivated students willing to give up Saturdays to do
something geeky.

In both groups, some are precocious, others more average in terms
of skill.  My goal as a teacher is to impart enough skills to make some
kind of self steering investigation possible, i.e. they get lectures, but
also a lot of "try stuff" time, with me walking around and helping.  We
use such as stickworks.py, and/or the native VPython API, in addition
to core Python.

As many have noted here, students love graphics, and when it
comes to bang for the buck, I find VPython vastly more motivational
than a Tk canvas.  I agree with the late Arthur Siegel that VPython
is critical to Python's competitive advantage.  Ruby is very
OpenGL aware, right out the box, and will likely supersede Python
in many educational arenas if VPython, or packages of similar
capability, are allowed to lie fallow.  I understand why he wanted
VPython added to the Standard Library.  On the other hand, the
Standard Library is something of a graveyard/junkyward as well.

Anyway, the feedback I'm getting is that the pipeline whereby new
geeks get born and nurtured through to a professional real world
career (doesn't mean in computer science necessarily) is severely
broken right now except in a few relatively utopian settings.

The CS faculties tend to blame HS experience, as so many students
are already turned off and/or ready only for remedial numeracy courses
by the time they enter college.  CS0 courses, rather than serving an
exciting recruiting function, may serve to further dull the material,
turning off even more students (especially the most curious).

One prof at a recent Willamette U. panel on this:  "whatever you're
doing in high school, please stop it" (except he didn't say please).

What I call (he's too modest to call it that) "the Mark Shuttleworth
Pipeline" (which you've been reading about over the last year, if you've
been reading my posts) assumes only a normal average healthy
curiosity, not any kind of special genius.

A lot of students in South Africa are in open revolt against a
"business as usual" education, when it comes to developing their
analytical (problem solving) skills.  They know, from being close to
the bottom of TIMMS, that their only hope of participating as equals
in the emerging global high tech economy is in "leap frogging,"
more than simply imitating.  A lot of other countries feel the same
way.

My investments in screencasting and mathcasting companies
(including my own 4D Studios) are in alignment with the peer teaching
and home teaching models.  CS0 *could* be a helpful puzzle piece,
but in many cases it's merely a backwater, something to bypass
because too dumbed down, just like the USA's K-12 more generally.

I probably sound like a militant compared to most college professors,
but I assure you many of my private sector collegues are far more
polemical than I, when it comes to pointing out shortcomings in the
current curriculum.

Kirby
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