[Edu-sig] Update on my PSF doings

[Maria Droujkova]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:55 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> The "group theory for children" idea is in retreat, with everyone
> focused on remediating a borked precalculus track which almost
> everyone hates, but ETS keeps nailed, turning NCTM schools into slave
> ships.
>
> How sad for them.

This relates to two conversations, going on at other lists at the moment.

One is a talk among several parents working on group theory with
little kids, on the Living Math list
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LivingMathForum/). I translated a
sixties Russian book episode about an "imaginary number carousel"
(powers of i, as a rotation group), and a mother shared her
experiences with her 7yo son, for example: "We started by making out
own rotating around a point triangle (a triangle of one color attached
with a tack and secured with a piece of eraser to sheet of paper of
contrasting color) marking its original position and naming all 3
rotations. Then, after a couple of initial questions (about the angles
of rotation which M. happily computed; commutation, inverse) we filled
out the first part of the multiplication table." We also looked at an
online toy about rotation groups a father made for his young kids,
called "The flippy triangle thing":
http://www.leftoverpi.com/play/flippy/

The second conversation is at IAEP
(http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-May/005466.html and
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-May/005484.html), about
the value of "similarities over differences" as a rare, remarkable
cultural accompishment:
http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals I think "group
theory for kids" is an excellent example of a higher-order similarity
among many different ideas and objects (numbers, rotations, etc).
Refusing to work with high-order similarities is a huge step
backwards, culturally.

-- 
Cheers,
MariaD

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