[Edu-sig] more follow-up re Pycon / EduSummit

[kirby urner]

Thanks Nicholas that's entirely consistent with what you said at Pycon,
I'll be patient. :-D

In the meantime I purchased the newest Pi today (free shipping from
Amazon), my main motivation being to work through examples in Peter
Farrell's book, Hacking Math Class (is that title too scary for non-geeks?
But then "Python" itself scares many teachers with [0]).

He's using the Pi3D library and I've always been an avid fan of doing 3D
graphics.  It'll run on Ubuntu with effort but I'm on MacOS, and besides,
for realism (to get it like it's presented to students) I should use an
actual Pi.

Steve Holden (a former PSF Chairman) gave me some, but I apparently gifted
them onward, kinda like those OLPC XOs I used to own.

Peter seems to be one of those rather rare birds who dares to think the
generic high school math curriculum needs to change, not that we need to
suddenly on-board a CS faculty, which most experts agree is unlikely to
happen ("so get over it" is the message).

Not only does he think the way I do, he's written a book.  Lots of source
code.

Unfortunately, the USA's Common Core Math is moving in the opposite
direction of Hacking, is rather deliberately CS-unfriendly in saying over
and over "Base 10, Base 10..." like a mantra, meaning "stay away from any
so-called 'alternative bases' at all costs."

On the ground, some schools dare to deviate [1], but the test-meisters
count every second not teaching to the test, a wasted second.  Common Core
is about everyone marching to the same drummer, to a greater extent than
we've ever seen in USA schools (historically novel, and more corporate than
government led, as a convenience to big publishers -- such a pain when the
states diverge i.e. exercise self government).

Anyway, I started a Twitterverse campaign to ask IEEE why Common Core Math
is OK with them, given its CS-unfriendliness, when NASA thinks we should
all learn hex.[2]  NASA seems a lot smarter than IEEE to me, but maybe I
haven't done enough homework yet?  I've done quite a bit.

Did anyone else see The Martian with Tom Hanks?  That was hex code that
saved his life.  A coded message from NASA perhaps? :-D

Best wishes to the UK tomorrow, whatever its fate.  God bless and all that.

Kirby

[0]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpetophobia

[1]
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/142866/where-does-binary-arithmetic-manipulation-enter-the-mathematics-engineering-curr

[2]  http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2016/06/learn-hex.html




On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 11:27 AM, Nicholas H.Tollervey <ntoll at ntoll.org>
wrote:




>
> Devices won't be available until mid-July and only then via online
> re-sellers. Google Farnell micro:bit and you'll find the right things.
>
> N.
>
>
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