[Edu-sig] OO in K-12

[Kirby Urner]

Is anyone aware of a book that does more to elaborate the idea
of a class hierarchy with more analogies to biology i.e. to 
taxonomy (the "tree of life" in the sense of branching phyla,
species etc.).  I found at least one URL making the link, but
it's not developed: http://www.cis.ufl.edu/~jnw/CIS4930/Lectures/l13.html
(see bottom of page).  More likely, given the engineering focus, 
we're going to see a fax machine as a subclass of the more generic 
telephone.

I have nothing against the more mechnical metaphors for a class
hierarchy, but I'm always looking for ways to better integrate
the curriculum (like, kids are going to be studying biology 
_anyway_ -- or I hope so), and so it might be useful to talk 
about how chordata (animals with backbones) have these spinal
chord related properties and methods in common (send nerve 
impulse down chord to branch A).  You could say that the 
evolutionary processes are effective at subclassing plants 
and animals to fit available ecosystemic niches.

This is a useful way of talking about the difference between 
classes and objects, as well.  You have the class Tarantula,
which is the generic blueprint, and then all the actual 
instantiations of that class:  the gazillions of tarantulas 
hanging out in banana bunches or wherever.  The instantiations
are the actual creepy-crawlies, with their own on-board 
instance variables (e.g. the internal states of one creepy-
crawly versus another's -- size, age also being instance 
variables).

I think that silly simulation I did, of a little ecosystem of
"animal objects" fits in here:

http://www.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2000-April/000306.html

Kirby