[Edu-sig] Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #207 - 5 msgs

[Dorothea Salo]

> I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here, but using HyperCard=
>  to
> present practice problems is a lot different from writing a=
>  program
> to solve the problems.  Or did the stacks solve the problems
> themselves?

    Insofar as the stack had to figure out the right answer, yes. I'm
practically positive the right answers were algorithmically-derived, not
handed to the program up front -- in at least one case I remember, at least
two correct solutions were possible, and the program accepted two (the two I
tried, anyway) as correct.

    Essentially, the stack would show you a problem, let you solve it, and
tell you whether you were right or wrong. If you were wrong, it would show
you the problem ("parallel fifth here" "that isn't really a ii chord") so
that you could revise your solution.

> I understand that natural language is a wonderful thing, and a
>  lot of
> the interesting stuff in CS is closely related to language.  I
>  just
> think that it would be a hard way to teach programming and still
>
> teach language concepts at the same time.  Can writing a program
>  give
> greater appreciation for a work of literature?  Maybe it can, and
>  I
> would love to see some examples.  With math, however, programming
>  can
> uncover things that would otherwise go unnoticed, and the
>  programming
> is relatively simple.

    Same for language (which is not the same thing as literature; let's not
get our fields mixed here). It's relatively simple to write a program to
produce regular verb paradigms from natural-language-of-choice. In the
process, though, students absolutely will uncover a lot of knowledge about
language they didn't know they had. Toss irregulars into the mix (easier for
Romance languages, harder but still possible for English), and you have a
winner -- tough-but-interesting programming problem that touches on a
significant pedagogical problem.

    As for literature, I'd turn kids loose on writing a concordancer in a
hot minute. It's absolutely astonishing what you can learn about an author's
use of language from a concordance. For English poetry, I think stress
analysis would be fun (especially combined with a pre-written speech
synthesis module). If you stress a poem precisely according to The Rules,
does it sound right? Why or (more often!) why not? What departures from The
Rules do poets make? Does a poem that precisely fits The Rules necessarily
sound better than one that breaks them every now and then?

    (For Spanish poetry, syllable analysis is the
analogous-but-not-identical problem.)

> Other subjects would require a pretty extensive
> re-evaluation of current curricula and teaching methods

    This is probably true, but once again, if our goal is genuinely
Programming for Everyone, we can't balk at that.

    In a way, too, part of what I'm putting forward is Natural Language for
Programmers, who are reputed (how fairly or unfairly I can't say, not having
taught a large enough sample) to have difficulty learning foreign languages.
I think the two-way enrichment is part of what CP4E is after.

Dorothea
--
Dorothea Salo
Impressions Book and Journal Services, Inc.
phone: (608) 244-6218  fax: (608) 244-7050
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