[Edu-sig] re: The trackball reality

[Arthur]

Laura writes -

>One of the reasons that games are effective at teaching is that they
>provide 'teaching that is training' as opposed to 'teaching that is
>education'.  And training is a very effective way to learn.

I think the converstaion gets off track.  Probably my fault.  the issue is
computer interface, not games per se.  The most effective teacher I
experienced - elementary school - integrated chess into our currcilum quite
effectively.  And took a lot of heat for it.

The fact is that chess, for example, was and is not considered a mainstream
educational tool.  It is available at minimal costs. Why are we then
considering, creating and investing in new educational games, when the old
and classic one's sit on shelves.

What there is to be learned from computer games, as interface - I assure
you, as a parent - kids get more than enough exposure to.

My sister, who has an exceptional child, was complaining just yesterrday
that her son spends most of his free time online playing Magic Card games.
She was really asking me what I might do to stimulate him to get more
involved in some of the geometry/math material being presented to him at
school.   She happened to mention something about Tower of Hanoi along the
way, so I sent her the VPython Tower of Hanoi demo, which I thought Adam
might find interesting; it is striking, visually, and its guts are fifty or
so lines of code. I wouldn't expect him to understand the code, but hope to
interest him in the fact that so little code was necessary to get so much
done. A look behind the scenes I thought might interest him.  He hasn't
found time to even take a look at it yet.

Creating games - I'm all for it. It puts one behind the secenes.  Taking
advantage of the graphical abilities of the current generation of PCs to add
dimension, interest, fun - I'm all for it.

What I want though, as interface, is to encourage, allow students to get
behind the scenes and to think and interface in sentences, paragraphs, and
compositions at a time.  Rather than a word at a time - point, click,
point,click,point,click.

And if I thought otherwise, that effective GUI was the key to educational
software, I would be otherwhere than here.  Since I don't see what in
particular Python contributes to the particular realm of technology.

Not to say that I think this as a response fully covers the issues you
raise.

Its just that I have a flight this afternoon.


Art

Much more to say, speculate on