[Edu-sig] CP4E

[Kirby Urner]

> One problem that many students have is a fundamental syntactic difficulty:
> it takes a lot of work and reminders to get them to the point where they
> would see the difference--ANY difference--between
> 	f.write(...)
> and
> 	f write(...)
> or similar constructs and remember to use the right notation each time (or
> understand the interpreter's error messages).  

I focus a lot on "dot notation" as a way of pointing into a container, an
object, that has verbs (methods) and adjectives (attributes) -- or maybe the
adjectives are nouns (monkey.state = 'Awake').  

You "trigger" or "call" the methods, get/set the attributes and so on.

 >>> polly = Parrot()
 >>> polly.fly()
 flap flap flap
 >>> polly.squawk()
 screeeeech

My patter is very abstract, about mammals, dogs, humans.  I focus on our own
methods (eating, breathing, sleeping -- I tend to shy away from excremental
functions with the little ones, but obviously they're implied).  

After my chatter, their imaginations are full of dogs barking, monkeys
swinging, parrots squawking -- all before we deal with file-like objects
having read and write methods.

> So I'd be concerned that the syntactic (not to mention lexical--what do 
> all these function names mean?) baggage would get in the way of the more 
> basic requirement of teaching and learning *geography*.  Traditional 
> teaching methods already emphasize linguistic skills heavily, and 
> especially considering that geography affords some opportunities for 
> visual learning, I wouldn't abandon those in favor of adding extra text-
> handling requirements.

I agree with you about the visual part.  I was thinking we could add
latitude and longitude next to each of the state capitals, and feed these to
some plotting facility that makes dots on a map of the USA (or EU, or
wherever).

Geography is also a place to work on date/time concepts, e.g. GMT and the
timezones relative thereto.  The problem of clock synchronization.  The fact
that we're not working in base 10 when we work with standard time units.

One thing we might do in geography class is ping servers around the world,
look at traceroutes a bit, try to include the Internet as one of those
global circuitries -- along with airlines and 3-letter airport codes,
shipping circuits and so on.  That 'Atlas of Cyberspace' is a place to visit
and project on the big screen up front (the projector is indispensable to
geography class in general).

> Now, if you're talking about offering a computing curriculum outside of
> the regular subject-area classes, and particularly, offering it to 
> students who have reached a point where they'd be comfortable using the 
> necessary text-handling skills, I don't see any problem with that.  One 
> could even use this example to make a point about the power of programming

> without necessarily expecting the students to learn to do the process
> themselves--though I'm wary of making it look more like magic than it
> already does.  I think we need to connect the cool stuff to the question,
> "How would I learn to do that in the first place?"
> 
> Anyway, that's more words already than I felt like dumping into my
> computer this morning, so I'll leave it at that.
> 
> jmj

Thanks for all those thoughts.

I think the school/curriculum I'm envisioning would have to be considered
pioneering and to some degree esoteric i.e. not all schools would follow
suit.  There'd be a lot of hanging back to see what kinds of results we got.
But in our school, there'd be a lot of "programming-like" activities
starting quite young.

Although this may sound like a top-down experiment being *imposed* by some
fanatical adult, in my actual experience it's the opposite.  I'm already
meeting the kids who want this kind of experience, and are getting it with
or without any help from their schools (mostly without).

As some of you know, I'm already wired into a situation where the goal is to
provide after-school activities in a computer lab that keep kids engaged and
occupied, and there's a commitment to working with open source tools,
including Python.  I'm speaking of West Precinct.  

So insofar as these ideas are being implemented, vs. just talked about, in
my reality that's probably the front line right now.  The demographics:
mostly Latino kids, sons and daughters of first generation immigrants (just
like the police chief, though he's Chinese).  We'll be doing a fair amount
of instruction in Spanish.

Kirby