[Edu-sig] How do kids these days get started in programming?

[kirby urner]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Maria Droujkova <droujkova at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:21 AM, Maria Droujkova <droujkova at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> << SNIP >>
>>
>>> That's why I am looking for kid-friendly AND large communities of
>>> practice first and foremost for any educational endeavors...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Cheers,
>>> MariaD
>>
>
> Exclusivity should be an interesting angle to pursue, with that
> "Hogwarts" metaphor. Still, math is already such an uphill battle
> socially that going for even smaller communities, on top of small
> interest in math, may be exponentially hard. Both approaches should be
> tried, though.
>

Yes.  This book 'Out of the Labyrinth' by the Kaplans was useful, a
gift to me from the PSF chairman this time, proof the guy is no
slouch.  We're copying some of what works from the math teaching
subcultures, but in a lot of ways we're alien interlopers, didn't come
up through the ranks.  This administration makes that easier as the
later charters are more liberal in terms of who gets to play.
Remember:  all schools are charter schools in our lexicon (per
math-teach) unless they're private, and even then, there's probably a
legal mandate or founding document we could dig up and call a
"charter" of some kind.  Just using the old English meanings, trying
to avoid using the rank and file shoptalk, which isn't elite enough,
nor serviceable for our purposes.

>
>>
>> In any case, remember that teachers, not just students, like that
>> feeling of being in a small pilot or government study, elite guinea
>> pigs, something to brag about, kind of like TAG.  That's where I like
>> talking about the Winterhaven Experiment (see slides) where Silicon
>> Forest executives had total control of our "geek Hogwarts", were able
>> to boot Google Earth the first day, go from there to Kml to Xml to GIS
>> more generally, as a set of rich data structures on a polyhedron
>> (planet Earth), ergo we're talking geography (GIS) not just geometry,
>> etc.  Bridging geometry and geography is a fond goal of ours.
>
> I just got back from a nice workshop about Math Circles and Math Clubs
> (Twitter hashtag #greatcircles though almost nobody joined me in
> reporting it on Twitter
> http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23greatcircles) - there was a very
> nice presentation there by Tom Davis (a pdf on his page is related
> http://www.geometer.org/mathcircles/) on geography and geometry.

Probably didn't include Fuller Projection, so more a competing brand,
but that's OK, as we're into geography in many flavors, geometries too
(non-Euclidean is *not* out of bounds pre college, as the Math Circles
prove -- glad to see you're into those as well).

> Questions like, "Where do you need to stand on Venus for the sun to be
> directly overhead?" Then I asked him about designing your own planet
> systems, which can be a good programming task, I think >_>
>

That's already handled in Celestia, an open source project and
mentioned in my write-up of the Winterhaven Experiment.  We also use
Solaria, links on request.

Kirby

>
>
> --
> Cheers,
> MariaD
>
> Make math your own, to make your own math.
>
> http://www.naturalmath.com social math site
> http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations
>