[Edu-sig] mixed messages about math...

[kirby urner]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 7:59 PM, Carl Karsten <carl at nextdayvideo.com> wrote:

> I pretty much disagree with your conclusion about "what is said. .. CS is
> not Math" and all the conclusions and predictions.
>
> Math classes and math teachers are not going to be replaced by anything.
>
>

Most of the articles I see begin with the premise that "Math is not CS"
i.e. if we're to have more coding in the schools, that's not because math
classes will need to change to include more coding.

Math will stay the way it is now. Mainly with the TI calculators. That
seems to be a widely shared vision.

Coding as an activity is usually presented as something outside of math.

Given increasing pressure to teach coding skills, schools have to decide in
a hurry if that has anything to do with updating the math curriculum.  I
think that's a question we should not just bleep over.  I'm not saying I
have all the answers as to how things might go.

To the extent the answer is "no, we can't expect more sharing of coding
savvy to come from the math teachers", the message then is:  math and
coding are separate disciplines.

I'm suggesting, contrary to this conclusion, that existing math teachers,
if permitted to innovate, and given professional development classes, could
probably rise to the occasion, and that's a solution we should explore.

The Bootstrap project has been looking into this issue.  You're likely
familiar with Shiriam Krishnamurti's work.  I'm lurking on the discussion
list around Pyret, more active than math-thinking-l these days.

https://www.wpi.edu/news/20156/mathcsci.html



> In HS my CS teacher was a trained musician.  He did fine teaching Basic,
> but had no idea how to teach or program Pascal to the 5 or so of us in the
> advanced class.  I suspect a few years later he figured it out, and can now
> teach it just fine.
>
>
Can he teach math as well?  More power to him if so.

I'm thinking of Peter Farrell's book for example:  Hacking Math Class.  It
has many of the usual calculus and pre-calculus topics.

Students learn about trigonometry through coding.  It's a step up from
graphing calculators, in terms of technology.  Imagine learning what
composition of functions means in terms of Python.  In math class.  For
math credit.  From a math teacher.



> There is the problem of hours in a day, and hours you can keep a person in
> class.  those are fixed, so if you want to add a minute teaching CS you do
> need to decide what you will take a minute away from.  Language? PE,
> lunch...   I'm glad this is not my problem.
>

My question is more like:  should we bother teaching CS as a separate high
school subject, if instead we might converge it with math.  Is the decision
to treat these as two separate disciplines appropriate?  Isn't this rather
a golden opportunity to show the relevance of mathematics to everyday life?

Why not just keep teaching these newer skills under the heading of math and
give math teachers the tools they need to add coding?

That doesn't mean other subject teachers shouldn't update their skills as
well.

While teaching where the commas and periods go, and the semi-colons, we
might as well add HTML, stuff about fonts, unicode and typography.  That's
all "Communications Arts" or whatever.

In my Python classes we use the Periodic Table of Elements a lot, as a
typical data structure.  In other words, coding (including markup
languages) might be shared more throughout STEM (or STEAM), not just in
math class.

I'm more explicit how I'm coming to look at it in this Youtube shared
through my blog:
http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-pep-talk-of-my-own.html

Kirby


<https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/attachments/20160805/88fed1d3/attachment.html>