[Edu-sig] False alarms?

[Sergio Rojas]

 Okey-dokey, Kirby. Nice exposition, including the web links.
To explore this issue a bit further, how, in your view, 
 the Common Core State Standards (http://www.corestandards.org/)
fit in the CS call at schools?

The standard points what perhaps is already being implemented as
an operational way to approach it: 
from page 7 of 
http://www.corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/Math_Standards1.pdf

5 Use appropriate tools strategically.
Mathematically proficient students consider the available tools when 
solving a mathematical problem. These tools might include pencil 
and paper, concrete models, a ruler, a protractor, a calculator, 
a spreadsheet, a computer algebra system,
a statistical package, or dynamic geometry software.

  
 

Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 9:39 AM
From: "kirby urner" <kirby.urner at gmail.com>
To: "Sergio Rojas" <sergio_r at mail.com>
Cc: "edu-sig at python.org" <edu-sig at python.org>
Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] False alarms?

Hi Sergio --
 
Per this article, with so many states and no national curriculum (I don't advocate for one), it's tough to generalize about US schools:
 
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/07/americas-schools/564413/
 
Now, to generalize :-D
 
The mathematics classroom was rarely also a computer lab.  If the school has a computer lab, that's usually a separate facility and they learn business applications and typing, rarely much programming, until rather recently.
 
Today, schools likely have Chromebooks in large charging cabinets on rollers.  Fewer schools give out Chromebooks to each student but that's the trend, perhaps from 6th or 7th grade up.
 
The mathematics curriculum has never integrated any programming as there's still that sense that programming takes years to learn and would be a huge detour.  Those of us more familiar with the state of the art don't see it that way.
 
You're right that Mathematica paved the way for a small subculture and I-Python, Sage, Jupyter Notebooks, SymPy do feature in some US schools, but very few.
 
Rather than integrate mathematics and learning to code, the strong belief is we need to keep math and computer science separated, which means teaching a lot of things twice, given the Venn Diagram shows large overlap.
 
Your book, which I've been reading, takes the more integrated approach that I favor.
 
Math teachers are in a tough position I think, as a lot of the mathy content that students find most attractive is being placed in another subject area.
 
I have my opinions about all this, as a former high school math teacher turned applications programmer and teacher-trainer.
 
https://medium.com/@kirbyurner/the-plight-of-high-school-math-teachers-c0faf0a6efe6[https://medium.com/@kirbyurner/the-plight-of-high-school-math-teachers-c0faf0a6efe6]
 
Finding a lot of computer science teachers in a hurry is the name of the game right now, and lots of educators are selling on ramp teacher training programs.  That's becoming a big business. 
 
I expect many with a math teaching background are currently migrating to computer science, so in some sense my desire for better integration is being fulfilled.  Some of this on ramp programs teach a language called Pyret, which we're told is the better way to go.
 
Kirby
 
 
 
 
On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 5:13 AM, Sergio Rojas <sergio_r at mail.com[mailto:sergio_r at mail.com]> wrote:
>  here's a blog post raising the alarm
> that Python (among others) is "completely incompatible with mathematics".
>
>
> https://blogs.ams.org/matheducation/2017/01/09/integrating-computer-science-in-math-the-potential-is-great-but-so-are-the-risks/[https://blogs.ams.org/matheducation/2017/01/09/integrating-computer-science-in-math-the-potential-is-great-but-so-are-the-risks/]
 
 

I get lost reading the referred blog post. I was
under the impression that the ideas presented in the
post were already fully discussed back in the 90's,
when Mathematica was getting its way into the
classroom at US schools. That things like "x = x + x"
were already familiar to teachers.

In fact, I was thinking of an open source alternative to Mathematica
when writing the book on Prealgebra via Python Programming
(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325473565[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325473565]), with the
advantage that Python can be used for intensive computing task as
well as for symbolic (algebraic) computations (like mathematica)
via SymPy.

I was under the idea that the Mathematica team has already shaped and
polished the road. I can see that I was wrong. It is still very, very
rough (much more than the first draft of my book).

Sergio