[Edu-sig] Update on my PSF doings

[kirby urner]

I've been enjoying learning something of the internal organs involved
in British education, thanks to working with Dr. Ian Benson on various
proposals before the PSF regarding some math through programming
initiatives (actually, just the one proposal at the moment, dubbed
NiceTime [tm], a kind of wordplay if you know said organs (which I
don't, or just barely)).[0]

Anyway, for those of you into math teaching (just a few of us on
edu-sig), the counterpart of the USA's NCTM (following me on Twitter
since the BOF at the last conference), is the ATM, founded by Caleb
Gattegno and at one time a vector (in the CDC sense) for a positive
strain of math teaching centered around those colored blocks or bricks
we associate with the name cuisenaire (Belgian guy) -- not to be
confused with Cuisinart if you're an American).[1]

Given Dr. Ian has been to my last too Chicago presentations, he's well
aware that OCN is in the math education business.  In the Portland
context, I keep at cube a CubeSpace for intermittent use, which is our
geek hogwarts for adult professional, home of Portland Barcamp, most
the user group meetings (not OpenGIS though).  Our geek hogwarts for
middle schoolers is Winterhaven, where I taught Python at the 8th
grade level using some GIS concepts ("hello world" means booting up
Google Earth and saying "hello" -- or stick in a push-pin and grab the
KML more likely).[2]

A few pilot schools have staying with Gattegno's original concepts
more or less and have qualified for special attention.  They're eying
Python among other FOSS offerings as possibly contiguous, now that
their students are all algebra savvy and chomping at the bit for more
challenges.  But of course our audience is teachers and empowering
them.  This is where the NiceTime proposal comes in.

As many of you know, OCN is into futuristic stuff, sort of at the
other end of the spectrum from ultra-conservative.  I use the "rib
cage" operations of __add__, __mul__ and their inverses with multiple
"math objects" in order to generate an algebraic sense of group, ring
and field properties.  When you define the "same" operations across
matrices, rational numbers (Q objects), integers modulo N etc., you
end up grasping higher level mathematics more successfully, or at
least that's the theory. [3]

We want this layer of abstraction so our dive into RSA and/or
Diffie-Hellman-Merkle doesn't feel like some out of the blue math club
activity or after school foray.  We want abstract algebra more
intrinsic to the curriculum and think Python, operator overloading in
particular, will make this doable.

Of course this early in the game and it's by no means obvious:

(a) that NiceTime will be approved (this is a 2nd pass already,
Steve's attitude being "if at first you don't succeed..." -- he's been
encouraging of Dr. Ian's process, knows he's just one more voice in
the directorship, albeit the chairman)

(b) that exotic Made in Oregon content will be what teachers are
wanting to tackle, this being a UK project after all.  My materials
are already FOSS and on the Web, including as videos, so it's not like
I really need to lift a finger or anything (the Web is like magical in
that way, wouldn't have much FOSS without it).

What I'm pretty sure the teachers won't want, because too futuristic,
is my Sqlite + Vpython lesson plans, where I take related tables
stuffed with vector coordinates of polyhedra and draw those on screen.
 Gattegno's curriculum is called AlgebraFirst for a reason (Ian also
works with algebra.org in NY), whereas at OCN I'm into GeometryFirst,
tempting Montessori schools with my Mites, Sytes and Kites, sometimes
using CubeIt! (from Huntar company), other manipulables.[4]

This is what got me in hot water with NCTM years ago when they changed
their logo from looking like an octet-truss (relates to this geometry)
to an infinity symbol with stronger lawyer protections (like PSF, they
were worried about losing control of their branding, actually were
losing control in this case).[5]

The politics here is Bucky Fuller was a cold warrior type, honored by
then president Reagan with a Medal of Freedom but hated and feared by
just about everyone else (except artists, hippies, other "live in the
moment" types).  To this day, if you talk about space-filling Mites in
a math teaching context, you're likely to get run out of town (unless
the town is Portland, in which case you're allowed to teach this
material through Saturday Academy, with the blessings of Silicon
Forest -- but this town is unusual in that respect, a FOSS
capital).[6]

So for now I'm mostly sticking to algebra and the transferable "rib
cage" concept, thinking to walk teachers through these "math objects"
with interactive capabilities.  Having this new discrete math title
(brought to my attention by Software Association of Oregon, which has
designs similar to mine, in terms of FOSS in the schools) is a boost,
especially the section on polynomials and their treatment as algebraic
objects (i.e. you can add and multiply two polynomials no problem,
with closure in both cases).

I'm pretty sure NiceTime is on board with the cryptography stuff at
least in storyboard.  Dr. Ian supplied a short video clip to my 3 hour
workshop (first 57 minutes syndicated through Blip TV) authorized for
that one viewing only, regarding DHM use at Amazon.  It was a
kid-friendly Discovery channel segment, about public key cryptography
more generally, so also suitable for RSA, which is what I've been
going over (Andy Harrington supplied some improvements as well).[7]

One example of a high school project that might merit a poster at
Pycon someday would be to dig through the Mozilla code base and find
the https bits, maybe convert those to running Python.  It's possible
to take lower level C code and recast it as inanely verbose and
unpythonic Python that nevertheless runs and, by imitating the C,
gives Python readers a first inkling of what a lower level language is
like (many won't know).  Anyway, that's one idea.

I've been very up front with both Steve (holdenweb.com) and Dr. Ian
though:  I'm still pretty focused on South Africa and Lesotho (my
family HQS was the latter mountain kingdom for like 7 years,
transferring from another mountain kingdom in the Himalayas).
Archbishop Tutu (like Dr. Ian, a King's College grad) was in town last
night, yakking about ubuntu and all that good stuff, inspiring my home
sickness for Cape Town.  Jackalope is looking good by the way.  But
it's not either/or is it?

My role in all this, as a noob with PSF (incoming Class of '09), is
simply to look over Steve's shoulder and watch the process.  I'm not
being asked to vote and there's nothing in the proposed budget to buy
any of my services.  I've got other irons in the fire when it comes to
teacher trainings, but really like this idea that the UK is looking at
FOSS outside any strictly CS teaching context (which I think way too
narrow, unlike CP4E's).

Kirby
4D

[0] http://www.ncetm.org.uk/ (i.e. NiCETiMe)

[1] http://worldgame.blogspot.com/search?q=cuisenaire
http://www.cuisinart.com/ (not to be confused with)

[2] http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/winterhaven/ (FOSS @ geek hogwarts)

[3] example explanation in math teaching context:
http://mathforum.org/kb/plaintext.jspa?messageID=6692550

[4] http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/03/matrix-of-sytes.html  (re
manipulables, I haven't even opened my shrink wrapped
StrangeAttractors because the factory burned to the ground, making it
a collector's item -- told Chris Brooks of SAO it was "my retirement"
at Bagdad lunch meeting -- being somewhat facetious (I did the box
graphics using Python + POV-Ray, actually got paid for it).  We had an
all-6th grade assembly at geek hogwarts to learn about this geometry,
build left and right A modules as a group process:
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/search?q=sixth+grade

[5] http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/ncmtmemo.html (hah hah, I'm
still such a noob back then, don't even get the acronym right in the
URL, but you see the old logo there).

[6] "cold warrior" in the sense of American industrial complex in
competition with USSR's (didn't help matters that Fuller's primary
collaborator on his magnum opus, dubbed "Sonny" because of their close
relationship, was also a well-known cold warrior in his own right).
Dr. Ian and Steve kindly joined my last day of Pycon to see 'Starting
with the Universe' at Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, per slides.
More on "suspicion of Bucky" (occasional hatred) in the new bio on
H.S.M. Coxeter (Canadian), to whom 'Synergetics' is dedicated (they
were friends in the end), 'The King of Infinite Space' (lots more
gossip via CSN if interested).

[7] Dr. Ian is in touch with Whit, CSO for Sun these days (he is also
well connected at SU ( http://stanford.edu/~ibenson/ ))
See:  http://osgarden.appspot.com/motd.html for some additional context.