[Edu-sig] seasonal challenge to calculator dominance in high schools

[kirby urner]

On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 4:12 PM Wes Turner <wes.turner at gmail.com> wrote:


> Yes, my friend Gerald de Jong was a first adapter of "elastic interval
>> geometry" where every "rod" is a tension-compression spring governed by
>> mathematics.  He put creatures made as tensegrities in a simulation and
>> selected for which was able to walk furthest, of course adding a concept of
>> gravity + friction (traction).
>>
>
> TIL about Tensegrity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity
>
>
Good link.

I had the distinction of serving as first webmaster for both BFI (bfi.org
-- Buckminster Fuller Institute) *and* Kenneth Snelson.

https://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/10/some-prehistory.html

He later got a professional to redo his site but said fine to my keeping
the original we made together.

http://www.grunch.net/snelson/

The two experienced a falling-out and somewhat bitter rivalry after the
Black Mountain college collaboration.  Something of a coup that I could
help bring the two camps closer together.  Kenneth gave me one of his
originals ('Barrel Tower') which sits here on my desk (pretty small, but
too big to go through EWR X-ray, and this was just after 9-11 -- that
October -- so they let me walk it through).

Kenneth let me stay as a guest a few times.  I believe the last time I saw
him I brought my daughter to meet him, and also to attend a Best of Friends
exhibit at Noguchi Museum in Long Island City.  Fond memories.


Does codesters have any features for grading?
>
> https://www.codesters.com/?lang=en
>
> Yup, Codesters has an integrated LMS and automated grading. Can it post
> grades to e.g. Google Classroom?
>
>


I've never fully explored all those features, as the after-school meetups
I've been leading, either present in person or virtually, are non-graded.

We have a place to make notes on what each student is working on, but when
I teach remotely, they may be wearing a hoodie and using an alias, i.e. I'm
thankfully not in a position to issue grades or even be sure who is whom.

However I do make use of the "share and mix" features, similar to MIT
Scratch.

We create a private "swimming pool" wherein any student can toss (share)
project they're working on, not visible to general public, and other
students can grab a copy.  I can bring up student code on the big screen
and discuss it in front of the class, or let them do it.

Show & Tell is a big part of learning to code as a group activity.  Have
students present about their own work, but also observe others commenting
on it as well.

Helping kids in person is more straightforward as I can just look over
their shoulders.  That's what I've been doing around Portland, driving
around to many campuses, both public and private.  It's hard to think of
many other jobs that would have given me access to so many different
academies.  Good opportunity to assess the state of the art.  I worked in
quite a few Windows labs.

A popular Codesters topic is "how do I import pictures I see on the
internet and turn them into sprites?".  Scratch allows this too.

https://www.codesters.com/preview/0da23d529403455092d171134020cc1e/

Scratch is on the whole enjoying a bigger budget and support team is my
impression, and is especially capable around sound (writing programs that
make music for example).  Codesters is not non-auditory.

We could go a lot further with some Pythonic world civilizations game...
"we" being a team of skilled coders (not just little me writing a few
Jupyter Notebooks for other Bucky nut world gamers. :-D).

Kirby
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/attachments/20190623/6614ede4/attachment.html>