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

[Wes Turner]

On Sunday, June 23, 2019, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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).
>

I grew up in Omaha, NE and the suburbs of St Louis, MO. I don't remember
when I leaned about the "Old Man River" proposal to build a dome over all
of East St Louis in 1971
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project

AFAIU, the Mars 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge entries are all necessarily
designed to be built with 3D printing and very little water. IDK if any
Fuller or Fuller-esque structures have been incorporated or not
http://www.nasa.gov/3DPHab

https://youtube.com/results?search_query=Mars+habitat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_habitat#NASA

The world's largest glazed geodesic dome protects the year-round desert
environment through hot windy summers and cold snowy winters at the Henry
Doorly Zoo in Omaha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Doorly_Zoo_and_Aquarium#Desert_Dome

Maybe easier to clean a geodesic dome than a fully-spherical structure. Are
geodesic domes as or more resilient than regular domes?
https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/geodesic-domes


>
> 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.
>

 Fun!

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.
>

Like a pastebin app or more of a wiki? If codesters creates a screenshot
(and links to them with og:image or schema:image metadata) that'd be cool.


> 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.
>

The collaborative features of VScode (and CoCalc's LaTeX editor and
notebook time slider) may be helpful for remotely helping folks.


>
> 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.
>

AFAIU, Windows 10 now includes Python 3.7 in the app store. IDK whether
Anaconda or Miniconda are yet also packaged for the Windows app store.

I've heard that passing USB keys around with the latest anaconda package
set(s) for all 3 platforms works, but some environments are careful about
sharing storage media. Something like AcademicTorrents would be quickest
when internet bandwidth is limited but users can open a port.


>
> 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/
>

https://octodex.github.com/

The artist who created the original octocat (from a stock image by Simon
Oxley) lists his portfolio through Dribbble
http://cameronmcefee.com/work/the-octocat/
https://dribbble.com/cameronmcefee


> 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.
>

I tried to lay down a track with concurrent beats with Scratch one day. It
sort of worked. I'll have to try out the Codesters sound support in a lab
someday.

Here's a gist that shows how to generate headerless waveforms with
numpy.sin or scipy.signal and play them back with Audacity:
https://thehackerdiary.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/it-is-ridiculously-easy-to-generate-any-audio-signal-using-python/

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9770073/sound-generation-synthesis-with-python

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK
http://chuck.stanford.edu/release/
http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
https://github.com/Calysto/chuck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding :

> It is most prominent as a performing arts form and a creativity technique
centred upon the writing of source code and the use of interactive
programming in an improvised way. Live coding is often used to create sound
and image based digital media, as well as light systems, improvised dance
and poetry,[4][5] though is particularly prevalent in computer music
usually as improvisation, although it could be combined with algorithmic
composition.[6] Typically, the process of writing source code is made
visible by projecting the computer screen in the audience space, with ways
of visualising the code an area of active research.[7] Live coding
techniques are also employed outside of performance, such as in producing
sound for film[8] or audiovisual work for interactive art installations.


>
> 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).
>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_(game_designer)#Game_designer
might have some ideas about this presumably reinforcement-learning based
game (with MathTeX, I'm sure) that you speak of. One word: Nbgrader.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhandy/2013/03/25/moores-law-vs-wrights-law/


>
> Kirby
>
>
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