On Apr 4, 12:28 pm, David Joyner <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Alec: (but that should be approved by moderators there :) > > David: Sorry, I did not. I don't see what this has to do with Sage > development or (to mention the goal of the sage-edu list) with the > development of Sage packages useful for teaching. Well, it has to do with the thought that people will learn math or some subject with math content by presenting their problems to some external actor (a human or computer program) from which the answer can be copied down into their homework. It was my impression that many advocates of math software like Sage would endorse the notion that one learns better with such an assistant nearby, and thus this article is food for thought. The article does not address the other article of faith for many advocates of computer systems that it is somehow good for the soul to learn how to use a computer, as expressed by pallab, above. I personally think it is food for thought. I learned to "extract square roots" by pencil-and-paper. I also learned to use a slide rule. I am currently much less facile with these techniques than I was, previously. For that matter, I am probably less accurate in long division and adding large columns of numbers... If students are given a tool that does algebra (or more), does that mean that they will be unable to do algebra (or whatever) accurately? If so, is this a desirable consequence of using Sage? (etc.) Is there a danger here, or do we think that (say) the quadratic formula is no longer worth learning because a computer can do it? David: Perhaps you could copy this discussion over to sage-flame, but I think it would be courtesy to plant a link from sage-edu. Offhand, I don't know how to copy these items myself. RJF If you think it is irrelevant to the advocates of Sage for educational use, I suppose that it is your > On the other hand, I do believe that there are several > math teaching email lists which the message would > be appropriate for. > > > > > Alec Mihailovs > > > -- > > To post to this group, send an email to [email protected] > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > > [email protected] > > For more options, visit this group > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > > URL:http://www.sagemath.org > > > To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject. -- To post to this group, send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
