________________________________
From: prathap sridharan <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tue, December 8, 2009 2:31:17 PM
Subject: Re: [sage-edu] How using Sage for high school math effectively?
This might sound a bit tangential to some but in my mind is very relevant. I
think using the Litvin text to create a Math/CS course would be awesome. I
think what would further motivate students overwhelming to the point of forcing
the faculty to seriously give this some consideration is a course that teaches
python along the lines of Litvin but the problems the students are solving are
Math puzzles.
To me this has a 2 fold positive effect:
1) You are getting kids ready for the real world by teaching them programming
in a real world computer programming language
2) You are getting kids really excited about mathematics. It is no secret that
most students are in the Math class because they have to be. Almost everything
being taught in high school can be motivated in the form of a puzzle. Martin
Gardner's books are excellent for that.
So if you teach this CS class using python/sage and use it to solve
recreational math problems, you really have something here.
Thanks,
Prathap
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 1:59 PM, michel paul <[email protected]> wrote:
>I can't claim it's effective, but so far this is what I'm doing -
>
>As much as possible I try to use the SAGE notebook as my blackboard. At the
>beginning of this year I had my students open their own SAGE notebook accounts
>as their first HW assignment.
>
>In my Analysis classes I enter the example problems for the lesson using LaTeX
>beforehand. Then in class I show them various ways to express the ideas in
>Python/Sage. My school uses SmartBoard airliner slates, so I use that to
>write directly on top of the SAGE notebook. That's useful for comparing the
>computational approach to the traditional hand-written form. I then publish
>the notebook page at sagenb and post the link along with the HW assignment
>online.
>
>In my FST (Functions, Statistics, Trig) classes I'm actually having them learn
>pure bare-bones Python! Around the 10-week marking period I could see that
>the mid-semester doldrums had start to set in, so one day I asked, "Would you
>guys like learn Python?" I was very pleased to get a strong positive
>response, as I've been trying for years to create a fusion CS/math course and
>have been met with unbelievable resistance, both from students and staff. The
>primary reason the students have been resistant has to do with grades. The
>kids at our school are terribly grade conscious, and the suggestion of using
>Python in class immediately sounds 'hard'. The primary reason for resistance
>on the part of my colleagues and department chair has to do with graphing
>calculators. Their attitude is, hey, we've got these great calculators. Why
>introduce something else when the calculator is 'good enough?' Wow - I am
>still amazed as I reflect back on all the
frustrating conversations I've had. I keep saying, look, these things are
used NOWHERE outside of a high school math classroom. Why not show the kids
how things are ACTUALLY done?
>
>So fortunately the kids were interested in exploring Python. Though you can
>use Sage without knowing Python, I think it's a whole lot better to become
>fluent in bare-bones Python to get the most out of Sage. According to our
>curriculum, we are supposed to be studying transformations of functions and
>data - so I've been doing lots of stuff with list comprehensions. I've been
>having them do stuff in the Python shell, and then showing them how the same
>thing also works in Sage, plus you get lots of other great stuff, like easy
>graphing.
>
>One thing I've concluded - though it is possible in SAGE to directly plot
>various functions, I think it's better for the kids to first construct lists
>of ordered pairs as list comprehensions and then to plot them using 'points'
>or 'line'. That way they can see by doing that as you increase the number of
>steps you get a smoother and smoother graph.
>
>My dream is to create a fusion math/CS course. I came an inch close to having
>it happen for this year - but the course wasn't really supported by my dept
>chair and was never officially put into the schedule, so kids couldn't sign up
>for it. However, as it turns out, there actually was more interest on the
>part of the students than the administration wanted to admit, and I'm
>continuing to push for it. Eventually it HAS to happen.
>
>Ultimately I want to create a Computational Analysis course using the Litvin
>text Math for the Digital Age. I think it would be a wonderful book. We
>would begin there, and whatever topics in the Analysis curriculum that were
>not addressed in that book we would bring in as needed.
>
>I'm very much interested in getting something like this to happen, and I'd
>like to know if anyone is doing something like that anywhere.
>
>- Michel Paul
>
>
>
>
>On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Chris Seberino <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>>
>>
>>How are people using Sage for high school math effectively?
>>
>>>>I've tried a few things and discovered it isn't obvious how to use
>>>>Sage effectively for high school students.
>>
>>>>(This isn't a fault of Sage, but rather, is caused by fact that good
>>>>teaching is hard and students aren't simple machines.)
>>
>>>>Chris
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
>--
>"Computer science is the new mathematics."
>
>-- Dr. Christos Papadimitriou
>
>
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