----- Original Message ----
From: David Joyner <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tue, December 8, 2009 3:32:32 PM
Subject: Re: [sage-edu] still getting e-mail after unsubscribe???
As Minh said, email
[email protected]
as described at the bottom of every email you receive on this list.
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Jenya Polyakova <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> ________________________________
> 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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