Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:48 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.comwrote: From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs, several times. It breaks at fourth roll. Toddler experiments with breakable objects more to explore the idea of sometimes. They keep discussing this big idea of sometimes and experimenting. A few years down the road, the mother relates to the kid how this guy was saying, I smoked all my life and I am fine - and they laugh at it, together. Probability and statistics comes in later still. Meanwhile, the bunny's safe, and a whole host of dangers that happens sometimes are easy to communicate to the toddler. - Deep tool: graphs. Several kids play with graphs qualitatively (a-la http://thisisindexed.com/). What comes of it? When the 5yo math club members yell too loud, the leader makes a yelling graph kids follow up and down in volume, as it's being drawn, thereby obtaining control. When a 10yo experiences a strange math anxiety, she draws a graph of her mood vs. problem solving events, and analyzes it for possible patterns. When a tween and teen group discusses game design, they compare learning curves for apps and games they know and make design decisions correspondingly. i wish I had thought of this for my noisy special class :-) - Deep collective reasoning: kites. A 3-5 Reggio Emilia group decides to make kites together. Adults provide books and supplies, kids work on patterns and sketch and photograph their ideas. It takes listening and coordinating; their peacekeepers of the day resolve conflicts. Kites change from day to day, becoming increasingly complex. Great examples Maria but Subbu may still be correct - in that some deep thinking takes years to emerge clearly or it might appear then get buried due to peer pressure and then reappear again later, etc. I would say that you are both right. I have heard it mentioned a few times that it takes 10 years for genius to emerge, eg. Mozart started at 5yo but did not display genius until 15yo btw how would the mother know that the toddler did not believe her if the toddler did not voice their dissent? it takes a smart mother to guess that the toddler does not believe and go through the rolling the glass down the stairs routine if the toddler does not object - my general point being that much growth is silent, hard to or almost impossible to observe also see minsky 'society of mind' section 7:10 Genius Cheers, Maria Droujkova Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath subscribe now to discuss future math culture with parents, researchers and techies http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
Hi Subbu Here's one way to look at this... IQ - What if you had an IQ of 500, but were born in 10,000 BC. You would not be able to make a lot of progress. For example, Leonardo was very smart but couldn't come up with the engines his vehicle designs needed in order to work -- he was born in the wrong century for what he wanted to do. Knowledge - On the other hand, Henry Ford was not nearly as smart as Leonardo, but was born at a very good time and in a good place, so he was able to combine engineering and production inventions to make millions of inexpensive automobiles. Outlook - what made Henry Ford powerful (and most other things today) was an enormous change in Outlook (you called it a paradigm shift) which we can symbolize by invoking Newton. Knowledge is Silver, but Outlook is Gold (IQ is Lead ... because most worthwhile problems we want to work on and solve are beyond mere IQ) In other words, most human cultures accumulate and use a lot of knowledge (this is what a culture is all about) that is used to survive, to accommodate to the environment and even sometimes thrive. But the knowledge of a traditional society is very different from that of a feudal society which in turn is very different from a technological scientifically based society. The bug most people have about schools (including many who set up schools) is the idea that they are there to teach knowledge. (Not a bad secondary goal, but it's a very bad idea for it to be the main goal.) Montessori was an early voice who pointed out that the main purpose of schooling (especially early schooling) was to help students learn and deeply internalize the most powerful outlooks that have been discovered/invented by humans. She observed that otherwise children wind up living in the 20th century but with a 10th century (or much earlier) outlook. Both farms and schools (and books) can be limited or can be great learning environments for certain kinds of things. Historically, changes of outlook rarely happen on a farm, but sometimes happen in a school or from reading. Being around adults who have interesting outlooks works the best for most kids. I was brought up on a farm (a somewhat unusual one), but the farms in the region were not at all conducive for learning powerful outlooks, nor were the schools particularly. However, my grandfather was a writing farmer and had a huge library of books of all kinds in his farmhouse. This allowed me to bypass both the farm and the school. But someone helped me to learn to read at an early age, and someone had the library of books in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Someone decided that it was OK for me to read for hours every day instead of working on the farm (I had to do that too). So I very much depended on adult help but of a very different kind than my school friends got in their homes. The outlook in my farmhouse was that there was a lot more to life than learning to raise one crop a year. One size doesn't fit all, so a personal story can't be generalized very usefully to cover the plight of other children and of their parents. But, if I were trying to make things happen with IAEP, I would try to do just a few main things, and one of them would be to make a program/user-interface which could do a great job of teaching a child to read and write their native language without requiring any more from the adults around them than a little encouragement. Part of the desired changes in outlook could be made part of the stories and other materials that the kid would encounter along the way (and part of the big change in outlook that we are a part of is fluent reading of non-story materials in general and about outlook changing ideas in particular). Best wishes, Alan From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 12:12:59 PM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Wednesday 01 Jul 2009 9:03:26 am Alan Kay wrote: Your last sentence is somewhat parallel to what many business types like to say about how hard it is to measure Return On Investment for research funding. But in the business case, this is actually a form of dissembling, since an enormous percentage of all the GNP (and in fact GWP) comes directly as return from research. The top 10% of learners don't need school. The bottom 10% need more than a school. For the middle 80%, learning in school should be demonstrably better than that out of school. A school is relevant only if it can detect and weed out contexts that hinder learning (or have nothing to do with learning) as quickly as possible. Otherwise people will vote with their feet. In one of our local public school parents meet, a poor farmer challenged, Why should I retain my kid in this school? Can you show me one student who studied here and became
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Thursday 02 Jul 2009 5:19:58 pm Alan Kay wrote: Knowledge - On the other hand, Henry Ford was not nearly as smart as Leonardo, but was born at a very good time and in a good place, so he was able to combine engineering and production inventions to make millions of inexpensive automobiles. As I look out of my window at the smog hanging over the city, I wonder if this is really progress :-). But I digress .. Being around adults who have interesting outlooks works the best for most kids. This was the crux of the point that the farmer raised. He didn't want his kid associating with people whom he thought were ineffective as guides. BTW, his feedback was crucial in fixing some of the lacunae in his school and helped raise the bar. The kid is back in school and making good progress. I was brought up on a farm (a somewhat unusual one), but the farms in the region were not at all conducive for learning powerful outlooks, nor were the schools particularly. However, my grandfather was a writing farmer and had a huge library of books of all kinds in his farmhouse. Parents set a minimum bar. As I pointed out earlier, a school is relevant only to the extent that it can do better than that level; much better. But, if I were trying to make things happen with IAEP, I would try to do just a few main things, and one of them would be to make a program/user-interface which could do a great job of teaching a child to read and write their native language without requiring any more from the adults around them than a little encouragement. This is exactly what we do (sikshana.blogspot.com) but in a way that differs from Sugarlabs. Kids use computer as a tool to discover, to create, to simulate ideas; not as an appliance to be owned. Their projects are accumulated on a personal flash chip, but the tool itself is shared (and changes every year) and augments other learning aids in the schools. We don't know if this is the best way to use a computer. We started with this assumption and will tweak it as we learn more about its effectiveness. Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 15:12, K. K. Subramaniamsubb...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday 02 Jul 2009 5:19:58 pm Alan Kay wrote: Knowledge - On the other hand, Henry Ford was not nearly as smart as Leonardo, but was born at a very good time and in a good place, so he was able to combine engineering and production inventions to make millions of inexpensive automobiles. As I look out of my window at the smog hanging over the city, I wonder if this is really progress :-). But I digress .. Being around adults who have interesting outlooks works the best for most kids. This was the crux of the point that the farmer raised. He didn't want his kid associating with people whom he thought were ineffective as guides. BTW, his feedback was crucial in fixing some of the lacunae in his school and helped raise the bar. The kid is back in school and making good progress. I was brought up on a farm (a somewhat unusual one), but the farms in the region were not at all conducive for learning powerful outlooks, nor were the schools particularly. However, my grandfather was a writing farmer and had a huge library of books of all kinds in his farmhouse. Parents set a minimum bar. As I pointed out earlier, a school is relevant only to the extent that it can do better than that level; much better. But, if I were trying to make things happen with IAEP, I would try to do just a few main things, and one of them would be to make a program/user-interface which could do a great job of teaching a child to read and write their native language without requiring any more from the adults around them than a little encouragement. This is exactly what we do (sikshana.blogspot.com) but in a way that differs from Sugarlabs. Kids use computer as a tool to discover, to create, to simulate ideas; not as an appliance to be owned. I don't think Sugar Labs has much to say about who owns the computing device. I would personally be happy to work on Sugar so that people with differing views on that aspect benefit from it. Regards, Tomeu Their projects are accumulated on a personal flash chip, but the tool itself is shared (and changes every year) and augments other learning aids in the schools. We don't know if this is the best way to use a computer. We started with this assumption and will tweak it as we learn more about its effectiveness. Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
Heh heh, yes your comment about smog is quite a digression (because Henry Ford is just a stand in), but it does underline the huge qualitative difference between knowledge and outlook (a society with a much stronger outlook would choose to make vehicles that didn't generate smog and be willing to pay the whole price for it). Sounds like an interesting farmer, but one would expect that he would use his larger perspectives to be more successful (a digression also I confess). I pretty much agree that one of the purposes of schools is to exceed the parental context when that is below threshold (not so easy even when the school is terrific -- cf studies of blue collar culture inertia in the UK). I think there is a bit of an analogy to books and other materials. If there are a reasonable number of books in a freely available school library then a lot of progress can be made without personal ownership, in part because when a child wants to read for any reason, they have a good chance of finding a book without having to put off the impulse for too long. Seymour Papert observed that a school which had a special room in which the five pencils and the only writing materials available could only be used for a few hours a week, was not a viable model for pencils or books or for computers. A more complex question has to do the the customs of subsistence cultures which do a lot of sharing of scarce materials. Even though those might be the customs, it could be that that depth of sharing is simply a dead end -- this argument has been made strongly wrt the enormous change in outlook from the Middle Ages to the 17th century that was brought by both abundant and privately read printed books. I'm more on the side of this argument than against it. Being able to form your own point of view outside the prevailing social context seems very worthwhile to me, even with its dangers -- this is a very large part of the difference between traditional cultures which are good at coping but not good at progressing, and the much rarer cultures which have a sense that normal is not the same as reality and therefor it has the possibility of being changed for the better. Best wishes, Alan From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2009 6:12:02 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Thursday 02 Jul 2009 5:19:58 pm Alan Kay wrote: Knowledge - On the other hand, Henry Ford was not nearly as smart as Leonardo, but was born at a very good time and in a good place, so he was able to combine engineering and production inventions to make millions of inexpensive automobiles. As I look out of my window at the smog hanging over the city, I wonder if this is really progress :-). But I digress .. Being around adults who have interesting outlooks works the best for most kids. This was the crux of the point that the farmer raised. He didn't want his kid associating with people whom he thought were ineffective as guides. BTW, his feedback was crucial in fixing some of the lacunae in his school and helped raise the bar. The kid is back in school and making good progress. I was brought up on a farm (a somewhat unusual one), but the farms in the region were not at all conducive for learning powerful outlooks, nor were the schools particularly. However, my grandfather was a writing farmer and had a huge library of books of all kinds in his farmhouse. Parents set a minimum bar. As I pointed out earlier, a school is relevant only to the extent that it can do better than that level; much better. But, if I were trying to make things happen with IAEP, I would try to do just a few main things, and one of them would be to make a program/user-interface which could do a great job of teaching a child to read and write their native language without requiring any more from the adults around them than a little encouragement. This is exactly what we do (sikshana.blogspot.com) but in a way that differs from Sugarlabs. Kids use computer as a tool to discover, to create, to simulate ideas; not as an appliance to be owned. Their projects are accumulated on a personal flash chip, but the tool itself is shared (and changes every year) and augments other learning aids in the schools. We don't know if this is the best way to use a computer. We started with this assumption and will tweak it as we learn more about its effectiveness. Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: When I get together with other scientists, at some point I ask them how they got started. For most, it wasn't because of school, but because of direct contact with adults, often a relative who was a scientist, and some of the older generation got into it from reading the classic science fiction stories of the 40s and 50s. (This is not a scientific survey, heh heh, but it would be interesting to see the results of one.) I have seen results of more formal studies about the subject in several different areas. One of most notable areas is survival: success stories of people who grew up with serious adversity, such as parental abuse or extreme poverty. Almost universally, people who were able to make it name significant adults as the key difference in their life. I conducted some interviews at two summer camps, one for keeping girls on the fast math track, and another for underrepresented minorities. I asked kids about their decisions for college, future career, and current math and science activities. Personal adult friends or relatives came up as the main factor in these interviews. My daughter is working on a parent-child-professional coop called My young apprentice for helping kids meet adults for micro-apprenticeships and possibly longer-term contact. It's crucial for, well, everything pretty much. From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs, several times. It breaks at fourth roll. Toddler experiments with breakable objects more to explore the idea of sometimes. They keep discussing this big idea of sometimes and experimenting. A few years down the road, the mother relates to the kid how this guy was saying, I smoked all my life and I am fine - and they laugh at it, together. Probability and statistics comes in later still. Meanwhile, the bunny's safe, and a whole host of dangers that happens sometimes are easy to communicate to the toddler. - Deep tool: graphs. Several kids play with graphs qualitatively (a-la http://thisisindexed.com/). What comes of it? When the 5yo math club members yell too loud, the leader makes a yelling graph kids follow up and down in volume, as it's being drawn, thereby obtaining control. When a 10yo experiences a strange math anxiety, she draws a graph of her mood vs. problem solving events, and analyzes it for possible patterns. When a tween and teen group discusses game design, they compare learning curves for apps and games they know and make design decisions correspondingly. - Deep collective reasoning: kites. A 3-5 Reggio Emilia group decides to make kites together. Adults provide books and supplies, kids work on patterns and sketch and photograph their ideas. It takes listening and coordinating; their peacekeepers of the day resolve conflicts. Kites change from day to day, becoming increasingly complex. Cheers, Maria Droujkova Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath subscribe now to discuss future math culture with parents, researchers and techies http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
In theory, teachers are supposed to be a critical pool of significant adults, especially for the fields -- such as math and science -- in which most parents are not adept or interested. In the US, this is unfortunately also the case for most elementary school teachers, and (way too) many middle and high school teachers. Serious juvenile science fiction stories and novels -- not TV or movies -- in the 40s and 50s were a great alternative. For example, those by Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, etc. Cheers, Alan From: Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:18:34 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: When I get together with other scientists, at some point I ask them how they got started. For most, it wasn't because of school, but because of direct contact with adults, often a relative who was a scientist, and some of the older generation got into it from reading the classic science fiction stories of the 40s and 50s. (This is not a scientific survey, heh heh, but it would be interesting to see the results of one.) I have seen results of more formal studies about the subject in several different areas. One of most notable areas is survival: success stories of people who grew up with serious adversity, such as parental abuse or extreme poverty. Almost universally, people who were able to make it name significant adults as the key difference in their life. I conducted some interviews at two summer camps, one for keeping girls on the fast math track, and another for underrepresented minorities. I asked kids about their decisions for college, future career, and current math and science activities. Personal adult friends or relatives came up as the main factor in these interviews. My daughter is working on a parent-child-professional coop called My young apprentice for helping kids meet adults for micro-apprenticeships and possibly longer-term contact. It's crucial for, well, everything pretty much. From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs, several times. It breaks at fourth roll. Toddler experiments with breakable objects more to explore the idea of sometimes. They keep discussing this big idea of sometimes and experimenting. A few years down the road, the mother relates to the kid how this guy was saying, I smoked all my life and I am fine - and they laugh at it, together. Probability and statistics comes in later still. Meanwhile, the bunny's safe, and a whole host of dangers that happens sometimes are easy to communicate to the toddler. - Deep tool: graphs. Several kids play with graphs qualitatively (a-la http://thisisindexed.com/). What comes of it? When the 5yo math club members yell too loud, the leader makes a yelling graph kids follow up and down in volume, as it's being drawn, thereby obtaining control. When a 10yo experiences a strange math anxiety, she draws a graph of her mood vs. problem solving events, and analyzes it for possible patterns. When a tween and teen group discusses game design, they compare learning curves for apps and games they know and make design decisions correspondingly. - Deep collective reasoning: kites. A 3-5 Reggio Emilia group decides to make kites together. Adults provide books and supplies, kids work on patterns and sketch and photograph their ideas. It takes listening and coordinating; their peacekeepers
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: In theory, teachers are supposed to be a critical pool of significant adults, especially for the fields -- such as math and science -- in which most parents are not adept or interested. In the US, this is unfortunately also the case for most elementary school teachers, and (way too) many middle and high school teachers. Serious juvenile science fiction stories and novels -- not TV or movies -- in the 40s and 50s were a great alternative. For example, those by Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, etc. Cheers, Alan Juvenile science fiction and fantasy has been increasingly moving from technology focus to social and psychological topics. What kids read now is much more likely to be about touch moral choices than about fancy future technologies. This may be a part of the general lack of math in juvenile cultures, including social web sites. MariaD -- *From:* Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com *To:* Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com *Cc:* K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org *Sent:* Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:18:34 AM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: When I get together with other scientists, at some point I ask them how they got started. For most, it wasn't because of school, but because of direct contact with adults, often a relative who was a scientist, and some of the older generation got into it from reading the classic science fiction stories of the 40s and 50s. (This is not a scientific survey, heh heh, but it would be interesting to see the results of one.) I have seen results of more formal studies about the subject in several different areas. One of most notable areas is survival: success stories of people who grew up with serious adversity, such as parental abuse or extreme poverty. Almost universally, people who were able to make it name significant adults as the key difference in their life. I conducted some interviews at two summer camps, one for keeping girls on the fast math track, and another for underrepresented minorities. I asked kids about their decisions for college, future career, and current math and science activities. Personal adult friends or relatives came up as the main factor in these interviews. My daughter is working on a parent-child-professional coop called My young apprentice for helping kids meet adults for micro-apprenticeships and possibly longer-term contact. It's crucial for, well, everything pretty much. From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs, several times. It breaks at fourth roll. Toddler experiments with breakable objects more to explore the idea of sometimes. They keep discussing this big idea of sometimes and experimenting. A few years down the road, the mother relates to the kid how this guy was saying, I smoked all my life and I am fine - and they laugh at it, together. Probability and statistics comes in later still. Meanwhile, the bunny's safe, and a whole host of dangers that happens sometimes are easy to communicate to the toddler. - Deep tool: graphs. Several kids play with graphs qualitatively (a-la http://thisisindexed.com/). What comes of it? When the 5yo math club members yell too loud, the leader makes a yelling graph kids follow up and down in volume, as it's being drawn, thereby obtaining control. When a 10yo experiences a strange math anxiety, she draws a graph of her mood vs
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Maria Droujkovadroujk...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: In theory, teachers are supposed to be a critical pool of significant adults, especially for the fields -- such as math and science -- in which most parents are not adept or interested. In the US, this is unfortunately also the case for most elementary school teachers, and (way too) many middle and high school teachers. Serious juvenile science fiction stories and novels -- not TV or movies -- in the 40s and 50s were a great alternative. For example, those by Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, etc. Cheers, Alan Juvenile science fiction and fantasy has been increasingly moving from technology focus to social and psychological topics. What kids read now is much more likely to be about touch moral choices than about fancy future technologies. This may be a part of the general lack of math in juvenile cultures, including social web sites. MariaD While this is an interesting topic. It is getting pretty far from the goals of Sugar Labs, to create and promote a learning platform. There are numerous forums for discussing education theory. This particular forum, and project, are geared toward turning those theories into activites and content which can used, tested, and assessed in classrooms. thanks david From: Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:18:34 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: When I get together with other scientists, at some point I ask them how they got started. For most, it wasn't because of school, but because of direct contact with adults, often a relative who was a scientist, and some of the older generation got into it from reading the classic science fiction stories of the 40s and 50s. (This is not a scientific survey, heh heh, but it would be interesting to see the results of one.) I have seen results of more formal studies about the subject in several different areas. One of most notable areas is survival: success stories of people who grew up with serious adversity, such as parental abuse or extreme poverty. Almost universally, people who were able to make it name significant adults as the key difference in their life. I conducted some interviews at two summer camps, one for keeping girls on the fast math track, and another for underrepresented minorities. I asked kids about their decisions for college, future career, and current math and science activities. Personal adult friends or relatives came up as the main factor in these interviews. My daughter is working on a parent-child-professional coop called My young apprentice for helping kids meet adults for micro-apprenticeships and possibly longer-term contact. It's crucial for, well, everything pretty much. From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs, several times. It breaks at fourth roll. Toddler experiments with breakable objects more to explore the idea of sometimes. They keep discussing this big idea of sometimes and experimenting. A few years down the road, the mother relates to the kid how this guy was saying, I smoked all my life and I am fine - and they laugh at it, together. Probability and statistics comes in later still. Meanwhile, the bunny's safe, and a whole
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 11:08:18AM -0500, David Farning wrote: [thread about how to get kids interested in science] While this is an interesting topic. It is getting pretty far from the goals of Sugar Labs, to create and promote a learning platform. I think it speaks to the components such a platform could contain and/or encourage. I didn't find it off-topic. thanks david Martin pgpLJnwB66J19.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
Having been through this era (I was born in 1940), the technology focus started dropping off rapidly during the 60s. I haven't seen any studies why. My private theory was that what science fiction had talked about up through the end of the 50s was starting to happen in the 60s (rockets to the moon, computers, the world of the future, etc.) and in many cases, it started to overrun what the writers actually did understand and could project out of their understanding. Part of the irony was that in so many cases, it was the kids who grew up on this stuff who went on to become scientists and engineers who started to actually make things along the lines of what had been previously just stories. Cheers, Alan From: Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:55:27 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: In theory, teachers are supposed to be a critical pool of significant adults, especially for the fields -- such as math and science -- in which most parents are not adept or interested. In the US, this is unfortunately also the case for most elementary school teachers, and (way too) many middle and high school teachers. Serious juvenile science fiction stories and novels -- not TV or movies -- in the 40s and 50s were a great alternative. For example, those by Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, etc. Cheers, Alan Juvenile science fiction and fantasy has been increasingly moving from technology focus to social and psychological topics. What kids read now is much more likely to be about touch moral choices than about fancy future technologies. This may be a part of the general lack of math in juvenile cultures, including social web sites. MariaD From: Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:18:34 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: When I get together with other scientists, at some point I ask them how they got started. For most, it wasn't because of school, but because of direct contact with adults, often a relative who was a scientist, and some of the older generation got into it from reading the classic science fiction stories of the 40s and 50s. (This is not a scientific survey, heh heh, but it would be interesting to see the results of one.) I have seen results of more formal studies about the subject in several different areas. One of most notable areas is survival: success stories of people who grew up with serious adversity, such as parental abuse or extreme poverty. Almost universally, people who were able to make it name significant adults as the key difference in their life. I conducted some interviews at two summer camps, one for keeping girls on the fast math track, and another for underrepresented minorities. I asked kids about their decisions for college, future career, and current math and science activities. Personal adult friends or relatives came up as the main factor in these interviews. My daughter is working on a parent-child-professional coop called My young apprentice for helping kids meet adults for micro-apprenticeships and possibly longer-term contact. It's crucial for, well, everything pretty much. From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
That's a pretty funny comment. (I hope you were being humerous ...) Cheers, Alan From: David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org To: Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com Cc: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com; K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 9:08:18 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Maria Droujkovadroujk...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: In theory, teachers are supposed to be a critical pool of significant adults, especially for the fields -- such as math and science -- in which most parents are not adept or interested. In the US, this is unfortunately also the case for most elementary school teachers, and (way too) many middle and high school teachers. Serious juvenile science fiction stories and novels -- not TV or movies -- in the 40s and 50s were a great alternative. For example, those by Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, etc. Cheers, Alan Juvenile science fiction and fantasy has been increasingly moving from technology focus to social and psychological topics. What kids read now is much more likely to be about touch moral choices than about fancy future technologies. This may be a part of the general lack of math in juvenile cultures, including social web sites. MariaD While this is an interesting topic. It is getting pretty far from the goals of Sugar Labs, to create and promote a learning platform. There are numerous forums for discussing education theory. This particular forum, and project, are geared toward turning those theories into activites and content which can used, tested, and assessed in classrooms. thanks david From: Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:18:34 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: When I get together with other scientists, at some point I ask them how they got started. For most, it wasn't because of school, but because of direct contact with adults, often a relative who was a scientist, and some of the older generation got into it from reading the classic science fiction stories of the 40s and 50s. (This is not a scientific survey, heh heh, but it would be interesting to see the results of one.) I have seen results of more formal studies about the subject in several different areas. One of most notable areas is survival: success stories of people who grew up with serious adversity, such as parental abuse or extreme poverty. Almost universally, people who were able to make it name significant adults as the key difference in their life. I conducted some interviews at two summer camps, one for keeping girls on the fast math track, and another for underrepresented minorities. I asked kids about their decisions for college, future career, and current math and science activities. Personal adult friends or relatives came up as the main factor in these interviews. My daughter is working on a parent-child-professional coop called My young apprentice for helping kids meet adults for micro-apprenticeships and possibly longer-term contact. It's crucial for, well, everything pretty much. From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 18:21, Martin Denglermar...@martindengler.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 11:08:18AM -0500, David Farning wrote: [thread about how to get kids interested in science] While this is an interesting topic. It is getting pretty far from the goals of Sugar Labs, to create and promote a learning platform. I think it speaks to the components such a platform could contain and/or encourage. I didn't find it off-topic. Same here, though I always enjoy reading what people reply at the question And what it has to do with Sugar?. Regards, Tomeu thanks david Martin ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 12:12 PM, K. K. Subramaniamsubb...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday 01 Jul 2009 9:03:26 am Alan Kay wrote: Your last sentence is somewhat parallel to what many business types like to say about how hard it is to measure Return On Investment for research funding. But in the business case, this is actually a form of dissembling, since an enormous percentage of all the GNP (and in fact GWP) comes directly as return from research. The top 10% of learners don't need school. The bottom 10% need more than a school. For the middle 80%, learning in school should be demonstrably better than that out of school. A school is relevant only if it can detect and weed out contexts that hinder learning (or have nothing to do with learning) as quickly as possible. Otherwise people will vote with their feet. In one of our local public school parents meet, a poor farmer challenged, Why should I retain my kid in this school? Can you show me one student who studied here and became somebody in life? In the field, I can teach him to raise at least one crop a year. For him, there was lot more of physics in the farm than in school textbooks. See description of parents' positive reactions in http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com wrote: ... As I said, I am a beginner at Sugar, so what I say now may need (a lot of?) adjustment. We should assure everyone that we all are beginners at Sugar (as Alan did.) It's An Education Project, not a platform project. Sugar Labs very much welcomes this discussion and mutual adjustment, see http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Education_Team. Authentic conversations with nuggets like those in this thread are food for reflection and inspire better plans, better collaborations, better Sugar... --Fred ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Monday 29 Jun 2009 10:01:34 pm Alan Kay wrote: (a) the epistemology of science is not at all what most people suppose, and it is rather distant from the normal ways our minds are set up to work, Could you please elaborate it? Isn't the desire to seek the deeper principles behind things and events around us a unique aspect of human mind? If we leave out the last few decades, scientists did pretty well on the whole. What I find disturbing is the 'intermediation' that has crept into the science education in recent decades. It is no longer about direct experience. It is about dealing with text in books, pictures on charts and movies on screen. It is about literacy, not comprehension [1]. [1] http://solar.physics.montana.edu/tslater/montillation_of_traxoline.html Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and ''Mastering'' Educational SW
Hi Tony 1. Most interesting learnable fields have numerous aspects, and many of these require various kinds of skill learning. The Kokorowski stuff could possibly be of great help in one part of the larger picture. For example, very composer and artist does problem solving, but the center of their arts is not problem solving. Yet, learning how to deal with problems within an art is an important part of the larger picture. Similarly, most forms of instrumental music playing require chops (technique) to be developed, and this requires an enormous amount of drill and practicing (and computers these days can provide very helpful tools here). But as Francois Couperin said in his book about learning to play the harpsichord I would rather be moved than amazed -- in other words, musical performance is not primarily about chops. The big difficulty in many educational schemes, particularly in a pragmatic society in a pragmatic age is that the lesser is substituted for the greater and the greater is redefined to be the lesser. 2. But, I also believe that educational technologies like the OLPC must have a new kind of mentoring user interface which is better than no teacher and better than a bad teacher (and as much better than these as possible). This has been a 50 year dream and goal (since McCarthy's Advice Taker proposal), and it is philisophically possible to achieve (pragmatically, on the scale of Kennedy's putting a man on the moon within the next decade goal of the 60s). In other words, the Dynabook which can help its user learn what is needed is likely the only reasonable way to scale and distribute the educational quality of experience that the billions of children in the world need. And, this is another example in which the all too human tendency to claim victory before achieving it will be an immense problem in really doing the job well enough. Cheers, Alan From: fors...@ozonline.com.au fors...@ozonline.com.au To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: gregsmit...@gmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 9:37:47 PM Subject: Re: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and ''Mastering'' Educational SW I share Alan and Edward's concern that we are selling kids short, if physics education is all about just getting the 'right' answers but want to break down the question posed by Greg into some sub-questions: 1)Despite the limitations of education which focuses on getting the 'right' answers, more structured or formulaic instruction may still have a place in education. 2)If (1) is accepted, is there a useful role for programmed instruction by intelligent tutors? 3)If (2) is accepted, can intelligent tutors give feedback by Socratic questioning? 4)If (3) is accepted, what are the implications for the Sugar OS? 1) There is good evidence that more traditional education which focuses on getting the 'right' answers to rather repetitive application of principles learnt in worked examples, results in knowledge which is inert, which cannot be used in real world situations. Real world problems are ill defined, multi disciplinary, with poorly defined goals and multiple or no solutions. Rote learning of standard solutions does little to advance real problem solving skills. If real world problem solving is accepted as the goal, this 'higher order thinking' still requires a repertoire of basic skills including numeracy and literacy. These basic skills may be best taught by traditional rote methods. Arguably Newtonian mechanics could be included in this basic skill set. 2) Programmed instruction depends on how smart the intelligent tutor is. Masteringphysics claims that through extensive trials, common misconceptions have been identified and the intelligent tutor can react appropriately. Given the millions of ways that it is possible to misunderstand, I retain mild scepticism about their claims but am prepared to accept them for the moment. 3) Socratic questioning exposes inconsistencies in a learner's understanding or mental model: “If you believe A then B flows as a consequence, but B is inconsistent. Do you still believe A?” A good method of 1:1 tutoring, but is the intelligent tutor really smart enough to get into the learner's head space and expose the inconsistencies of their mental model? 4) Should something like Masteringphysics be reproduced in Sugar? Given the immensity in doing the task well, I think no. Hopefully, if we wait, somebody will produce similar materials on the net which are in the public domain. Sugar then would need reliable network access, a compatible browser and the ability to display multimedia. These issues have already been identified as Sugar priorities. Does Sugar offer the opportunity to do this stuff in a better or different way? I see 2 features of the Sugar environment which make it different and potentially better, to accessing web based materials
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
Hi Subbu I don't know how to do justice to your question in a short reply. One of Anthropology's human universals (found everywhere in human societies) is indeed the desire to seek the deeper principles . etc. Science is used in at least two distinct ways these days. The roots of the word connote the gathering of knowledge and this sense some years ago in my European lunch companions led me into a very fruitless argument about e.g. whether Aristotle was a scientist. There I should have said modern science to denote the kind of science that Galileo and a few others started, which Bacon discussed so well as a debugging process for what is wrong with our brains/minds, and which Newton first showed how different and incredibly more powerful it could be from all previous forms of thinking. Human beings had been on the planet for at least 40,000 and as many as 100,000 years before the enormous qualitative leap was made in the 17th century. So we could say that the issue is really about (a) the kinds and forms of explanations that can satisfy the desire to seek deeper principles, and (b) that qualitative leaps are changes in kind not just degree, changes in outlook, not just in quantity of knowledge gathered. The duration of time before the discovery/invention of modern science is an indication of how well our minds can be fooled by appearances and beliefs and customs, etc. The difficulties of teaching real science have to do with the huge differences between the kinds of explanations which are sought and accepted, and with outlook changes that go considerably beyond our normal built in ways of perceiving, explaining, coping with the world, etc. Very best wishes, Alan From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com To: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 4:11:14 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Monday 29 Jun 2009 10:01:34 pm Alan Kay wrote: (a) the epistemology of science is not at all what most people suppose, and it is rather distant from the normal ways our minds are set up to work, Could you please elaborate it? Isn't the desire to seek the deeper principles behind things and events around us a unique aspect of human mind? If we leave out the last few decades, scientists did pretty well on the whole. What I find disturbing is the 'intermediation' that has crept into the science education in recent decades. It is no longer about direct experience. It is about dealing with text in books, pictures on charts and movies on screen. It is about literacy, not comprehension [1]. [1] http://solar.physics.montana.edu/tslater/montillation_of_traxoline.html Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 5:42:29 pm Alan Kay wrote: ..There I should have said modern science to denote the kind of science that Galileo and a few others started, which Bacon discussed so well as a debugging process for what is wrong with our brains/minds, and which Newton first showed how different and incredibly more powerful it could be from all previous forms of thinking. You mean Roger Bacon, the 13th century philosopher and teacher? If so, then the term 'science' itself is relatively modern :-), a post-Newton era term. (b) that qualitative leaps are changes in kind not just degree, changes in outlook, not just in quantity of knowledge gathered. There have been qualitative leaps (paradigm shifts) before too, esp. in south/east asia where philosophy developed without interruptions for thousands of years[1,2]. Patanjali's treatise [Yoga Sutras] on psychic processes is highly regarded even today. You can see applications of its theory in documentaries like Ring of Fire by Lawrence Blair [3]. I see people like Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Feynman, etc. as part of a long line of paradigm shifters. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_science [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indian_science_and_technology [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGnsMIvp1v0 Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
When I get together with other scientists, at some point I ask them how they got started. For most, it wasn't because of school, but because of direct contact with adults, often a relative who was a scientist, and some of the older generation got into it from reading the classic science fiction stories of the 40s and 50s. (This is not a scientific survey, heh heh, but it would be interesting to see the results of one.) Seymour Papert liked to say You can't think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something. He meant that most thinking skills, even those which are usable from subject area to subject area tend to be best learned via learning and doing particular subject areas. However, there do exist any number of ways to assess how well and what kinds of thinking children can do and are learning to do. So please don't worry about that. Your last sentence is somewhat parallel to what many business types like to say about how hard it is to measure Return On Investment for research funding. But in the business case, this is actually a form of dissembling, since an enormous percentage of all the GNP (and in fact GWP) comes directly as return from research. Most of these types do not really understand that the potential to make progress and money is directly related to the abilities of humans to convert stored energy of various kinds into constructions and actions. This came not from tinkering and old style engineering, but from scientific research done using the new ways of thinking we have been discussing. As an example, the ROI for Xerox PARC has been estimated in excess of $28T dollars now, spread around the world as more than $1T per year industry (and Xerox made more than a 20,000 % ROI just on the laser printer). This all came from special funding of just 25 people for the main inventions. Another way to look at it is that deep thinking is primarily what has made the difference between the Middle Ages and now, and between the average productivity per person in the Middle Ages and the enormous average productivity per person now. The people who find this difficult to understand are those who did not learn to think well themselves, and they are all too often in places of authority (where they should absolutely not be!) in educational and business systems. Best wishes, Alan From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 7:31:07 PM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
that Galilean gravity is an approximate theory, that Newton's theory is a much better but approximate theory, that Einstein's General Theory is a much better theory but also approximate). There are many reasons for all this, which can be gisted as (a) the epistemology of science is not at all what most people suppose, and it is rather distant from the normal ways our minds are set up to work, and (b) that most educational processes most places in the world including the US are still teaching knowledge as religion to be believed in, which *is* what our minds are set up for, and this is how things have been since the Pleistocene. This is one of several reasons why Creationists are able to argue, at least among themselves, that Darwinism is just a competing religion. Best wishes, Alan From: Greg Smith gregsmit...@gmail.com To: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 8:53:02 AM Subject: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW Hi All, Does anyone have experience or comments on the educational work of David Pritchard and David Korokowski, MIT Physicists? They created the Mastering Physics (and other subjects) software: http://www.masteringphysics.com/site/index.html Its commercial SW focused on College level learning and its uses what they call a Socratic method of learning (possibly related to sophistry). See some of their papers here: http://www.masteringphysics.com/site/results/index.html I'm interested in feedback for my own edification but thought it might also generate some discussion on the best educational tools for Sugar/XO. Thanks, Greg Smith ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and ''Mastering'' Educational SW
I share Alan and Edward's concern that we are selling kids short, if physics education is all about just getting the 'right' answers but want to break down the question posed by Greg into some sub-questions: 1)Despite the limitations of education which focuses on getting the 'right' answers, more structured or formulaic instruction may still have a place in education. 2)If (1) is accepted, is there a useful role for programmed instruction by intelligent tutors? 3)If (2) is accepted, can intelligent tutors give feedback by Socratic questioning? 4)If (3) is accepted, what are the implications for the Sugar OS? 1) There is good evidence that more traditional education which focuses on getting the 'right' answers to rather repetitive application of principles learnt in worked examples, results in knowledge which is inert, which cannot be used in real world situations. Real world problems are ill defined, multi disciplinary, with poorly defined goals and multiple or no solutions. Rote learning of standard solutions does little to advance real problem solving skills. If real world problem solving is accepted as the goal, this 'higher order thinking' still requires a repertoire of basic skills including numeracy and literacy. These basic skills may be best taught by traditional rote methods. Arguably Newtonian mechanics could be included in this basic skill set. 2) Programmed instruction depends on how smart the intelligent tutor is. Masteringphysics claims that through extensive trials, common misconceptions have been identified and the intelligent tutor can react appropriately. Given the millions of ways that it is possible to misunderstand, I retain mild scepticism about their claims but am prepared to accept them for the moment. 3) Socratic questioning exposes inconsistencies in a learner's understanding or mental model: âIf you believe A then B flows as a consequence, but B is inconsistent. Do you still believe A?â A good method of 1:1 tutoring, but is the intelligent tutor really smart enough to get into the learner's head space and expose the inconsistencies of their mental model? 4) Should something like Masteringphysics be reproduced in Sugar? Given the immensity in doing the task well, I think no. Hopefully, if we wait, somebody will produce similar materials on the net which are in the public domain. Sugar then would need reliable network access, a compatible browser and the ability to display multimedia. These issues have already been identified as Sugar priorities. Does Sugar offer the opportunity to do this stuff in a better or different way? I see 2 features of the Sugar environment which make it different and potentially better, to accessing web based materials with other OS's. It is potentially reprogrammable by the student. Something like Masteringphysic's intelligent tutor could be reprogrammed by students. Unfortunately there is usually a disconnect between the programming skills and the physics skills. That is, to reprogram a physics sim suitable for year 9 physics requires year 12 programming skills. Collaboration is built in. Collaboration is not new in IT education. Forums, blogs, wikis, Moodle all facilitate collaboration. Sugar just takes it a little further by allowing easy collaboration at the activity level. It facilitates peer tutoring, which I see mainly as an alternative to intelligent tutors, but maybe there are synergies that I an missing. Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
