[math4] FourthGradeMath Digest, Vol 2, Issue 2

[Stephen Jacobs]

Stephen Jacobs, RIT Prof here.
Actually a Game Design Prof with mediocre programming chops :-)
Reposting my comment to Greg's Blog here

__________________________________________________________________________

That Rochester Prof here. I'm actually a game design professor in our BS and
MS program here. There's actually good precedent for approaching things this
way, as there've been successful efforts in using games to teach math and
programming (to kill the dragon you need to write a link list of the spells
to go off in the right sequence, etc).

At the moment I've got a small batch of students with a mixed background
from across the college and none of them are game students. Won't know what
resources I've got until next week when the class starts so I dunno whether
they'll be able to code in python or not. I'm hoping to recruit more first
week of classes during add drop now that I can be more specific about what
we'll be doing in class

That said, we'd be happy to work on Mongo if they can, either on coding or
on design and assets. They might also be able to do some rapid prototyping
of a wide variety of different types of math apps/modules for other projects
as well.

They're at my disposal until mid May, and I might be able to continue some
or add new ones over the summer.

Though the class starts next week I actually started a local group in
January (to which Karlie has been a blessing) to get local efforts going and
to provide another resource for the students to interact with during the
class (ok, so I stacked the deck)

Looking forward to working with you and the rest of the group.



On 3/2/09 12:00 PM, "fourthgrademath-request at lists.sugarlabs.org"
<fourthgrademath-request at lists.sugarlabs.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. Re: RIT and the Fedora Developers XO Program (Steve Buck)
>    2. Re: RIT and the Fedora Developers XO Program (Greg Dekoenigsberg)
>    3. Re: RIT and the Fedora Developers XO Program (Karlie Robinson)
>    4. GSoC and other ways to gain contributors (David Nalley)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 11:11:52 -0500
> From: Steve Buck <steve at sbuck.net>
> Subject: Re: [math4] RIT and the Fedora Developers XO Program
> To: FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Message-ID: <20090302161152.GB22748 at therowes.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Is this something that we may want to get going at other uni's?  My
> brother is a professor in the UMASS system.  I could see if there is an
> interested at his school.
> 
> Also are we looking for teachers to be involved from a non-technical
> perspective?
> 
> I'm sorry if these questions have been hashed out already, I'm still new
> here.
> 
> Steve.
> 
> On Mar 02 10:41, Karlie Robinson wrote:
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject:  Re: [Fwd: Fedora Developers XO program]
>> Date:  Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:41:33 -0500
>> From:  Stephen Jacobs
>> To:  Karlie Robinson
>> CC:  David Nalley, Mel Chua
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Ok folks,
>> 
>> We had our 2nd OLPC group meeting tonight and the group is interested in
>> helping the math curriculum work move forward.  I will dedicate my course to
>> doing the same.
>> 
>> The course is 90% a go.  It's a little light on students at the moment due
>> to some red tape issues here but I've been told it should run despite a
>> little under-registration.  First day of class is 3/13 and it ends 5/14.
>> Class will meet physically once a week in a class room once a week on
>> fridays and teams will meet with each other, members of the local group
>> and/or the larger development community a couple hours a week as well.
>> They'll also attend the local OLPC group meetings twice during the run of
>> the class.  If things go well it'll be co-taught by my lab staffer, who's an
>> NYS k-12 certified teacher with a specialty in art.
>> 
>> Here's a little more about the plans for it...
>> 
>> 
>> Goals of the course
>>  
>> ?     Develop on a constrained platform
>> ?     Work as team members on an international open source effort
>> ?     Learn about designing educational software
>> ?     Engage with local Rochester Developers
>> ?     Explore the controversy of technology?s potential impact on the third
>> world and international priorities for aid
>> 
>> 6.0          Topics (outline):
>> 6.0  What is the OLPC Movement
>> 6.0.1     History
>> 6.0.2     Community Goals
>> 6.0.3     Educational Philosophy and how it formed the OS and Hardware
>> Development
>> 6.0.4     Introduction to the Community Members and Resources
>> 6.1  The Platform
>> 6.1.1     Hardware
>> 6.1.2     OS
>> 6.1.3     Networking
>> 6.1.4     Included Applications
>> 6.1.5     Development languages and Packages
>> 6.2  Development Projects and Timelines
>> 6.2.1     Project Design Docs
>> 6.2.2     Project Management
>> 6.2.3     Team Formation
>> 6.3  Developing for Constrained Platforms
>> 6.3.1     Design Constraints
>> 6.3.2     Tech Constraints
>> 6.3.3     HCI Impacts
>> 6.4  Technology?s impact
>> 6.4.1     Digital divide in the US and third world countries
>> 6.4.2     As a priority over other forms of aid
>> 
>> 
>> As you can see, I'm not focused on making this a "develop in Python" course
>> per se.  I want the students to experience FOSS and community togetherness
>> and participating in something larger than the average class project.  I'm
>> as happy to see them developing throw away prototypes of math
>> exercises/games in e-toys or scratch as I am in Python.  Whatever we can do
>> to advance these efforts over the next months is fine with me.
>> 
>> Additionally, RIT is a CO-OP university.  That means that students must have
>> full-time, paid work in their field for 3 10-11 week blocks as a requirement
>> of graduation.
>> 
>> If the work being done is for a non-profit, the paid portion of the
>> requirement can be waived.
>> 
>> So it's quite possible some students would want to continue over the summer
>> on this project, they'd just need someone from an organization to certify
>> the full-time aspects and evaluate their performance.
>> 
>> So that's the resource you have available
>> 
>> 
>> <removed previous conversations>
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> FourthGradeMath mailing list
>> FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/fourthgrademath
>> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 11:18:09 -0500 (EST)
> From: Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com>
> Subject: Re: [math4] RIT and the Fedora Developers XO Program
> To: Steve Buck <steve at sbuck.net>
> Cc: FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Message-ID:
> <alpine.LFD.2.00.0903021115200.22041 at localhost.localdomain>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> 
> 
> On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Steve Buck wrote:
> 
>> Is this something that we may want to get going at other uni's?  My
>> brother is a professor in the UMASS system.  I could see if there is an
>> interested at his school.
> 
> I'd love to see professors picking up on this.  It dovetails with another
> theme I'm pushing in a more professional capacity: getting professors
> involved directly in open source projects.
> 
>> Also are we looking for teachers to be involved from a non-technical
>> perspective?
> 
> Absolutely.  The sooner the better.  Frankly, I think this has been a
> weakness of both Sugar Labs and OLPC since the very beginning.  An
> understandable one: it's harder to engage teachers.  But it's absolutely
> necessary when you're connecting activities directly to curriculum.
> 
> In this case, obviously, we're looking for fourth grade math teachers.  :)
> 
>> I'm sorry if these questions have been hashed out already, I'm still new
>> here.
> 
> No worries.  Everybody is new here.
> 
> --g
> 
> --
> Got an XO that you're not using?  Loan it to a needy developer!
>    [[ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Exchange_Registry ]]
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:27:09 -0500
> From: Karlie Robinson <karlie_robinson at webpath.net>
> Subject: Re: [math4] RIT and the Fedora Developers XO Program
> To: FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Message-ID: <49AC08DD.8010806 at webpath.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> I know Brian Powell is working on a similar project at UBuffalo.
> 
> My hope is once we have a working example it will be easier to tap the
> collegiate resources.
> 
> ~K
> 
> Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
>> On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Steve Buck wrote:
>> 
>>   
>>> Is this something that we may want to get going at other uni's?  My
>>> brother is a professor in the UMASS system.  I could see if there is an
>>> interested at his school.
>>>     
>> 
>> I'd love to see professors picking up on this.  It dovetails with another
>> theme I'm pushing in a more professional capacity: getting professors
>> involved directly in open source projects.
>> 
>>   
>>> Also are we looking for teachers to be involved from a non-technical
>>> perspective?
>>>     
>> 
>> Absolutely.  The sooner the better.  Frankly, I think this has been a
>> weakness of both Sugar Labs and OLPC since the very beginning.  An
>> understandable one: it's harder to engage teachers.  But it's absolutely
>> necessary when you're connecting activities directly to curriculum.
>> 
>> In this case, obviously, we're looking for fourth grade math teachers.  :)
>> 
>>   
>>> I'm sorry if these questions have been hashed out already, I'm still new
>>> here.
>>>     
>> 
>> No worries.  Everybody is new here.
>> 
>> --g
>> 
>> --
>> Got an XO that you're not using?  Loan it to a needy developer!
>>    [[ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Exchange_Registry ]]
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> FourthGradeMath mailing list
>> FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/fourthgrademath
>>   
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 11:32:58 -0500
> From: David Nalley <david at gnsa.us>
> Subject: [math4] GSoC and other ways to gain contributors
> To: FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Message-ID:
> <d6e6dfeb0903020832k3ec9998bhd37569ca58ee6d9 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Greg or others who may know:
> 
> Is sl.o participating in GSoC?
> If so who is administering it?
> This strikes me as prime summer work for college students.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
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> 
> End of FourthGradeMath Digest, Vol 2, Issue 2
> *********************************************