[math4] Learning in software

[Kathy Pusztavari]

Wow Mel and Greg, thanks for your background.  Very interesting indeed.
Gives me hope for our kids in the US. It's people like you that will bring
education around (albeit slowly).

Thanks,
Kathy 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mel Chua [mailto:mel at melchua.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 1:30 PM
To: Kathy Pusztavari
Cc: fourthgrademath at lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: Re: [math4] Learning in software

> I was wondering about how any activity, not just math activities, are  
> using databases?  Again, a newbie question.

Most activities (the way we've been using the word here so far as I've seen
it, anyway) don't - they're standalone, tiny, non-web-based games (though
I'm not sure the latter is/should actually be a restriction).

>> And finally, are you writing to flat files or is there some sort of  
>> scaled down database in use or to be used?

I think this is a per-activity decision, but I've had success in the past
with pickling (saving python objects in a flat text file) for small basic
storage. Others may vary - I'm definitely not the most experienced Python
game hacker here.

 >> Hi, I'm just curious as to what is motivating people like Greg D.
 >> to tackle this.  Do you guys have kids?

Still too young to have my own kids, but it wasn't too long ago that I was a
kid myself. As a severely hearing-impaired child, the "listen to teachers"
learning methodology didn't work so well; I taught myself most things from
books (and later computers) and was constantly frustrated by the lack of
resources and people to learn with that my little world contained - and also
realized I was lucky to be /able/ to teach myself at all. I want my cousins
(I'm the oldest of 14, the youngest is 5 now, and we're very close) to have
better options than I did.

There are many more reasons, but that's one of mine.

--Mel