[Its.an.education.project] An "About" statement? (Was: untangling constructionism)

[Edward Cherlin]

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 5:43 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's my massaging of Bill's summary
>
>  "it's an education project"
>
>  Summary:
>
>     * Learning practice and theory needs to evolve as technology evolves
>     * There needs to be a bridge connecting the community of
>  developers with the community of educators

I dislike the bridge metaphor. I wrote a paper for a Unicode
conference on "Obliterating the Digital Divide" because bridging a
divide still leaves people on the wrong side of it.

We need more people who are both educators and developers. Now that we
have powerful development tools that teachers can learn and students
can use, there is no excuse for the separation. In the long run, we
need every teacher and every student to be a developer, and we need
every developer to be a lifelong student and a mentor to others.

>     * Sugar software development can serve as a tangible structural underpinning
>     * understanding Sugar's educational importance is a current focus
>  of this discussion list

We also need to be aware of other Constructivist and Constructionist
possibilities. I would like to start a Best Practices list, which I
suppose I will do in a minute on the Laptop Wiki, to include the best
tools and learning materials we collectively know of.

I nominate, in addition to Sugar, Python, and Smalltalk/Squeak/Etoys,
the programming languages.

* Forth: Best books, Starting Forth and Thinking Forth, by Leo Brodie.
Used in Open Firmware. The most compact, conceptually simple, and
extensible programming language. The Forth word 'see' allows a user to
inspect the source code of any Forth word.

see 2dup
: 2dup
dup dup ;
ok

*LISP/Scheme: Best books: The Little LISPer/Schemer, The Seasoned
Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer, by Daniel P. Friedman and others:
Anatomy of Lisp by John Allen.
*APL/J There are numerous math books written using APL and more
recently J as the executable notation for every math statement. Ken
Iverson, the inventor of APL, wrote textbooks on Arithmetic, Algebra,
and Calculus. APL has successfully been used in first grade
arithmetic. I also have copies of books on probability, statistics,
cryptography, computer graphics, and computer design using APL.

Forth, LISP, APL, and Smalltalk are the most important programming
language paradigms. They are Turing-equivalent, but so different in
form, and so simple in concept and syntax, that I can say that nobody
understands the possibilities of computers who does not understand all
of them in some depth.

* The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study, by Kimon
Nicolaides . Whole Earth Review : "...not only the best how-to book on
drawing, it is the best how-to book we've seen on any subject."

Add Montessori, Gattegno, and many others. Think about engaging all
students to be learning researchers, able to discover in general and
in every individual case the best learning/discovery/mastery
strategies for every subject.

>  -walter

-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay