[IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and "Mastering" Educational SW

[Alan Kay]

This doesn't teach physics ... it is aimed mostly at providing typical problems with some diagnostic aids and hints to (theoretically) help students learn how to apply what they are supposed to have learned by other means to physics problems. 

(However, it is difficult to find any physics text for high school or college that actually teaches physics and physical thinking. Even lab courses usually use the lab to verify the "truths of physics" (there are actually no such things) rather than to try to get evidence for formulating and guiding the creation of theories which can lead to further experiments.)

As an example, the lab for gravity is used to verify the Galilean formulas (which postulate constant acceleration). This is because with simple tools in air it is difficult to measure accurately enough to get data which more closely resembles what is going on. (Dropping a heavy object 14-16 feet in a vacuum measured very very carefully will reveal a difference of about 1 part in a million between constant acceleration and inverse square acceleration, and it takes incredible tools to show that inverse square acceleration is not the whole story either.)

The sad results according to those who have studied this in colleges for more than 30 years (for example Physicist Lillian McDermott) is that 70% of all students (including science majors) fail to understand even Galilean gravity, and a much higher percentage don't understand 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. 

Best wishes,

Alan




________________________________
From: Greg Smith <gregsmithpm at gmail.com>
To: iaep at 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


      
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