[IAEP] educational brew

[Albert Cahalan]

Costello, Rob R writes:

> most teachers that i know want to know that any 'innovation'
> 'addresses the curriculum'
...
> but this won't overturn the inertia in traditional curriculum content

To a teacher, is curriculum the raw state/national standard or is it
instead the content of the particular textbook that the school uses?

In any case, you're up against a compatibility issue. Students will
transfer, sometimes during the school year, and hopefully graduate.
An oddball school does a disservice to the students.

> for example i can see no maths curriculum in the world (i've been
> looking at lots of them in detail recently) that is doing much
> more than including a few references to recursion or iteration...
> (there was more 'programming' in my year 12 course in 1985)

Which other math would you eliminate to make room for this,
and what will happen to the students if they transfer or graduate
without knowing that other math?

BTW, though I like computer science too, this stuff isn't that useful.

> i also fully agree with Kathy that personalisation can mean
> software intelligently adapts the sequence of lessons...
> i've seen that in action as well

I've been thinking about this. It's really valuable, though not
so easy to implement. Let's take 4th grade math as an example:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Math4Team/Resources/Curriculum_Chart

Suppose you wrote up lessons for all those. You'd get a lot of
overlap with the California standard, the Iowa standard, etc.
The overlap becomes severe if you add the rest of the grades.
Imagine having lessons to cover all standards.

To benefit from a given lesson, one must master any prerequisites.
This should remind you of building software with the "make" program
or perhaps installing software from RPM packages. Leaving aside the
minor issue of review, there is no point to presenting students with
old lessons. Leaving aside the minor issue of "testing out", there
is no point to presenting students with lessons that they have not
prepared for.

You could set up "4th grade math for Massachusetts" as a list of
things to master. It's quite similar to setting up a Makefile with
a target that exists purely to have a list of prerequisites.
This target becomes a goal to reach. Once the goal is chosen, the
software supplies lessons as required to reach it. When more than
one lesson would be appropriate, allowing student choice could help
to keep the student in a good mood for learning.

Sadly, a real-world system would also need to provide distraction
for the students who are at risk for completing the grade before
the end of the year. Traditional schools don't tolerate that well.

> i know traditional curriculum can get suffocating and dry ..

Of course, dealing with "suffocating and dry" stuff is a valuable
life skill. :-/ Sitting down to slog through something boring is
not easy for many people.