Kim, I came across Lockhart's Lament last year; it is very good. Math education is a chaotic arena and at this point I don't think it is a good place for Etoys. They have somehow pulverized the joy mathematicians find in their subject and are just offering dry husks to children.
When a school is ready to add computer science, that is where we fit. That means for many school buildings just one teacher, like for music, art, and phys ed. So a district like Unit 4 with ten elementary schools would not have to in-service 500 classroom teachers to teach Etoys, but rather just find ten teachers who could/would. Just ten teachers reach 5000 students; very efficient and very effective. Sadly, we are still searching for those districts.
Have you read the Ravitch book yet? It is too bad she didn't foresee the consequences of the policies she so ably advocated and now renounces. At least she has the courage to say she was wrong. Education is slow to change and the testing industry will not go quietly.
Our group here is working to have a curriculum ready for the time when people realize they need one. You know, of course, there is a difference of kind between an assortment of experiences/projects and a curriculum. This summer we are working on a set of materials for HS computer science and we will see what teachers think of them in our August workshop. The prerequisites require that they already know one programming language and are already teaching CS. We are looking forward to some interesting discussions with them; their knowledge and experience will be invaluable to us. --------------------------------- Call for Applications!
CS4HS: Summer Workshop for Computer Science teachers! Generous stipends! Supported by Google and the University of Illinois, this workshop is aimed at teachers who are looking for exciting content for teaching beginning programming at the high-school or middle-school level. Join us as we explore the Etoys programming language as a platform for attracting students into the field of computing.
Dates: August 3-5 Location: University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Details and Application: cs4hs.mste.illinois.edu -------------------------------------------- Thanks for the cheerful note. Regards, Kathleen
---- Original message ----
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 10:53:28 -0700 From: Kim Rose kim.rose@vpri.org Subject: Re: [squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog To: "kharness@illinois.edu" kharness@illinois.edu Cc: "Hilaire Fernandes" hilaire.fernandes@edu.ge.ch, "squeakland.org mailing list" squeakland@squeakland.org
Beautifully stated, Kathleen -- hear, hear!
For additional reading, I'd also like to recommend "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart.
A (shorter-than-the-book PDF version is available here: www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf , but also highly recommend reading the (slightly) longer book.
Kim
On May 29, 2010, at 8:45 AM, kharness@illinois.edu <kharness@illinois.edu
wrote:
The god of assessment has always had clay feet and Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010) gives me hope that we will see less emphasis on multiple- choice-single-right-answer-learning. I would urge that we (Etoys) not spend very much time developing subject area electronic worksheets and mechanisms that count right/wrong answers and keystroke attempts to be part of the software. Book publishers routinely provide such materials that are specific, sequenced, and aligned and, from what I can see, teachers are hard pressed to use everything that is already available. If new artifacts are being considered as potential objects for the next release of Etoys, we should start talking about our vision for Etoys and what the core of it will be.
Etoys thrives on mathematics and, on imagination, but to put too much emphasis on teaching a core curriculum of math or science will limit the other uses and imagination. My students use math in their projects and are indeed learning concepts at a deep level but they are not learning the math curriculum for their grade. For example, my 2nd-5th grade students routinely use test statements, create variables, and add random number generator tiles to projects. They use xy coordinates fluently because they want to control locations of objects and to position objects with reset scripts. Most of the Races and Mazes in EtoysIllinois were made by elementary students and show these kinds of applications of learning.
Hi Kathleen and all,
On 05/31/2010 06:01 AM, kharness@illinois.edu wrote:
Kim, I came across Lockhart's Lament last year; it is very good. Math education is a chaotic arena and at this point I don't think it is a good place for Etoys. They have somehow pulverized the joy mathematicians find in their subject and are just offering dry husks to children.
When a school is ready to add computer science, that is where we fit. That means for many school buildings just one teacher, like for music, art, and phys ed. So a district like Unit 4 with ten elementary schools would not have to in-service 500 classroom teachers to teach Etoys, but rather just find ten teachers who could/would. Just ten teachers reach 5000 students; very efficient and very effective. Sadly, we are still searching for those districts.
Have you read the Ravitch book yet? It is too bad she didn't foresee the consequences of the policies she so ably advocated and now renounces. At least she has the courage to say she was wrong. Education is slow to change and the testing industry will not go quietly.
Our group here is working to have a curriculum ready for the time when people realize they need one. You know, of course, there is a difference of kind between an assortment of experiences/projects and a curriculum. This summer we are working on a set of materials for HS computer science and we will see what teachers think of them in our August workshop. The prerequisites require that they already know one programming language and are already teaching CS. We are looking forward to some interesting discussions with them; their knowledge and experience will be invaluable to us.
This remembers me about the article by David Cavallo "Changes in Learning environments", about large scale changes in institutional educative systems. We (me and some students) are trying our approach to this problem using social software (Cyn.in) as a glue for communities of practice on our subjects of study. We have some interesting results and practices, but they don't last in time (one of the problems cited by Cavallo). So we're going in other direction from quantitative to qualitative. So the idea is to work with a small group of people who "belongs at the end" even when the academic semester is finished and wants to change educational systems. The idea is to work with "leverage places" (places where minimal force creates maximal change, following Peter Drucker's ideas). Here is a presentation about that "travel" with my students and the learnings about education that we have after it, that I made in TEDxPassion Bogotá (in Spanish, but I know that some people here reads and speaks it):
Nómadas Digitales, aprendizaje y la cultura alternativa http://prezi.com/7sp0ejyi7lpw/
For me the question now is how we keep connected the communities of practices that share ideas about this innovative practices and changes for the better in education.
Call for Applications!
CS4HS: Summer Workshop for Computer Science teachers! Generous stipends! Supported by Google and the University of Illinois, this workshop is aimed at teachers who are looking for exciting content for teaching beginning programming at the high-school or middle-school level. Join us as we explore the Etoys programming language as a platform for attracting students into the field of computing.
Dates: August 3-5 Location: University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Details and Application: cs4hs.mste.illinois.edu
Thanks for the cheerful note. Regards, Kathleen
¿Seems really interesting. It's only for Unite States CS teachers ?
Cheers,
Offray
Offray, . . . about the workshop mentioned below, please apply, you would be most welcome! I need to read the articles and authors you mention below, too late today but I look forward to continuing the discussion tomorrow. Regards, Kathleen
---- Original message ----
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:34:42 -0700 From: Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas offray.luna@javeriana.edu.co Subject: Re: [squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog To: squeakland@squeakland.org
Hi Kathleen and all,
On 05/31/2010 06:01 AM, kharness@illinois.edu wrote:
Kim, I came across Lockhart's Lament last year; it is very good. Math education is a chaotic arena and at this point I don't think it is a good place for Etoys. They have somehow pulverized the joy mathematicians find in their subject and are just offering dry husks to children.
When a school is ready to add computer science, that is where we fit. That means for many school buildings just one teacher, like for music, art, and phys ed. So a district like Unit 4 with ten elementary schools would not have to in-service 500 classroom teachers to teach Etoys, but rather just find ten teachers who could/would. Just ten teachers reach 5000 students; very efficient and very effective. Sadly, we are still searching for those districts.
Have you read the Ravitch book yet? It is too bad she didn't foresee the consequences of the policies she so ably advocated and now renounces. At least she has the courage to say she was wrong. Education is slow to change and the testing industry will not go quietly.
Our group here is working to have a curriculum ready for the time when people realize they need one. You know, of course, there is a difference of kind between an assortment of experiences/projects and a curriculum. This summer we are working on a set of materials for HS computer science and we will see what teachers think of them in our August workshop. The prerequisites require that they already know one programming language and are already teaching CS. We are looking forward to some interesting discussions with them; their knowledge and experience will be invaluable to us.
This remembers me about the article by David Cavallo "Changes in Learning environments", about large scale changes in institutional educative systems. We (me and some students) are trying our approach to this problem using social software (Cyn.in) as a glue for communities of practice on our subjects of study. We have some interesting results and practices, but they don't last in time (one of the problems cited by Cavallo). So we're going in other direction from quantitative to qualitative. So the idea is to work with a small group of people who "belongs at the end" even when the academic semester is finished and wants to change educational systems. The idea is to work with "leverage places" (places where minimal force creates maximal change, following Peter Drucker's ideas). Here is a presentation about that "travel" with my students and the learnings about education that we have after it, that I made in TEDxPassion Bogotá (in Spanish, but I know that some people here reads and speaks it):
Nómadas Digitales, aprendizaje y la cultura alternativa http://prezi.com/7sp0ejyi7lpw/
For me the question now is how we keep connected the communities of practices that share ideas about this innovative practices and changes for the better in education.
Call for Applications!
CS4HS: Summer Workshop for Computer Science teachers! Generous stipends! Supported by Google and the University of Illinois, this workshop is aimed at teachers who are looking for exciting content for teaching beginning programming at the high-school or middle-school level. Join us as we explore the Etoys programming language as a platform for attracting students into the field of computing.
Dates: August 3-5 Location: University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Details and Application: cs4hs.mste.illinois.edu
Thanks for the cheerful note. Regards, Kathleen
¿Seems really interesting. It's only for Unite States CS teachers ?
Cheers,
Offray _______________________________________________ squeakland mailing list squeakland@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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kharness＠illinois.edu -
Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas