John Brawley, addressing me, wrote:
>You must be either a
>saint or a masochist.
Actually, "masochist" is probably a more
accurate term than "saint" is. :-) In any
case, working on computers with this age
group does have its compensations. One can
learn quite a bit from these kids; one just
has to avoid a common occupational disease
of techies: trying to pretend that one is
smarter than everyone else. In my job, I
know that I will frequently see little kids
demonstrate clearly that they are much more
intelligent than I am. This comes with the
territory. Grown-ups with egos that can't
handle this don't belong on this turf.
Anyway, thanks to John Brawley for the tip
on the TVLiveST.py program. I'll see when I
get a chance to try it out--soon, I hope.
While I'm on this, I'd like to toss out an
idea that I've been mulling over for a
while. Those of you who are using VPython
as a tool to teach programming to college
and high school students could suggest or
assign the following project to your classes:
Write a program that could be used by young
children to learn solid geometry and related
subjects. If programs like these were emailed
to me, posted on the web, or whatever, I
could use my lab as an experimental test
site to see how well they actually worked.
I hopefully could also get more material
than I will ever have time to assemble
myself, conditions being what they are.
Any programming students who wanted to get
involved should keep a few things in mind:
First, the obvious: the target audience has
a lower age limit of five and an upper age
limit of eight. Activities should be made
suitable for that range.
Second: the operating system used here is
Windows XP Professional.
Third: the hardware that each student uses
is a desktop system with a 2.8Ghz Pentium
4 HT and 512MB of RAM. The machine on my
desk (connected to a SmartBoard) is a
3.4Ghz P4 HT with 1GB of RAM. Disk space
is a non-issue, since all relevant storage
is done on network drives with hundreds of
gigs of available space. In other words,
the programmers can go crazy and not worry
about pushing things too far. Include all
of the splashy special effects you want;
kids in this age group love that stuff.
Fourth: I'm not sure exactly how soon I'd
be able to put the programs in front of the
children. This school, and the district that
it belongs to, are not regular (V)Python
users; in fact, one of my goals in suggesting
this project is to see if I can get one or
more things that might impress my principal
and other administrators enough so that they
would look at adopting Python broadly.
(Right now, I'm just tinkering with VPython
very informally with a few classes at some
limited times.) Although the bigwigs here
love to make noises about "innovation,"
getting any actual change through the slow
bureaucracy can be a major ordeal.
I hope this is enough to get some people
thinking. I await your questions, feedback,
suggestions, and whatever else.
Joel
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