OLPC..etc. for math-education ?
problems@gmail
I read:-
>Some teachers in Uruguay are teaching the Pythagorean Theorem
>and were stymied by the lack of a square root function in
>Turtle Art. They wanted to demonstrate that the length of the
>diagonal of a square is equal to the square root of the sum of
>the square of each side. In psuedocode, they wanted to build
>the following construct:
>
> repeat 4 (forward 100 right 90)
> right 45
> forward sqrt ((100*100) + (100*100))
I fetched their:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Patching_Turtle_Art
but it didn't seem to solve the BIG picture which IMO is something like:
* square roots are too complicated for kids using Turtle Art.
* specifically 'the square root of 2' being an irrational/infinite-decimal
is a complex concept.
* the whole task of introducing irrational numbers, perhaps by looking
at the ratio of the length of the 'side' to the circumference of a
square, equilateral triangle and then a circle, could be a worth while
exercise - if 'captured in software' to amortize the cost.
* perhaps the correct/normal approach is to show that some square roots
are easy to find and others 'impossible', which is itself a deep
philosophic concept !
Recently, I was lucky that someone from these fora pointed to:
> http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/
> /Depts/CompLit/cmltgrad/JSchaub/ta_main/toom.html
>
> A Russian Teacher in America
>
> ANDREI TOOM
He points out how US [and many other societies] are building a
generation of minimum-effort/immediate-results-expecting pseudo educated.
Which IMO is strongly related to your current sub-prime-crisis.
IMO it would be good for the sugar & OLPC to get some input from ANDREI TOOM.
Since I'm located in 3rd-world [S.Africa], I can't use the Hollywood-kid
method of internet access: leaving the fridge door open while I drink my
coke. I quickly fetch and process the text off-line. So the original
protocols of e-mail and NewsGroups are good for me and live-blogs are
crap ! So perhaps someone else will paste this back to:
http://walterbender.org/ or OLPC..
TIA,
== Chris Glur.