teaching

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For those of you unaware of my background it may surprise you to find out that I have two degrees, one is in Computer Science, the other is in Theoretical Mathematics, the kind you can't use for anything ;). During my day to day, 9 to 5, actually getting paid to do stuff job, I work all day using the Computer Science part of my brain, programming various things. This has left the Math part of my brain atrophied and depressed, I barely visit, hardly ever call, and never send it flowers anymore. But, for this post I will be dusting off the Math part of my brain, don't worry nothing too in depth. For those that want to skip to the point click here

My senior year I took a 400 level course in the History of Mathematics, it was probably my favorite and most interesting math course. We discussed the evolution of number systems and mathematical theory from the Greek Ionian Numerals to Modern Abstract Algebra, it was a fantastic journey through human knowledge. I will always remember the lesson on Euclidean Geometry and most importantly why it was taught.

Euclidean Geometry has 5 basic principles (called axioms) upon which all other theorems, corollaries, and other fancy math talk are built off of. The important thing about Euclidean Geometry is not the subject that it examines, moreover it is the way in which it examines it. When Euclid penned Elements it was the first major examination based off of a logical system and comprehensive deduction.

The whole idea was that within this beautiful system, no matter how big and magnificent the structure became, you could always walk a theorem through the structure and down to the axioms without making any leaps of logic. This used to be the point of teaching Euclidean Geometry, it is a concrete example of a deductive and logical system, working on objects simple enough that children can understand it.

Sadly, we no longer teach the most important part of Euclidean Geometry to our children in America. The important part, deductive reasoning, is very difficult to teach, it requires magnitudes more work than what we currently teach, mechanical geometry. We have children memorize rules and tricks and mnemonic devices so that they can perform mechanical operations on lines and angles and shapes. They learn nothing from this, they will forget these machinations, and they will have never learned the deductive reasoning skills that seem so lacking these days.

What am I writing about though, why does this belong on a programming blog, have I gone mad? To answer these question in order: This is an interesting story you just got for free (ingrate) and will dovetail nicely with the next section, its reason for existing will become apparent in a second, and you can't go somewhere you already are. The point of the above is that in teaching a concrete something (in the above case Geometry) you might actually be trying to teach an abstract something else (in the above case Deductive Reasoning and Logic).

As a Mathematician I think that we should go back to teaching Euclidean Geometry the right way, but as a Computer Scientist I like flashy fun interactive keyboardy things, so let's talk about those. You see there is another way to trick kids into learning about structured logic and deductive reasoning, programming. We can if we try a bit even make it fun. Let's take a look at past and present attempts to do just that.

Logo

I remember you fondly from my childhood, Mr. Turtle. Logo was a simple language built at MIT on top of LISP, possibly the seed of my love for LISP was planted by this simple turtle. The idea was to give the child a simple interface with a little turtle that they could command around using a simple syntax.
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[sql]
FORWARD 50
RIGHT 90
FORWARD 50
RIGHT 90
FORWARD 50
RIGHT 90
FORWARD 50
RIGHT 90
[/sql]
That code would draw a nice simple square, 50 pixels by 50 pixels, but logo didn't stop there, it had functions and loops and all many of list processing. The above code could be simplified to
[sql]
REPEAT 4 [ FORWARD 50 LEFT 90 ]
[/sql]
and suddenly the child would learn loops, it was great fun and is still used today to teach programming to young children. There are still active versions, like FSMLogo for Windows or ACSLogo for Mac

Alice

Alice is a new attempt to make programming easy and fun, it allows you to start making 3D scenes almost immediately. It is free from Carnegie Mellon and they do a pretty good job summing up what it is.

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

Here is a video introducing Alice

Some of the innovative features are the fully 3D environment, the drag-and-drop source editing in which code constructs are represented by physical objects, and the integration with Java and the JVM.

Scratch

Another effort from MIT. Scratch's motto is "imagine, program, share" and they live up to it. Like Alice they utilize a drag-and-drop source editing system, but there is a much greater emphasis on the social aspect of it all. In a web 2.0 nod, they encourage people to upload their projects and let other mix and match projects in fun and interesting ways. Its easy for kids to jump right in because there are just under 600,000 projects being shared on the Scratch website, so there is plenty of examples. Here is the Scratch video.

Scratch from Karen Brennan on Vimeo.

Hackety Hack

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I didn't know whether or not to include this one, the creator _why decided to leave the internet behind a while ago and as such abandoned this project. It has been picked up and rescued by Steve Klabnik. It is based off of ruby and allows kids to get interesting programs up and running quickly because of the powerful and intuitive libraries included. It is an integrated IDE with tutorial, editor, and runtime all rolled into one. The best part of HacketyHack is that so much of what you learn can be transferred directly to the mature ruby language. You can start your kids off with HacketyHack and when they become jaded nerdy teens that can start their own website in RoR to talk about Twilight or whatever the hell it is teenagers do.

Lego Mindstorms

This last one comes from Lego and costs some cash unlike the previous offerings, but the money gets you a badass programmable robot. It has a drag-and-drop development environment similar to Alice and Scratch. Kids (and adults) can get really into it, making lots of cool things and holding sweet lego competitions. It's one thing to see "Hello World" on a monitor, its an entirely different feeling to have a robot do your bidding.

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So that's the educational round-up, with these tools we can find something to appeal to the youth today and hopefully teach them some sweet, sweet logic. Give it a try with your kids, or try to start a program up at a local school or social club. Spreading the joy of programming will enrich their lives and your own.