Comments on: Exploring Computational Thinking

By: Sue Downing

Sue Downing — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:04:51 +0000

FYI – I did find the forums on the Computational Thinking site and posted a note. They responded and fixed the error right away.

By: Sue Downing

Sue Downing — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:35:58 +0000

Obviously when I hit submit, what I wrote appears to have changed, so I will try again. The TE says that x is less than 12 and x is greater than 2 returns a false.

By: Sue Downing

Sue Downing — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:27:52 +0000

I was intrigued by this so I downloaded the program and started working my way through the lessons. There appears to be an error in Introduction to Python TE, exercise 8.
x=3, yet the page says that x2 returns a false. I got a true, which appears to be correct to me. I couldn’t find a place to contact Google to ask about this. Am I wrong, or is Google wrong?

By: Chris Sears

Chris Sears — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:20:29 +0000

I’m new to computational thinking, and I’m initially skeptical. It may be a good idea to supplement a curriculum, but I wouldn’t want to base an entire curriculum on it. I’m not sure that it will work with every learning style. Someone with a kinetic learning style may do as well by looking at the problem as a set of step-by-step procedures.

This also seems to hide the big picture of the mathematics curriculum. I don’t know if the students can see how the topics fit together.

It also reinforces the concept that math problems can be done by memorizing algorithms. Memorizing algorithms is good for arithmetic, but not for algebra. Memorizing is a black hole for solving applications.

This is also not new. I have a book (somewhere) that uses programs in APL to teach math.

Again, these are just my initial thoughts on the topic.

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:54:19 +0000

As an ex-Computer Science guy, seeing math lessons based on Python warms my heart, but some of these seem like they’d go better with a spreadsheet (and one I’ve done with a spreadsheet before) — there’s no need to teach coding, the algebraic connection is more strikingly apparent (each box is its own variable), it’s related more to prior computer experience, and there’s instantaneous graphing.

After enough spreadsheet experience, one of my students made the remark that “algebra is like cheating for math”.

Have these been tried in practice? What’s the learning / time ratio like?

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:27:16 +0000

josh g., Btw I’d love to hear how you’d use the ‘Roots of an Equation’ program in a class.

Yeah, it's weird to me they didn't include the lesson plan I wrote to accompany the program. That was the more time-intensive task.

By: josh g.

josh g. — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 03:36:06 +0000

I love this concept but really don’t like the presentation. More “How to use this” would be great.

Also, they really should be putting a huge “Download Python 2.5 here” link at the top of the page. I installed the newest Python while I started to browse the Intro doc, only to find out halfway through that the very first example of a program *wouldn’t run at all* because apparently any Python >= 3.0 drastically changes how the print statement works, or something.

Btw I’d love to hear how you’d use the ‘Roots of an Equation’ program in a class.

By: monika hardy

monika hardy — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:48:53 +0000

cool jets man..
huge grazie.

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By: Kris Kramer

Kris Kramer — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:41:59 +0000

Too bad Google sticks with CA standards; the Common Core would cover so many more folks.