[OLPC-Games] Fwd: Interactive Learning Patterns (or your better term for it)

Fri Jun 17 19:43:23 EDT 2011

2011/6/17 Charles Cossé <ccosse at gmail.com>:
> This may diverge from the original question somewhat, but reading E.
> Cherlin's comments about how young kids can learn math, languages, music and
> more reminds me of another challenge that lurks out there: Both my children
> were solving fairly complex algebraic fraction problems, among other things,
> by about first grade.

How did you and they accomplish that?

> At the end of 1st grade my son had been re-programmed
> so badly by his (mathematically clueless) first grade teacher that I was
> literally heart-broken.  I was no match for them.  That trend continued all
> the way to the present.

The classic study on this problem observed kindergarten children when
the teacher showed them without words how to fold a sheet of paper
into a fan. They all got it, and excitedly made fans and fanned
themselves and each other. Then the teacher told them how to make a
fan by folding a sheet of paper. After that, none of them could do it
any more, even when the teacher showed them again.

This demonstrates that you are 100% right, and the clueless excuse for
an education system that we have is completely broken.

> Now my kids get straight A's in math but don't have
> much of a clue anymore.  This, to me, is an extremely sad phenomenon as you
> only get to work with your kids at those early ages while they are those
> early ages.  Oh well ...

Your experience does not have to be a total loss. We would welcome you
to the Replacing Textbooks project to join in the effort to find out
how children really learn, and write materials to assist them rather
than pretend to teach them. One of the things I know we need to do is
to introduce children to ideas that their schoolteachers have never
heard of and can't mess up for them, such as group theory (symmetries
and patterns) and topology/rubber sheet geometry.

We have some hope that Martin E. P. Seligman's work on Learned
Helplessness and Learned Optimism can be harnessed to immunize
children to such nonsense.

> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 15:14, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > A great discussion from the tinygames mailing list (which gregdek
>> > started a while back).
>> >
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> > From: Ed Jones <ed.jones at gmail.com>
>> > Date: Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 11:01 AM
>> > Subject: Interactive Learning Patterns (or your better term for it)
>> > To: tinygames <tinygames at googlegroups.com>
>> >
>> > Whatever you call them, is there, or can we put here, a good list of
>> > the basic patterns of digital learning activity?
>>
>> They are the same as the patterns of all learning. What has been
>> lacking in past software is powerful computers for all children, and
>> imagination.
>>
>> To see the true nature of the question, turn your attention away from
>> what has passed for educational software in the commercial market for
>> decades, and consider what happens when you give children sharp tools
>> such as programming languages, word processing, spreadsheets, art,
>> music, and science, together with access to the entire Internet. With,
>> of course, the appropriate introductions. Oh, and access to each other
>> as well.
>>
>> We know that children with somebody to talk to in another language can
>> become fluent (at child level) within two months.
>>
>> We know how to teach programming languages starting in third grade.
>> That's settled in numerous experiments with a variety of languages.
>> Here is some new research that relates to that
>>
>>
>> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/330726/title/A_year_adds_up_to_big_changes_in_brain
>>
>> describing the development of a brain area for working memory.
>>
>> I can provide references on Smalltalk, Logo, LISP, Basic, Pascal,
>> Python, and APL. APL is the only language I know of that has been
>> successfully taught in first grade, but as an arithmetic language, not
>> a programming language. I am currently working on a wordless version
>> of Turtle Art, using iconic names on the programming blocks, with the
>> intention of breaking that record.
>>
>> Seymour Papert asked, in Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful
>> Ideas, what would happen if we had an environment in which learning
>> math was as automatic as learning ordinary spoken language. We're
>> working on how to do that.
>>
>> > That is, however fancy the game appears, in the end there are a
>> > relative few modes of interaction between the learner and the
>> > knowledge to be gained. True/false is the simplest (Binary choice,
>> > binary feedback). Multiple choice with 3 incorrect and one correct is
>> > the most common.
>>
>> Back in 1981, I was on a conference panel where someone in the
>> audience asked about 16-bit computing, "What can you use more than
>> 640K of RAM for?" This is the same lack of imagination, best expressed
>> by the proverb, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything
>> starts to look like a nail," and my converse, "If all you do all day
>> is pound nails, everything starts to look like a hammer." Then you get
>> people pounding nails with the butt of a nailgun and complaining that
>> its balance is all wrong.
>>
>> The answer then was music, graphics, videos, multi-megabyte documents,
>> and all the rest that is familiar today. Now we can do all of that in
>> schools, with every child having the same tools and the same access.
>>
>> So the short answer to your supposition is, "No." Children can _do_
>> math, science, music, art, history, geography, languages, and gym on
>> computers, not just be quizzed on them. Yes, gym. Everybody in serious
>> competitive sports keeps records of training, or hires someone to do
>> it, and takes endless videos of their performance, looking for points
>> to improve. And of the competition, also, looking for weak spots to
>> take advantage of.
>>
>> > Is there a name for the pattern underlying Greg's multiples of 3 and 5
>> > quest? Kind of a multiple choice with multiple correct answer
>> > components?
>> >
>> > WidgEd's second example of drad-drop matching certainly seems a unique
>> > entry.  From the first example, the inline dropdown is surely a new
>> > variant of multiple choice?
>>
>> See Peter Hewitt's Spirolaterals and Walter Bender's Turtle Confusion
>> for an entirely different view of the matter.
>>
>> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4331
>> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4450
>>
>> It will take you a minute or two to work out what Hewitt's UI does,
>> but that's part of the point. Click everything until it starts to make
>> sense.
>>
>> > And now you begin to see the forking nature of the beast...
>>
>> There is much, much more.
>>
>> > I wrote some more about this here, but I haven't found the definitive
>> > research:
>> >
>> > http://blog.openhistoryproject.org/2010/10/interactive-learning-patterns-google.html
>> >
>> > http://blog.openhistoryproject.org/2010/10/interactive-learning-patterns-ii.html
>>
>> I don't believe the definitive research has been done. I don't know
>> anybody even asking the right questions.
>>
>> > Thanks,
>> > Ed
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617
>> > 529 4266
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Games mailing list
>> > Games at lists.laptop.org
>> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/games
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
>> Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
>> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks
>> _______________________________________________
>> Games mailing list
>> Games at lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/games
>
>
>
> --
> AsymptopiaSoftware|Software at theLimit
>           http://www.asymptopia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Games mailing list
> Games at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/games
>
>

-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks