[OLPC library] [OLPC-Games] [sugar] Physics -- Newtonian mechanics.. for kids!

[Chris Leonard]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  I very much agree with this! Simulations are still "just math" and "real
> science" is about the relationships we can build between our representations
> (which are in the end "just stories", even if coherent and logically
> connected) and "what's out there". This "outlook" (or the more fancy phrase
> "epistemological stance") is the most important part of learning science
> (and is the least well taught or learned -- at least in the US).
>
> Bad simulations can be edifying if a real effort is made to see what the
> real world seems to do, but most people, and especially most children, are
> all too willing to substitute the story for the mapping.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>

It is interesting to think about the educational possibilities of a scenario
like one laptop running Measure (with sensors measuring some physical
parameter, e.g. a pendulum breaking a light beam) and another laptop
running thesimulation of the actual experiment in real-time right next to
it.

"All models are wrong, some models are useful"  George S.S. Box

cjl
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