[plt-edu] Re: [plt-scheme] behaviour of void?

So what kinds of exercises are you looking for?  I guess I'm in the unique position of being able to use programming to teach Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics projects.   As a high school teacher, I feel like computer science should be about integrating these disciplines.  I think if computer science viewed itself as the means by which these other disciplines communicate, education would be more computer programming centered rather than what we currently have, where students take our courses if they have time or are hard core technogeeks.

As a result, I've centered my courses around showing students how knowing HTDP and Dr. Scheme allows them to do more computationally than the other students taking science related courses.  As a result, my courses are getting larger (my ninth grade doubled this year).   My artificial intelligence course requires one yearlong collaborative project that must meet several requirements.

1)  The project must be transformative (transforming information from one form to another) such as pictures to sound or stock market data to sound.

2)  The project must involve such large amounts of data that it requires good programming principles or the program will crash and burn.

3)  The project must use some core AI technology

4)  The project must operate without human intervention (we use scheme servers set up by the students that are dedicated to specific tasks).

The result of these projects demonstrates to students how computer programming can help them automate computational tasks that can make their lives easier in some work position.

Just my 2 cents.

Dan

--- On Thu, 2/5/09, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:

> From: Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu>
> Subject: [plt-edu] Re: [plt-scheme] behaviour of void?
> To: "Prabhakar Ragde" <plragde at uwaterloo.ca>
> Cc: "PLT List" <plt-scheme at list.cs.brown.edu>, "plt edu" <plt-edu at list.cs.brown.edu>, "Shriram Krishnamurthi" <sk at cs.brown.edu>, "Arthur Nunes-Harwit" <anh at cs.rit.edu>
> Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 5:12 PM
> On Feb 5, 2009, at 5:51 PM, Prabhakar Ragde wrote:
> 
> > Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
> > 
> >> It's not too hard at all.  Our courses
> routinely assign these kinds of
> >> assignments.  But we also have to train our
> students to understand
> >> modern systems.
> >> SICP was not written for an interactive (in the
> sense of a
> >> computational model) era.  The world effort is an
> strong attempt to
> >> make functional programming just as relevant to
> modern computation.
> > 
> > Now who is setting up dichotomies with loaded use of
> the word "modern"?
> > 
> > You and your co-authors, in "Structure and
> Interpretation of the Computer Science Curriculum",
> rightly criticize SICP for requiring too much domain
> knowledge. One obvious use of world.ss is in simulation of
> physical phenomena -- but this requires domain knowledge in
> physics at least (maybe even fluid dynamics), not to mention
> knowing how to deal with computation using inexact numbers,
> something I would rather avoid in first year.
> > 
> > There must be non-gaming uses of world.ss that use
> discrete mathematics and have serious computer science
> content. I just have difficulty, personally, coming up with
> them. --PR
> 
> 
> 1. Recall that universe.ss is replacing world.ss.
> 
> 2. How about a chat server? It's well within reach for
> universe.ss. Students can design their own features for the
> last few weeks of the course: type Hindi at one end, see
> German at the other :-)
> 
> -- Matthias
> 
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