[racket] Racket/Bootstrap used for K-12 government sanctioned education?

One thing that I think math education does horribly at is having
students work from the specific to the general. When we teach
functions, we say f(x) = x^2, now tell me what f(1), f(3), f(7) are.
What we don't do nearly often enough is work in the other direction.

I think a great activity with kids learning pre-algebra/algebra is to
show them patterns and ask them to figure out formulas. This works
incredibly well with a language like Racket where they can set up the
test cases, play in the interactions window, and try functions in the
definitions until the test cases check.

And these don't have to be that complicated:

#1
0->1, 2->3, 5->6

#2
1->2, 3->6, 4->8, 5->10

#3
0->1, 1->2, 2->4, 3->8

For students who find this easy, see if they can find another function
that produces the given values, but is different than the first they
came up with for some other value that wasn't specified. (Easy in some
cases--not so much in others.)

Those are just ideas. But before you do anything, make sure that
students know their addition and multiplication tables up to 10, and
have a basic understanding of what it means to add, subtract,
multiply, and divide fractions. Without number sense, higher levels of
math are far more painful than they should be.

Todd

On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
> To elaborate, I'm curious about how the lessons-learned in the after-school
> version of Bootstrap could be turned into something that all educational
> programs could use as part of the typical year-long curriculum and what
> Bootstrap-ers even think of this idea.
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk at cs.brown.edu>
> wrote:
>>
>> Grant, what do you mean by "government sanctioned"? And why are you
>> asking?
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > Anyone used Racket or Bootstrap for a government sanctioned K-12
>> > educational program?
>> >
>> > Best wishes,
>> >
>> > --
>> > Grant Rettke | ACM, AMA, COG, IEEE
>> > grettke at acm.org | http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/
>> > "Wisdom begins in wonder." --Socrates
>> > ((λ (x) (x x)) (λ (x) (x x)))
>> > "Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop
>> > taking it seriously." --Thompson
>> >
>> > ____________________
>> >   Racket Users list:
>> >   http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
>
>
>
>
> --
> Grant Rettke | ACM, AMA, COG, IEEE
> grettke at acm.org | http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/
> "Wisdom begins in wonder." --Socrates
> ((λ (x) (x x)) (λ (x) (x x)))
> "Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking
> it seriously." --Thompson
>
> ____________________
>   Racket Users list:
>   http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
>