I have done this before (a long time ago, when I was teaching summer grade school kids on an Apple II, when they were new).
I would certainly make a point of having some fun computer games and other types of play for them (to keep them interested), but I also think there is a very serious matter they should spend some time (maybe an hour a day) on: problem solving.
There are some 'classic' problems, which are kind of fun to work with students on, but which require absolutely no use of a computer. The first is the problem of having students, working in small groups, prepare a step-by-step set of instructions for a few simple, everyday tasks (tying shoes is an obvious one). Then, you take each set of instructions and follow them absolutely literally. The results are usually hilarious, and give the kids an idea how 'dumb' (i.e. literal) computers are. Of course, you should give them a few tries, and they will quickly converge on a real set of instructions.
Then, work with them on some more normal algorithmic tasks, again by hand. have them plan how to sort a deck of cards, or how to count to ten (and stop when they get there).
It is important to stress that you don't spend all the time doing this stuff, or the kids will be bored to tears, but if you do some of it, and do it in a fun way, you will get them started thinking about how computers really work.
> Since Day One, Apple has hated any innovation besides its own.
Oh give it up! this is bunk. Apple has done a great deal to adopt and popularize standards from outside its own domain. Both PCI and USB were created in the Intel camp, but showed no real commercial life until Apple adopted them. The Intel camp is _very_ conservative about adopting new technologies, while Apple, in general, has been rather adventuresome and willing to (somewhat forcibly) sell new technologies. They are mostly sufficiently picky about the quality of the ones they try that many of them do end up popular (again, PCI and USB have finally made a large dent in EISA and RS-232/parallel port/SCSI etc. chains), but they will happily adopt from the outside.
I ran across a very interesting phenomenon recently with Project Gutenberg and the local public school district. My son needed a copy of "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall" for school, and it was not available without a long lead time from bookstores. I looked at Gutenberg, and found it, and printed him up a neat copy. I also printed an extra for him to give to his teacher, so students could copy it and not have to buy the book. I made it quite clear to the teacher that this was a legal operation, etc. However, my son says the teacher shelved the copy, and indicated little interest in providing it to students to copy.
It seems that free texts such as this would be the perfect thing to use in history courses, where students often buy a book, read it once, and never use it again. School systems could save the students a _lot_ of money this way, and with very little effort on the part of the teacher. Many copy places (such as Kinko's) even will handle distribution and sale of such copies to students, with no effort on the part of the teacher, and a lot more cheaply than buying a book for one use.
Do you have any idea how to convince school systems of the value of this approach? Given the large number of historical texts available, it seems that it would open the doors to teachers use of a lot more original material in classes without much effort or expense.
My daughter (8th grade) wants to learn programming this summer. After talking with few people and reading quite a bit, I think I am going to try Python as the language/environment. It has all the features of a really powerful language, but a very clean syntax and the 'safe' environment of an interpreter. I just ordered a book, ("Learning Python (Help for Programmers)" Mark Lutz, et al), but doubt that this is really sufficiently introductory for a new programmer.
I think, given the free nature, strengths, and portability of Python, that it would be very nice if someone would write a good Python text for the primary/early secondary student. If one exists already, and you know about it, let me know!
It worries me if Linuxcare is running into trouble. Their Australian division has hired a whole bunch of good linux people (Paul Mackerras, Andrew Tridgell, etc.) who are developing a lot of important packages (samba, rsync, ppp, linuxppc for PowerMac). I would not like to see that effort broken up.
I looked at the patent ffrom the IBM patent server. As a physicist, I can say that most of the contents are mumbo-jumbo.
It is important to remember that for a patent to be valid, it must be detailed enough for one 'skilled in the art' (patent office terminology) to build the device based on the patent (i.e. it must be enabling). A patent (the word, of course, means open) is supposed to open up a technology... you can't simultaneously have something under wraps and patented. You either have a trade secret or a patent, not both!
I would consider myself to be reasonably skilled in the arts associated with this type of work (PhD in Physics, Caltech, 1983) but the patent is certainly not enabling.
Worse, I suspect that it isn't based on any real physics. The discussion of exciting atomic states in the magnetic fields surrounding a wire reads a lot like the kind of language one sees in perpetual-motion patents to try to cover up the complete lack of any real possibility of success.
If I were making investment advice, I would certainly not recommend buying into this one.
On the other side of the hardware world, I am running LinuxPPC on my 333 MHz PowerPC G3 laptop, and it works beautifully. 90+% of everything I try works (some oddnesses with hot-swapping devices in the media bay, e.g.). It is quite a nice machine for fast computation (running OpenDX and such).
Actually, head geeks have been important since long before the 90's. In 1974 (!) I was head geek at my high school of a timesharing system (dual processor HP2100S/2114B with 10 MB of disk), and spent much of my free time running the hallways figuring out why this or that terminal had lost touch with the system, etc. There wasn't much competition for the position, then.
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I would certainly make a point of having some fun computer games and other types of play for them (to keep them interested), but I also think there is a very serious matter they should spend some time (maybe an hour a day) on: problem solving.
There are some 'classic' problems, which are kind of fun to work with students on, but which require absolutely no use of a computer. The first is the problem of having students, working in small groups, prepare a step-by-step set of instructions for a few simple, everyday tasks (tying shoes is an obvious one). Then, you take each set of instructions and follow them absolutely literally. The results are usually hilarious, and give the kids an idea how 'dumb' (i.e. literal) computers are. Of course, you should give them a few tries, and they will quickly converge on a real set of instructions.
Then, work with them on some more normal algorithmic tasks, again by hand. have them plan how to sort a deck of cards, or how to count to ten (and stop when they get there). It is important to stress that you don't spend all the time doing this stuff, or the kids will be bored to tears, but if you do some of it, and do it in a fun way, you will get them started thinking about how computers really work.
> Since Day One, Apple has hated any innovation besides its own.
Oh give it up! this is bunk. Apple has done a great deal to adopt and popularize standards from outside its own domain. Both PCI and USB were created in the Intel camp, but showed no real commercial life until Apple adopted them. The Intel camp is _very_ conservative about adopting new technologies, while Apple, in general, has been rather adventuresome and willing to (somewhat forcibly) sell new technologies. They are mostly sufficiently picky about the quality of the ones they try that many of them do end up popular (again, PCI and USB have finally made a large dent in EISA and RS-232/parallel port/SCSI etc. chains), but they will happily adopt from the outside.
I ran across a very interesting phenomenon recently with Project Gutenberg and the local public school district. My son needed a copy of "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall" for school, and it was not available without a long lead time from bookstores. I looked at Gutenberg, and found it, and printed him up a neat copy. I also printed an extra for him to give to his teacher, so students could copy it and not have to buy the book. I made it quite clear to the teacher that this was a legal operation, etc. However, my son says the teacher shelved the copy, and indicated little interest in providing it to students to copy.
It seems that free texts such as this would be the perfect thing to use in history courses, where students often buy a book, read it once, and never use it again. School systems could save the students a _lot_ of money this way, and with very little effort on the part of the teacher. Many copy places (such as Kinko's) even will handle distribution and sale of such copies to students, with no effort on the part of the teacher, and a lot more cheaply than buying a book for one use.
Do you have any idea how to convince school systems of the value of this approach? Given the large number of historical texts available, it seems that it would open the doors to teachers use of a lot more original material in classes without much effort or expense.
My daughter (8th grade) wants to learn programming this summer. After talking with few people and reading quite a bit, I think I am going to try Python as the language/environment. It has all the features of a really powerful language, but a very clean syntax and the 'safe' environment of an interpreter. I just ordered a book, ("Learning Python (Help for Programmers)" Mark Lutz, et al), but doubt that this is really sufficiently introductory for a new programmer.
I think, given the free nature, strengths, and portability of Python, that it would be very nice if someone would write a good Python text for the primary/early secondary student. If one exists already, and you know about it, let me know!
It worries me if Linuxcare is running into trouble. Their Australian division has hired a whole bunch of good linux people (Paul Mackerras, Andrew Tridgell, etc.) who are developing a lot of important packages (samba, rsync, ppp, linuxppc for PowerMac). I would not like to see that effort broken up.
I looked at the patent ffrom the IBM patent server. As a physicist, I can say that most of the contents are mumbo-jumbo.
It is important to remember that for a patent to be valid, it must be detailed enough for one 'skilled in the art' (patent office terminology) to build the device based on the patent (i.e. it must be enabling). A patent (the word, of course, means open) is supposed to open up a technology... you can't simultaneously have something under wraps and patented. You either have a trade secret or a patent, not both!
I would consider myself to be reasonably skilled in the arts associated with this type of work (PhD in Physics, Caltech, 1983) but the patent is certainly not enabling.
Worse, I suspect that it isn't based on any real physics. The discussion of exciting atomic states in the magnetic fields surrounding a wire reads a lot like the kind of language one sees in perpetual-motion patents to try to cover up the complete lack of any real possibility of success.
If I were making investment advice, I would certainly not recommend buying into this one.
On the other side of the hardware world, I am running LinuxPPC on my 333 MHz PowerPC G3 laptop, and it works beautifully. 90+% of everything I try works (some oddnesses with hot-swapping devices in the media bay, e.g.). It is quite a nice machine for fast computation (running OpenDX and such).
Actually, head geeks have been important since long before the 90's. In 1974 (!) I was head geek at my high school of a timesharing system (dual processor HP2100S/2114B with 10 MB of disk), and spent much of my free time running the hallways figuring out why this or that terminal had lost touch with the system, etc. There wasn't much competition for the position, then.