These kind of systems are more valuable for the early 20s, just out of college crowd. People dating, people just starting out in their careers. But the older you get, the less sense it seems to make.
The more you know influential people, the more the whole idea just becomes horrifying. Let's suppose I'm a personal friend of Larry Wall. The LAST thing I want is for some random person to look at my network and use my name as an excuse for contacting Larry ("hey, I'm a friend of em's, and....")
The big underlying problem here is that the math curriculum was designed for the things that are easy to do with graph paper and pencil. Hence the odd obsession with parabolas. New technologies make new kinds of math content learnable. But revising the curriculum for either new tech or old tech doesn't answer the more fundamental question:
Why do we want kids to know this math stuff again?
Do we have specific things we want them to be able to do? Which ones and why? We should really use that as our guide to curriculum reform, not what either new or old tech can do. And once you answer that more basic question, then whether it makes more sense to use PDAs or calculators or slide rules starts to be easier to sort out.
Speaking of Phillip Pullman... "The Golden Compass" and "The Subtle Knife" are supposed to be the first two volumes of a trilogy. I pre-ordered volume three "Amber Spyglass" from Amazon, but just got mail that its publication was cancelled. Anyone know what gives?
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These kind of systems are more valuable for the early 20s, just out of college crowd. People dating, people just starting out in their careers. But the older you get, the less sense it seems to make.
....")
The more you know influential people, the more the whole idea just becomes horrifying. Let's suppose I'm a personal friend of Larry Wall. The LAST thing I want is for some random person to look at my network and use my name as an excuse for contacting Larry ("hey, I'm a friend of em's, and
The big underlying problem here is that the math curriculum was designed for the things that are easy to do with graph paper and pencil. Hence the odd obsession with parabolas. New technologies make new kinds of math content learnable. But revising the curriculum for either new tech or old tech doesn't answer the more fundamental question:
Why do we want kids to know this math stuff again?
Do we have specific things we want them to be able to do? Which ones and why?
We should really use that as our guide to curriculum reform, not what either new or old tech can do. And once you answer that more basic question, then whether it makes more sense to use PDAs or calculators or slide rules starts to be easier to sort out.
Speaking of Phillip Pullman... "The Golden Compass" and "The Subtle Knife" are supposed to be the first two volumes of a trilogy. I pre-ordered volume three "Amber Spyglass" from Amazon, but just got mail that its publication was cancelled. Anyone know what gives?