Re: How about an inter-project project?

[Jeffrey Elkner <jelkner@yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us>]

I just spoke to one of our math teachers.  She is a future Linux
enthusiast;) and was open to the idea of working with Dr Geo and
developing course materials.  We are working on several computer science
books (see:

http://yhspatriot.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us/openBookProject/openbookindex.html

), but we are very interested in trying something from another
discipline.  I think that Geometry is an excellent idea, because it
lends itself to computer aided discovery learning.  We chose computer
science first for two main reasons:

1.  We are in computer science, so developing cs stuff amounts to
"scratching an itch" to use Eric Raymond's phrase.

2.  CS programs tend to have readily available computers.  This is a
potential problem with other disciplines.

We could however, make our linux lab available for another class, such
as Geometry.  I am willing and eager to work on this, so if anyone has
ideas as to how to proceed, let's get going.

jeff elkner

> I was thinking last night about what would be needed to get our work
> actually used in schools.  Besides having software for pedagogical
> purposes that runs on Linux, we'll need lesson plans and exercises that
> use that software and teaching material in the school's native
> language.  Interestingly enough, we have a few projects that can address
> each aspect of the need.  I wonder if we shouldn't work on preparing
> everything we need to use one or another program and then use that
> effort as a template on which to build others.
> 
> Perhaps we could ask the open textbook project to work on a geometry
> text geared toward Dr Geo while at the same time helping Hilaire refine
> and improve the program.  Lesson plans could be developed in concert
> with the open textbook, and everything could be passed on to Barret's
> translation project for conversion into multiple languages.  Since Dr
> Geo is designed for multiple languages it should work very nicely.
> 
> If all this works out we could consider Micah and Mauricio's Derive-like
> program and Odile's Promath for areas to work diligently on.  If we can
> come up with enough course material (let's not forget GNUplot) for
> mathematics, we might be able to get some Linux machines in schools for
> mathematics computer labs.
> 
> What do you all think?