Category: my thoughts

Nature Quest

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. —Frank Lloyd Wright

I was browsing through my Discord channels and was reminded of one of my goals; to get folks outside and observing the world. One of the channels is for the QuestaGame. A related channel is ‘Guardians of Earth’. I will update this post as I become more familiar with this game.

Another emerging opportunity to get out of doors is in the Augmented Reality nature walk. This can be done using TaleBlazer from MIT.

If you haven’t visited the live cameras here, I think you will find it enjoyable. But, that isn’t a substitute for getting outside; wherever you live.

The weather is another outdoors hobby. Although you can spend a lot of time online watching radar and related sites; a peek out the window is better and going outside is best(most of the time).

I think this starts early in a child’s education. Moving a part of the classroom out of doors is an important first step.

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Werner Heisenberg

my thoughts

Conversation

“Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

“All of them at once,” said Bilbo. “And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.

…

“Good morning!” he said at last. “We don’t want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water.” By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
“What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!” said Gandalf. “Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till I move off.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

I opened with that not because it provides deep insight into conversation, but, … well primarily because it is one of my favorite books. While reading “The Hobbit” I felt immersed in Middle Earth and, indeed, felt included in a “conversation.”

Good conversation is difficult to find. I found a number of quotes from books I have not read; but may go on my ‘to read’ list. I just hope I can take my Kindle and Nook into the afterlife. A few examples follow.

“What ho!” I said.
“What ho!” said Motty.
“What ho! What ho!”
“What ho! What ho! What ho!”
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.”
― Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.”
― William Hazlitt, Selected Essays, 1778-1830

You get the picture. I find most conversations today are more ‘dual monologues’; no one is truly listening, each is either talking or thinking what they will say after the other person quits talking. So, with a blog one is not interrupted by the other person talking. Which I suppose means I have no time to think of what I will be saying; hence a bit of a mindless sequence of words. So, … Good morning, or good evening, whichever is appropriate.

my thoughts Rural Living

Why Small Rural Towns?

“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.”

― Hugo Cabret

I was thinking of this quote and thought of software. Early in the development of computers, memory and processing cycles were precious. In today’s computer that is no longer the case and code can remain in programs long after it is no longer used. Perhaps this is a metaphor for organizations that have ‘parts’ remaining from decades past; there have been no reasons to remove them. Committees and meetings remain long after their purpose has been lost. But, like today’s computers, the price of this vestigial element is seldom recognized. In large organizations this can be unnoticed; however, in small organizations(like the early computers) this extra part can be debilitating

Mind Manager is a graphical view of a thought. This is about a small town.

my thoughts Porch Ponders

Computer, Science?

“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the “impossible,” come true.”

―F. Scott Fitzgerald,The Crack-Up

Please, dear reader, remember these are thoughts for discussions. How, one might ask, is the above quote relevant to the subject of ‘Computer Science’. What do you think? These mental meanderings are just that; open ended thoughts. There are those who consider that any topic whose study includes the label, “science”, isn’t.

When this tool became available in the first half of the twentieth century, programmers were not professional programmers. These were scientists and engineers who had questions to address and this was an additional tool. Perhaps computer programming is to software engineering as soldering is to electrical engineering.

There is little doubt the computer has added a critical tool to contemporary science. And, like all science studies, some results are useful and some are interesting but may not be relevant to current questions. Also, as with other studies, these may be solutions looking for a problem. I am of the opinion that learning how to use computer enhanced skills for problem solving should not be left in the hands of computer scientists.

Applying labels to people and activities is convenient, but often misleading.

“The philosopher F.W.J. Schnelling introduced the distinction between ‘Apollonians,” who favor logic, the analytical approach, and a dispassionate weighing of evidence, and ‘Dionysians’ who lean more toward intuition, synthesis, and passion. These traits are sometimes described as correlating very roughly with emphasis on the use of the left and right brain respectively. But some … seem to belong to another category: the ‘Odysseans,’ who combine the two predilections in their quest for connections among ideas.” – from “The Quark and the Jaguar” by Murray Gell-Mann

my thoughts

Day Eight

Evey kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact” – Carl Sagan

Languages; when I started thinking about this I was reading a primer on Latin. I have been fascinated with languages(although poor at learning them) since I started my studies in STS. (STS = science and technology studies or science and technology in society). While not a great insight, I think it is overlooked that if a language doesn’t have a word for an item, it doesn’t exist in that culture. Words I struggled with in STS were ontology and epistemology. And a reminder to those who hate wikipedia; I find it an interesting place to start my research on any topic. It just doesn’t end there.

However, as I thought about it, it isn’t about languages as much as its about formulating questions. How does a language evolve? Words must be created to describe a new thing. What would the word ‘radio’ mean to Socrates? Many questions were asked and answered over the past 2700 (or so) years. In our society, more people will quibble over the number 2700 than will be interested in the question posed.

As many of you know, history was not one of my interests until the aforementioned STS work. It seems to me the history and trajectory of a society can be told in the evolution of the language of a culture and the questions being asked within that culture.

During my short career as a teacher, well, formal career, I found students were often unable to formulate a question. As I look back over my varied careers, I find that is generally the issue; “what problem are we trying to solve, really?” The old saying,”A problem well stated is a problem half solved,” is more than a cute saying. It should be every scientist’s and engineer’s mantra. It is not at all clear to me that all studies start from that position.

It also occurred to me that there are far more answers looking for questions than well stated questions looking for answers.

“The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.” — attributed to Bishop Mandell Creighton, a British historian who lived 1843-1901.

education my thoughts

Computational Thinking in Education

Post author By stangrigsby
Post date June 22, 2022
No Comments on Computational Thinking in Education

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. — Nikola Tesla

What is computational thinking? Search for the term using Google returns a number of definitions; for example, DIMACS at Rutgers, Wolfram, and especially Stephen Wolfram.

I think this subjects is interpreted as “Computers in Schools.” In my opinion, simply teaching elementary school students how to program is a waste of time. From my limited conversations, it provides the already overworked teachers either yet another topic to cover, or perhaps a bit of a respite so they can concentrate on all the paperwork foisted upon them.

Computers can be a powerful tool for education and research; or, they can be another solution looking for a problem. If a student or researcher doesn’t know how to formulate the question, then a computer often provides a means by which wrong answers are achieved faster; and, unfortunately with the authority of being computer produced!

In my opinion, this is where computational thinking enters. Computational thinking allows the ‘computer’ to become a part of the problem stating and solving process.

I must add, it is important that everyone learn how to observe. To me that means getting outside and observing the world. Or, perhaps, sitting in a coffee shop and observing the gestalt of the setting.

“In Mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.” — Georg Cantor

my thoughts

Day One

Well, not quite the next day, from a calendar perspective but the next one here.

I am reviewing comments from notes strewn about my office and one set that expresses a bit of that which I learned over the past five years.

Equations tell stories
Look beyond the textbook,
look beyond the classroom
The World is our classroom, our Laboratory

Any language creates an approximation.
The approximations have three sources.

The writer
The language
The reader

my thoughts

Day 0

This is not so much a post as a way of discovering how this blog thing works. So let’s see where this page really ends up.

I am exploring some ways that may allow me to connect with these younger students. While I am no longer teaching, I find the subject and process very interesting.

One of the topics of interest is the use of games to explore. I have, therefore, decided to try one

Kerbal Space Program OK, so it isn’t quite a game, but its a start.

my thoughts

Hello world!

Are you like me, do you have ‘great’ things to say until you sit down with a pen and a blank sheet of paper; or a keyboard and a text box? I have been told the only way to overcome that is to start writing. So, here goes.

For the past five years I taught physics, electronics and statistics. During that time I found students were seldom interested in my presentation; only in the test and the grades. What I took away from this was, I had assumed they were as interested in learning as I was; they weren’t. So, I tried things to allow them to get involved. I encouraged them to build things. That helped. At the heart of much of this was a lack of math background. I thought (and still think) computational thinking is an answer. The computer programming and problem solving skills of my students was generally not strong. This is where I start my ‘thinking out loud’.

I wrote all of that a few years ago. It is now 2023. I am still ‘thinking out loud’ on these posts, and, I hope I am now acting on these concerns. I look forward to your comments.