Saturday, December 09, 2023

EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE: DESIGNED BY KIDS FOR KIDS

2023 introduction:

What did Seymour Papert give us? He gave us a series of microworlds where learning could flourish. Instances include turtle geometry, LEGO robotics and the "Instructional Software Design Project" (with Idit Harel). I became very interested in this, after reading MindStorms because it made my teaching of maths far more interesting and gave me the feeling that I was an innovator. Like many I found textbook maths rather boring.

Since then many new and fascinating microworlds have emerged. eg. the Turtle Art Tiles Project. As I see it the role of "constructionist educators" (a phrase that needs dynamic clarification IMO) is to evaluate in practice and then push these wonderful projects forward.

So, I’m reproducing this 1994 article of my efforts to imitate Idit Harels “Instructional Software Design Project”. I remember those Paralowie years evocatively - a "socially disadvantaged" school where I was encouraged to innovate by the Principal (Pat Thomson https://patthomson.net/author/patthomson/). I’ve reread this article carefully and think it stands up well as something that I might try again tomorrow if the conditions were right.

EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE: DESIGNED BY KIDS FOR KIDS

Bill Kerr, Jan., 1994, Paralowie R12 School

Abstract:

Students at the Year 8 level used LogoWriter software to design computer screens to teach Year 3/4 students Fractions. Students were set the task of doing transformations between words, symbols and pictures using LogoWriter. They recorded their experiences in a journal and identified problems they encountered and solutions to those problems. They helped each other solve problems in Fractions, design and computer programming.

Outcomes from this learning sequence included expressive writing about mathematics, improved scores in a Fraction test, improved fluency in Logo programming, improved self management skills, increased cognitive resilience (overcoming frustration and not giving up), improved time management, and increased faith by the students in their own thinking patterns. Students remained motivated and interested in the Fractions topic for a 7 week block using this approach. The culture of mathematics was perceived by the students to be different and more interesting than traditional textbook maths. Some students dropped in at recess and lunch to work on their projects.

The final combined software product is a useful piece of educational software that can be utilised by other teachers for diagnostic purposes as well as being an exemplar of what can be achieved with LogoWriter when it is used in this way.

Pretest:

A pretest of 41 questions about Fractions (selected from Idit Harel's pretest -- see reference at end for this excellent resource) was administered to the Year 8 class at the beginning of the topic. The test involved a variety of Fraction transformations between words, symbols and pictures with multiple choice answers. Here is a sample of a couple of questions from the pretest:

The same test was then administered to the Year 3/4 students by the Year 8 students. The Year 8 students were asked to explain the questions to the Year 3/4 students if they did not understand them.

Introductory lessons:

As well as the Pretest other introductory lessons were held with the Year 8's to explain the nature of the Project and get the students started on the design project. This included:

  • Conducting a class survey about the most difficult questions in the Fraction pretest. This simply required students to vote on the questions they got wrong and collating totals.
  • Talking about the variety of word, symbol, picture transformations and asking the students to provide examples of them in a class group and then on their own. Explaining how to set out a multiple choice answer format with 5 choices, A to E.
  • Leading the class in discussion on the following focus questions:
    • What would the Year 3/4 students find hard about fractions?
    • What computer screens could you design using LogoWriter to help the Year 3/4 students learn fractions?

Conceptually, the students were being asked to integrate their knowledge and learning about the 3 different areas of Fractions, Logo Programming and Instructional Design. Their brief is diagramatically represented below:

Information for a Logo novice

To create even a simple Logo screen involves a lot of mathematical learning. For instance, to create an equilateral triangle requires knowledge of the external angle of a triangle (120 degrees). To create a more complex design, such as a title page for the Project, requires more sophisticated manipulation of the turtle, for instance by using cartesian co-ordinates (Logo primitives, show pos and setpos[xvalue yvalue]). Conceptually, this is a fourth transformation of Fraction representations in addition to the word, symbol and picture transformations described above.

Regular lesson format

After the introductory lessons the class then gradually settled into a regular lesson format that went as follows:

  • Start (5 min.): Write down todays plans about screen designs.
  • Middle (40 min.): Programming Fraction screens on the computer using LogoWriter
  • End (5 min.): Write down how it went today with an emphasis on:
    • What problems did you have?
    • What you did to solve problems?
    • Who did you help today?

The teacher kept his own journal at the same time as the students. During the middle part of the lesson (40 min.) the teacher mainly worked as a facilitator, moving from group to group, answering questions and helping students design and program their screens.

When students completed a Fraction screen then they would go to the Year 3/4 room and ask their partners to return with them to complete the problem on the screen. The teacher would often intervene after this to assist the Year 8 students to evaluate their screens. Did the Year 3/4's find them too easy or too hard? Were there any confusing design aspects of their screens (such as confusing a picture of 3/4 (three-quarters) with 1/4 (one-quarter))? What would be an appropriate question to ask the Year 3/4 students next? The Year 8's were then offered a copy of the pretest to go through it again with the Year 3/4's so as to discover what they understood and did not understand.

This part of the programme carried on for about 5 weeks at 4 lessons a week. In that time each group (1 or 2 students per group) had designed between 1 and 4 Fraction screens. Some groups designed special title pages and special answer pages as well.

Here is a design problem that arose in the course of one lesson. The Year 8 Designer intended C to be shaded 3/4 in white and the correct answer to be E. However the Year 3/4 student saw C as shaded 1/4 in the darker colour. After the ambiguity was pointed out by the teacher the Year 8 Designer altered the question to, "What picture shows 1/4 shaded in white?"

The cultural setting

Although this Project used computing technology extensively, it was culturally driven not technology driven. The elements of the cultural setting included the skills and style of the teacher, the background of the students, some important elements of the Paralowie R12 School environment and finally the computing hardware that was available. Paralowie R12 School

Paralowie School is located in one of the lowest socio-economic regions of Australia. Absenteeism and lateness to lesson by students are chronic problems in the School and a variety of programmes already exist to meet special student needs. Students in the school are under some pressure NOT to embrace the traditional culture of maths and science since they are likely to be labelled "squares" by their peers. However, it was noticeable that some of the students from different cultures (eg. Serbian, Vietnamese) overtly rejected this cultural stereotype. The School Administration supports innovative teaching practice and so I have been encouraged to pursue my investigations into the effectiveness of transforming a maths learning culture into something more relevant and meaningful to students by using the LogoWriter medium. However, Logo is NOT an established part of the whole school culture at this stage. The Year 8 class is part of the new Paralowie Middle School (Years 6-9). As such I taught the class for 10 lessons a week (4 Maths, 4 Science and 2 Personal Development). This enabled me to establish closer personal relationships with many of the students than is normally possible for High School teachers.

Teacher input into the class culture

The central element of my teaching style can be described by the metaphor of relationship. I believe that learning occurs best when students develop a positive relationship with the teacher, their classmates and the subject matter, in this case maths. I select teaching materials with the idea of building a positive relationship at the forefront. This is a central reason for using Logo, for Logo is closely associated with an educational philosophy of making Maths personally meaningful or appropriable. My students would see me as an evangelical promoter of Logo and someone who can answer any question they have about it. Other maths teaching materials that I use extensively are Australian developed "hands on" products called RIME (Reality in Maths Education) and MCTP (Maths Curriculum and Teaching Program).

Students

This Year 8 class had a high proportion of English as a Second Language students of a variety of backgrounds. 5 students had Khmer background, 2 were Australian Aboriginal, 2 Latin American, 1 Vietnamese, 1 Vietnamese / Maltese, 1 Serbian and the remaining 13 were Anglo-Saxon Australian.

Each student brought into the classroom certain cultural attitudes -- attitudes to mathematics and Fractions that have developed over 8 years of Schooling, attitudes to computers ranging along a continuum from extreme reticence (initially) to extreme interest, attitudes about being put into the role of being expected to teach younger kids, attitudes about how to be "cool" in the classroom. I would loosely and simplistically group my students as follows:

  • Achievers: I classify 8 students out of the 24 in this category, 4 girls and 4 boys.
  • Artistic: One student (boy) used LogoWriter mainly as a means of artistic expression by designing a very attractive title page about Fractions as his first and main priority.
  • Socials: I identified 6 students in this group, 5 girls and 1 boy. For these students their most important lesson is lunch and recess where they can pursue personal relationships and do things that are "cool" such as smoking or leaving the school grounds without permission (breaking the rules).
  • Strugglers (4 girls and 5 boys): This is a mixed group that I believe are not achieving a great deal for a variety of reasons such as a difficult family situation or a poor mastery of the English language (ESL) or missing out significantly in their earlier schooling or learning styles that have not been catered for.

Although I believe that this Project could succeed in many classes it is worth stressing that it did succeed in this class with its high proportion of Socials and Strugglers (15 out of the 25 students)

Hardware

At the time of this project there were 17 computers in the room shared between 24 students. Hence some students had to double up on the computers. The computers are mainly ageing XT's (5 years old) with a variety of monitor formats. All of the computers were old and some were unreliable. Time and work was sometimes lost because of mechanical failure. Only 8 out of 17 computers had colour screens which was a big drawback because the students love to use colour.

Background knowledge

In Logo: Students had very little knowledge (if any) of Logo at the beginning of the school year. During 1994 they had been exposed to it in a fairly intensive way over 3 terms (10 weeks per term) as part of the Maths course prior to commencing this project. A closed book test held during Term 3 indicated that students knew between 12 and 68 LogoWriter primitives each, with a mean score of 38 primitives.

In Fractions: Students came from a variety of feeder schools with diverse curricula and teacher expertise in maths. Initially knowledge in Fractions was ascertained by a Fraction pretest (taken from Idit Harel's thesis). Scores in the pretest varied between 13 and 36 out of 41 with a mean of 25 out of 41.

Assessment

Students were assessed for this unit of work as follows:

  1. Quality of their written journals, marked about every 1.5 weeks.
  2. The number of problems identified in their journals and the number of solutions to the identified problems
  3. How many times they helped other students as recorded in the journals
  4. Quality of the Logo Fractions screens that students designed
  5. How many screen that were designed (ie. how many times that Year 3/4 students were invited to the room).
  6. Post test of Fractions (same as the pretest)
  7. Open book test at end with this question:
    Place Logo primitives into groups or categories of your own choosing.

Post-test results for Fractions test for Year 8 class:
out of 41

PrePost
Lowest 13 17
Highest 36 41
Mean 2531

This improvement occurred over 7 weeks without any organised formal instruction from the teacher to the whole class about how to solve Fraction problems. Twelve students improved their score substantially (between 5 and 18 extra), 8 marginally (between 1 and 4 extra) while 4 obtained the same score or less.

Samples of students work

From the journal of Ngoc Tran 9/11/94

"I have brought 3 girls up from Ms Munro's class, and show them my animation on computer of Fraction, and they all got incorrect answers by guessing. One of my year 8 friend who not bad at maths but couldn't even get it right, the problem is that they cannot recognize the equal shapes or areas."

By the design of her question, Ngoc is clearly identifying a common problem students have about Fractions, that the parts have to be divided into equal areas.

From the journal of Daniel Curnow Monday 21/11/94

"Today I am going to make a harder procedure maybe one that the younger kids found hard in the test they had. The last procedure we did the younger kids found it easy but it took a while before they got the answer. They said that they did not know that one fourth is the same as one quarter."

Daniel's screen:
WHICH SHOWS 1/4?

  • A. THREE FOURTHS
  • B. ONE THIRD
  • C. TWO FIFTHS
  • D. ONE QUARTER
  • E. NOT GIVEN

Daniel is reflecting on as aspect of language in maths. Students sometimes become confused when different words are used to represent the same value, in this case one fourth and one quarter.

From the journal of Sarah Scott Monday 14/11/94

"I showed them (the Year 3/4 students) my screen and they found it easy. I showed them the fractions test and pointed out the hard ones and they knew the answers to all of them. I don't know what screen to do that they wont find easy. I will design that screen in planning tomorrow."

Tuesday 15/11/94

"Today I will ask Mr. Kerr what type of screen I can do now since I am not sure. I just thought of one."

Sarah's was paired with a talented student in the Year 3/4 class who had found her previous screens easy to solve. Sarah thought up this more difficult screen without teacher help so as to offer the Year 3/4 student a real challenge. Her journal entry clearly documents the problem and the moment of creation.

DISCUSSION

Rich Learning Outcomes

As well as the learning about Fractions my strong impression was that significant amounts of learning were also occuring in such diverse areas as:

  • Collaboration with other students
  • Design skills
  • Self management skills
  • Fluency in logo programming
  • Expressive writing about mathematical and technical issues
  • Cognitive resilience (ie. learning not to give up)
  • Time management
  • Faith in own thinking
  • Developing teaching skills such as empathy with Year 3/4 students, planning, reflection and explaining.

It's hard to prove this and unfortunately you, the reader, were not there. Also the merits of the whole approach rests or falls on this claim. The best I can do is to refer you to Idit Harel's thesis for a far more comprehensive documentation of these claims.

What follows is a discussion of some of the claims and connected issues.

Improved Fraction Knowledge

How come students improved their Fraction knowledge (shown by the Pre and Post test results) without being formally instructed in Fractions?

The environmental framework was constructed by the teacher by setting the students a teaching task, a design task and a medium to work in. These were non negotiables but beyond that the students had the freedom to do their own thing. Students were put into the role of a teacher and all teachers know that having to teach a topic is a very good way to learn it. Students were set the task of doing transformations between words, symbols and pictures using LogoWriter. The LogoWriter procedures written by the students became a fourth type of transformation that kept students focused on the manipulation of Fractions. They were learning in constructionist fashion using Logo as a medium over an extended period of time. By constructionist I mean active, self directed exploration providing the opportunity for internal representations of fractions to evolve.

Dealing with complexity

A complex learning sequence where students designed computer screens to teach other students Fractions was completed successfully by the class. The students did not find it particularly difficult or confusing to be learning different skills at the same time. The teacher did not have to nag the class to get on with their work, apart from the occasional individual exception. By and large students self managed their own progress with the teacher (or another student) acting as a helper or facilitator when they became "stuck" with a particular problem.

Inclusive learning activity

All of the students, except two latecomers to the class, contributed to the final instructional software design product. Most of the students designed and made their own screens. The quality of the final screens varied considerably but the final collective class product is a useful piece of instructional software. Some students copied designs from the pretest, which was made readily available throughout. The teacher did not interfere if students chose to do this interpreting it as a lack of confidence that would be overcome in time.

Individuality was expressed

Some students displayed their individuality, initiative and skill by designing special features, such as:

  • Attractive title pages, designed using LogoWriter
  • An elaborate answer screen where a truck backed up to pickup a "YOUR RIGHT" shape and towed it across the screen
  • Flashing colour screens. One group discovered this by accident and it quickly spread throughout the class.

The teacher did not ask students to do any of this but did approve and encourage it when it happened.

Motivation

Motivation and interest in the Project by both students and the teacher remained high throughout the whole 7 week block. Usually, the teacher could work intensively with a small group of students with his back turned to most of the class. I have taught the same class using other more teacher directed methods and found this method the most effective for maintaining motivation and interest over an extended time period.

Problem Finding and Solving

Nearly all of the students systematically identified and recorded problems that occurred in the course of their work and solutions to many of those problems. According to my records, in the course of the Project 123 problems were identified by the students and solutions to 47 of those problems were recorded. The sort of problems that were identified included programming problems, technical problems, design problems, maths problems and personal problems.

Appraising

Students appraised the suitability of the product they made for the target audience (Year 3/4 students) and in many cases made plans to improve t

heir subsequent designs to better fit the target audience. eg. in some cases the first design was too easy for the particular Year 3/4 partner and so a more complex question was designed next time. This is a similar process that real life teachers go through in learning how to teach effectively.

Improved Fluency and Confidence in Technological Competence

Students became more fluent in their use of Logo primitives so that certain strings became second nature to them. For example, I have seen one particular programming sequence that involves trialling something on the front of the LogoWriter page in the command centre and then selecting, copying and pasting it to the flip side, which involves about 12 different keystrokes in correct order, gradually become second nature to a large proportion of the class. This is just one illustration of the improvement in programming fluency and increasing confidence of students in working with complex technology that could be readily observed in the classroom. Students, to varying degrees, developed a positive relationship with the computer and a sense of self as a technically competent person.

Expressive Writing about Maths and Technology

Students wrote systematically about mathematical and technical questions and in many cases included how they felt about these events. They wrote with feeling about technical questions and their collaboration with other students.

Genuinely Useful End Product

The "final" product is educationally valuable. The student software designs have been compiled and edited by the teacher and some of the more enthusiastic students. It is envisaged that the end product will be a useful diagnostic tool for maths teachers as well as an exemplar of what can be done with LogoWriter.

The "final" product could be developed and refined further in the future, simulating within the School the process that commercial software developers have to go through. It might even be possible to work on the product over an extended time with a select group of students to improve the software to commercial standard and then market it.

CONCLUSION

Methodology: Objects to think with

Teachers face the task everyday of how to make their subjects relevant and interesting to their students and this is seen to be a particular problem with maths. One way to look at this is from the point of view of objects to think with. The teacher and students co-construct a learning environment that is replete with "objects to think with". These "objects" include:

  • The challenge of teaching others and designing screens for this purpose using Logowriter
  • The structure of fractions and their transformations (words, symbols, pictures)
  • Other students, eg. best friends, class experts, the Year 3/4 students
  • Teacher (Is he/ she approachable, friendly and skilled?)
  • Journal reflections

Taken together these objects represent the ISDP (Instructional Software Design Project)

Harel and Papert (1990) argue that some materials are better with regard to the following criteria:

  • appropriability (some things lend themselves better than others to being made one's own)
  • evocativeness (some materials are more apt than others to precipitate personal thought)
  • integration (some materials are better carriers of multiple meaning and multiple concepts)

When used in the way described above LogoWriter is a most effective learning medium to think about Fractions and Design according to these criteria.

References

The approach adopted in this learning sequence was inspired from Idit Harel's PhD thesis titled: Software Design for Learning: Children's Construction of Meaning for Fractions in Logo Programming (MIT, June 1988). I obtained a copy of the thesis for US$20 by writing to:
Epistemology and Learning
MIT Media Lab
E15-309
20 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

Idit Harel's thesis was subsequently published as a book called Children Designers (1991), published by Norwood: Ablex.

Harel, I. & Papert, S. (1990) Software Design as a Learning Environment. Interactive Learning Environment, 1, 1-32

Kafai, Yasmin B., Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Children's Learning (1993). This thesis is available from the same 'Epistemology and Learning' address given above for the Idit Harel thesis.

Acknowledgments

Helen Munro, teacher of the 3/4 class at Paralowie R12 School in 1994, for her flexibility and collaboration

Darrell Wakelam inspired

This is the work of some of my year 8 students. If you want to learn how visit this page of Darrell Wakelam's website and also buy his brilliant book, Art Shaped

What you see here is just a tiny sample (using paper plates, egg cartons and plastic milk containers) of what Darrell offers

mice
caterpillar, chameleon, mouse
puffin, chameleon
clowns
elephant
shark (not a Darrell Wakelam design. I asked the student where she got the idea and she replied "Tik Tok!)

Previous:
art shaped: Darrell Wakelam

Saturday, November 11, 2023

learning and teaching Turtle Art

Turtle Art is a deliberately minimalist design of Logo by Brian Silverman and Paula Bonta of the Playful Invention Company. By minimalist I mean it sticks to the principles outlined by Mitch Resnick and Brian Silverman in their 2005 article, “Some Reflections on Designing Construction Kits for Kids”, namely
  • Make it as Simple as Possible – and Maybe Even Simpler
  • A Little Bit of Programming Goes a Long Way

The Turtle Art sessions were the starting point of a bigger project. The students began by designing interesting and artistic geometric shapes. They then exported an SVG of their shape into Tinkercad. From Tinkercad they saved an STL and then 3D printed the shape. Next they used the shape to imprint a clay tablet and finally they painted the tablet.

Following a well worn path I began with the square. The Turtle Art defaults are setup for drawing a square. Once a square is drawn you can then show how to “black box” it with a named hat. This creates a brand new block which can now be used later as part of a larger design.

This starting shape is a good one to role play with a student acting as a robot and another as the controller. This gels with the body syntonic principle (Seymour Papert, MindStorms) and hopefully gets students thinking in terms of “I am the turtle, what do I need to do to make this shape”

I then challenged the students to create the shapes shown (page 1 starters). I witnessed some students completing the square where the turtle begins and returns to the centre whilst others struggled to do this.

In my experience some things have to be taught whilst others are more likely to be picked up naturally in a well constructed learning environment like Turtle Art. My goal is for students to become fluent in their ability to make complex, artistic geometric patterns.

The principle I talk up at the start is turtle state. When you make a shape make sure the turtle ends up in the same position and heading (direction) as where it began.

Later on I talk a lot about 360 / N where N is the number of repetitions needed. For example, say you want to make this shape

First make a midpoint square, remembering that the turtle must start and finish in the same state

Then count the number of repetitions (5) and work out the angle 360 / 5 = 72. Use the midpoint square hat as a building block for the more complex shape

I had a number of regular polygons on my starter page (square, triangle, pentagon, hexagon, octagon). The 360/N formula produces the external angles of these shapes, not the internal angles. I did talk briefly about that showing a diagram on the board with internal and external angles. In this class I never got around to showing how to do variables so to draw all these shapes with one equation. I could have done that but
(a) it wasn't strictly necessary, and
(b)I’ve found in the past after showing this that students often don’t use it anyway. Many prefer the simpler version!

One of my triangles was right angled. Most students worked it out using a guess and test method. I asked the maths co-ordinator if they had done Pythagoras’ theorem yet and she said it would happen a bit later in the year. I decided to go ahead and show how to get the exact lengths using Pythagoras. The hypotenuse is 141.4 if the other two sides are 100 each. A few of the more capable students picked up on this but when I checked later for some of the others if they remembered me teaching Pythagoras I received some blank looks!

I’m not too fussed about this. On the one hand some students are doing it by tinkering which is another word for guess and test. Perhaps they are learning some perseverance as well. Others are learning the more traditional way and getting a more precise answer. For the purposes of what we are trying to achieve here – make interesting and artistic geometric shapes – both methods work fine.

From the page 1 starter shapes I then suggested some pathways that students could go down to produce more interesting and artistic shapes

I did make efforts to setup a situation where students worked in groups and helped each other. They nominated their preferred partners, I then set up groups. I also sometimes asked them to fill out a planning sheet at the start of lesson (questions like ‘Which shapes do you plan to make today?’) and end of lesson (questions like ‘Who helped you?’, ‘Who did you help?’ and ‘Give some details of the help’). I make this part of the assessment criteria. Some students emerged as brilliant helpers of others while some others learnt to find the right person to ask.

A few students managed to complete all my challenges before the others and so I gave them some harder challenges (shapes 36 and 40) from Barry Newell’s original booklet, Turtle Confusion. His hardest shape is shape 40. I had three students successfully do that one and one of them went on with it as his shape to 3D print.

A handful of students went their own way and developed their own shapes at some point. I didn’t push particularly hard for this but did praise it when I saw it happening
As the process continued students finished up with a variety of 3D prints that looked like this:
And painted clay tiles that looked like this:

And yet, this is only covers a tiny fraction of what you can do with Turtle Art. I hope to write some notes in the future about how to teach the many other artistic elements of the program.

Reference:
Burker, Josh Invent to Learn Guide to Fun (2015), pp. 107-113
Newell, Barry. Turtle Confusion (1988)
Papert,Seymour. Mindstorms (1980)
Stager, Gary & Martinez, Sylvia. Turtle Art Tiles Project Guide (adapted from the original Josh Burker article)

Software:
Turtle Art https://www.playfulinvention.com/webturtleart/

(earlier blogs on this project)
Turtle Art Tile Project Conclusion
Working with Acrylics
Working with Clay
Scaffold for Turtle Art Tiles Project
Turtle Art Tiles Project

ELECFREAKS line tracking car

ELECFREAK Nezha kit Case 11: Line tracking car

Had fun doing this with some Polly Farmer (aboriginal) students

For more about ELECFREAKS (positives and negatives) see my earlier blog

Tuesday, November 07, 2023

Turtle Art Tile Project conclusion

It’s quite a complex process with some fiddly technical steps along the way to making a great product.

I had a mixed ability class with incredibly talented students at one end and battlers at the other end. A few did leave early in the piece, for various reasons, but those battlers who displayed some initial reluctance did warm to the project as it proceeded. When it came to 3D printing their Turtle Art design without exception all students became excited. They had never done 3D printing before.

I did make efforts to setup a situation where students worked in groups and helped each other. They nominated their preferred partners, I then set up groups. I also sometimes asked them to fill out a planning sheet at the start of lesson (questions like ‘Which shapes do you plan to make today?’) and end of lesson (questions like ‘Who helped you?’, ‘Who did you help?’ and ‘Give some details of the help’). I make this part of the assessment criteria. Some students emerged as brilliant helpers of others while some others learnt to find the right person to ask. I was trying to nudge them in those collaborative directions and had some success with that.

Turtle Art Design: I did provide scaffolding here, which I blogged about earlier. I'm thinking now that I need to elaborate on this process further in a separate blog. Stay tuned.

I did produce a Help sheet “FROM TURTLE ART TO TINKERCAD TO 3D PRINTING” guide students through the fiddly bits where they transitioned between different software. Some important points:

Turtle Art steps: Make sure your Turtle Art shape:
  • Has a Clean block on top
  • Has pensize set to 10

The Turtle Art default pen size is 4. I found that when this flowed through to the 3D print the lines weren’t thick enough so I upgraded this to size 10.

You can save your Turtle Art file as an SVG which is needed to import into Tinkercad. I told students to choose outline and then plain, not framed, as the frame turned out too bulky and detracted from the art work.

Tinkercad steps: This was students first use of Tinkercad. This project was a good place to start because the Tinkercad steps were relatively easy. Teachers can setup a Tinkercad class with student nicknames to sign in. I always give students the opportunity to choose their own nicknames.

When they imported their SVG I suggested scale to 10% since otherwise the import was too big. I then told them to drop a ruler on the workplane and resize their shape to 90x90x2mm. The 2mm height was enough to make a good impression on the clay. A bigger height would have just meant longer 3D print time.

Students then gave their file a meaningful name and exported from Tinkercad to create a *.STL file

Prusa Slicer steps: I’m a big fan of the Prusa 3D printers. However, they don’t come with a prepackaged configuration, which is a pain, so I had to produce another step taking students through that process.

Once configured the process was straightforward since the sizes have been done in Tinkercad and just have to be confirmed. I did tell students that they had to save as 3MF and send me that file before they have permission to print. They also had to export their GCODE and not get confused about the functions of the different files. GCODE for the 3D printer and 3MF so the teacher could check everything was ready.

3D printing: This was the first time these students had done 3D printing and they were delighted to see that all their hard digital work was producing an atomic product!

Clay step: I've written about this in another blog. Not much to add except that I did 3D print guides for the students to roll their clay evenly to 6mm.

Painting step: I've also written about this here. We did apply varnish after drying to seal all over.

Overcoming bottleneck points: Real life classes are messy things due to varying student abilities, motivations and some absences. At any rate I needed a “filler”, something engaging for students to go on with who were up to date with everything else. Luckily at the right moment Gary Stager made his Turtle Art cards available. Go to Invent to Learn and when you quit you'll see the pop up. These are 156 beautiful Turtle Art projects. The code is supplied with an image of the finished product. Students went on with these while others were catching up. I even had one student who became so engaged with these cards that she did all of them!!!

REFERENCE (earlier blogs on this project)
Turtle Art Tiles Project
Scaffold for Turtle Art Tiles Project
Working with Clay
Working with Acrylics

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

the tower of AI babel

Borges and AI L´eon Bottou † and Bernhard Sch¨olkopf
Oct 4, 2023
Abstract:
Many believe that Large Language Models (LLMs) open the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some see opportunities while others see dangers. Yet both proponents and opponents grasp AI through the imagery popularised by science fiction. Will the machine become sentient and rebel against its creators? Will we experience a paperclip apocalypse? Before answering such questions, we should first ask whether this mental imagery provides a good description of the phenomenon at hand. Understanding weather patterns through the moods of the gods only goes so far. The present paper instead advocates understanding LLMs and their connection to AI through the imagery of Jorge Luis Borges, a master of 20th century literature, forerunner of magical realism, and precursor to postmodern literature. This exercise leads to a new perspective that illuminates the relation between language modelling and artificial intelligence
My summary:

LLM is a story telling fiction machine with innumerable forks that can write any story and, be warned, can be manipulated by others. Neither truth nor intention matters to the operation of the machine, only narrative necessity. Narrative necessity is statistically determined by what comes before.

The machine merely follows the narrative demands of the evolving story. As the dialogue between the human and the machine progresses, these demands are coloured by the convictions and the aspirations of the human, the only visible dialog participant who possesses agency. However, many other invisible participants make it their business to influence what the machine says.

Delusion often involves a network of fallacies that support one another

Forking paths: The linguist Zellig Harris has argued that all sentences in the English language could be generated from a small number of basic forms by applying a series of clearly defined transformations. Training a large language model can thus be understood as analysing a large corpus of real texts to discover both transformations and basic forms, then encode them into an artificial neural network that judges which words are more likely to come next after any sequence.

The Purifiers want to eliminate the heinous, tidy up the machine to serve the human race and make money from it. They want to reshape the garden of forking paths against its nature, severing the branches that lead to stories they deem undesirable. Although there are countless ways to foil these attempts to reshape the fiction machine, efforts have been made, such as “fine-tuning” the machine using additional dialogues crafted or approved by humans, and reinforcing responses annotated as more desirable by humans (“reinforcement learning with human feedback”.)

Confabulation: As new words are printed on the tape, the story takes new turns, borrowing facts from the training data (not always true) and filling the gaps with plausible inventions (not always false). What the language model specialists sometimes call hallucinations are just confabulations. Confabulation is inventing plausible stories with no basis in fact.

If an amnesiac patient is asked questions about an event they were previously at, instead of admitting they do not know, they would invent a plausible story. Similarly, in split-brain patients, where the corpus callosum is severed so each half of the brain cannot talk to each other, patients can invent elaborate explanations for why the other half of their body is doing a specific thing, even when the experimenter knows this is not the case because they have prompted it with something differently.

Story telling: The invention of a machine that can not only write stories but also all their variations is thus a significant milestone in human history. It has been likened to the invention of the printing press. A more apt comparison might be what emerged to shape mankind long before printing or writing, before even the cave paintings: the art of storytelling. Fiction can enrich our lives, so what is the problem?

Reference:
The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges (1941)
LLMs confabulate not hallucinate
Zellig Harris. Mathematical Structures of Language. John Wiley & Sons, 1968

Monday, October 02, 2023

children are not hackers

Children are not hackers by Paulo Blikstein & Marcelo Worsley (2016) - pdf available

This is a cautionary argument against people like me who have been known to say “we are all makers” without thinking deeply enough about the issues. See the footnote for more about this.

The authors begin with the counter intuitive claim that the cultural roots of the modern maker movement are a threat to its flourishing or even survival in schools! The one eyed warriors may sew the seeds of destruction of what they love. How ironic but not unusual. After this introduction I had to read on to understand.

They explain this claim. The people that created the first Fab Lab at MIT (Gershenfeld eta la in 2001) were hackers. By the way I don't use the term "hackers" as a pejorative. Hackers are those curious people who want to look inside and understand how things work. A better term for those who steal your data is Crackers.

This led to the creation of Maker Faires for those and other hackers to show off their cool products and the MAKE magazine (which originated in 2005). Those people were sophisticated publishers. Furthermore, Maker clubs have flourished more outside of schools in informal settings (eg. museum, after school programs and competitions) rather than inside schools.

Then there has been a push for STEM education due to a perceived shortage of qualified engineers and scientists. Those considerations involve the industrial workplace, not the school workplace.

All of these influences (hackers – publishers – informal educators – industrial workplace) have a middle to upper class origin and elite appeal. Such a culture will not win the battle to introduce modern maker education into schools in a mass way.

Hacker culture is self-sufficiency, autodidacticism, individualism and competition

“The popular image of the hacker is that of a disheveled, unshaven White male in his twenties, doing all-nighters in a messy electronics lab, capable of learning anything by him­self by scouring the Web or doing late-night runs to the library ...”

This is an extreme minority. To promote this won’t help most students.

Publisher culture: The initial culture of the Maker Movement which began in earnest around 2005 was college-educated, affluent, White men. They published MAKE magazine and organised Maker Faires where makers showed off their innovative finished products. This was a culture of Product before Process where unfinished “half baked” efforts are not rewarded.

Also the types of projects developed by this elite group downgrades and devalues projects such as traditional crafts, costumes, pottery, technology-augmented wearables and jewelry, among many others

Informal spaces Within these spaces the Keychain Syndrome prevails - the “30-minute” workshop model: fast, scripted, perpetually “introductory” workshops. The problem here is that the demonstrations often never get past trivial objects.

Job Market culture: It is argued that we need more STEM students because of shortages of engineers and scientists and other countries, such as a threatening China, are way ahead of us here.

The pathway pioneered by Papert and others is different: that software such as Logo (the precursor to Scratch) and hardware such as LEGO are tools for self expression and ways for transforming traditional subjects such as maths into something that is more interesting and natural to learn.

Summary from this section about the hackers – publishers – informal educators – industrial workplace influences: Promoters of modern maker education such as myself should not take the efficacy of “making” for granted.

TOWARDS A MAKER ED CULTURE THAT WILL WORK

Hard fun (Papert): The lesson for educators is that the work in FabLabs and makerspaces can be enjoyable but should never be “easy” fun, devoid of frustration and difficulty

Abstract and Concrete Thinking: The maker space approach does not reject the abstract but attempts to make the abstract more concrete. The examples provided by the authors are:

Supposedly abstract mathematical ideas suddenly become concrete when, for example, a student needs to design a laser-cut object using the least amount of material, or when a very “con­crete” 3D printed object gives rise to a discussion about Boolean operations

I can think of other examples arising from design work using Turtle Art. I asked students to make a right angled triangle. Some did this by trial and error which was fine. I also showed them how to get the lengths exactly right by using Pythagoras theorem. In another shape the outside octagon by trial and error the size was 121 (good enough), when calculated using trig it was 120.7 (exact). I would say the trial and error approach is acceptable but it's good to show the more precise way to obtain the values and some of the students (not all) will pick it up.

Gut feeling or Research? Doing or Theorising? Some maker ed advocates rely on gut feeling (doing is learning – list of attributes) but of course many educators want to see the real research done before they accept this. Deep learning doesn’t happen by magic. Maker ed advocates have to make strategic choices here. IMO a combination of both constructionist and instructionist methods are required. The authors are building a case here for a coherent theory of maker ed, not just hands on and she'll be right mate.

For example, in one class where we were making and coding with the microbit, I took the opportunity to try explain where the 255 came from in some MakeCode parameters. I talked about bits and bytes and 1s and 0s. It wasn’t very successful. It was too abstract for most of the students. It made me realise I need to prepare this sort of break from the making and coding more carefully.

RECOMMENDED LEARNING CULTURE FOR MAKER SPACE

How does a learning culture differ from a hacker culture?

From the perspective of where actual students are at these are bad slogans: “every child should be a maker”, “making mistakes is good”, “every child should hack”

Reality check: many students need support! If they don’t get it they will feel lost or frustrated. They drift into doing the less demanding parts of a task (colouring in).

Without help (sink or swim approach) those who feel uncomfortable in a maker space will become further disempowered

One possibility: Pair more competent with less competent and make the less competent the driver (in control of computer, mouse and keyboard). I thought this was a great idea and have been angling for an opportunity to try it out:

“ In half of the mixed pairs, the low-achieving student was mandated to be the “driver” of the activity (having control over the computer mouse and key­board, etc.). In those groups, the learning outcomes were almost the same as the groups with two high-achieving students, and dramatically higher than mixed groups in which the high-achieving student was the “driver” instead (Schneider & Blikstein, in press).”

The authors refer to other researchers about the stereotype threat (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006) which shows that individuals can perform below their ability level when they suspect that they belong to a group that historically does not do well at a particular activity

Key points from this section
  • include tasks that are meaningful to all students
  • avoid too much “learn from failure” rhetoric
  • find ways to get students out of their comfort zone (eg. instruct lower ability in a pair to be the driver)
  • be aware that some groups expect to fail

From jobs culture to literacy culture:

There is often lots of talk about STEM (and also STEAM) in education systems these days. Some of this originates from social shortages of engineers and scientists. This can be a source of an educational problem rather than a solution to a social issue.

There is a deep cultural abyss separating the corporate world and K–12 schools. Educational materials should be designed for children

  • microbit not arduino
  • Scratch not Java

The authors argue that the point of STEM literacy is to provide a lens through which to interpret the world and act upon it – “consciousness of the possible” Friere 1970. I have often advanced a similar argument, that Scratch is a multimedia fun machine for making stories and games.

From keychain culture to deep projects culture:

The “keychain syndrome” is ok for an introduction to 3D printing but we are not achieving much if we don’t go beyond that. One version of this is downloading a great design from thingiverse and printing it. I do that and again it has its place. But in the bigger scheme of things it is too easy, no design or remix skills happening here. How do we go beyond that to a culture of deep projects?

To develop a school culture of engaging cross curricular projects does require administrative support. Teachers are time strapped and so it is not realistic to expect them to develop such materials on top of their normal workload.

Unfortunately curriculum guidelines such as ACARA, which separate the what from the how, do not help here. A good curriculum ought to have more flexibility about WHAT we teach (eg. design a project around an idea that interests the student). Then the teacher helps the student HOW to do that. In other words the HOW should be guiding the WHAT. But what does ACARA do? Tells the teachers the WHAT like Moses' stone tablets and leaves it to the teacher to figure out the HOW. (Thanks here to Mitch Resnick)

We think outside of the “STEM box”: We have seen students creating fascinating musical instruments, clothes, costumes, and visual arts projects, working with and augmenting traditional crafts, and creating interactive art. We have also seen teachers from non-STEM areas create very compelling units, combining history and math, biology and engineering, language arts and physics. Allowing teachers to “pair up” and design curricula together, even if they are from different areas, greatly expands the range of activities that can be done in the labs and makes it possible to attract students with a variety of different interests.

Project ideas and themes should be connected to students’ lives, interests, passions, and their communities. Lives, interests, passions, communities covers a lot of ground

From product culture to process culture:

Priming students helps their performance. eg. if students have been previously taught that triangles make stronger structures (and are reminded) then rather than using readily available objects to build bridges (eg, a chair) they are more likely to build with triangles.

A product culture sees a great finished product suitable for a Maker Faire as the end goal. A process culture looks at things like collaboration, management (eg. planning ahead) and preparedness to go outside of their comfort zone. It’s a different form of assessment.

THE MAKING OF THE FUTURE

Maker education has made significant inroads into many schools and even official curricular. For this progress to continue so that maker ed flourishes advocates such as myself need to understand the issue of what cultures are more attractive to most members of a school community.

Footnote: An extract from a previous article where I went a little overboard about humans as makers:
We, humans, are homo faber (Latin for Man the Maker), the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools.
- Thoughts on reading Paulo Blikstein (the founder of the Fab Learn Schools Movement)

I think now even in pre modern societies there was a division of labour (eg. hunters and gatherers) and that in our present youth culture, with the influence of social media, people are more likely to become consumers than makers. However, the modern maker movement does provide a promising way for many to break out of this.

Sunday, October 01, 2023

3D hand print: from atoms to bits and back to atoms

I adapted the idea from a tutorial at the Prusa Printables education site (free for schools, universities and other educational institutions but you have to apply to register) to develop an interesting 3D print of my hand

The tutorial was Autumn Leaves by Vesela Skola

I wasn’t happy with the recommended image to SVG converter so I searched around and one that worked well for me: Free image to SVG converter

The Autumn Leaves tutorial taught me how to prepare the images and then in Prusa Slicer to superimpose a hand image showing fingernails and knuckles onto the full hand backdrop. It also showed me how to alter the settings to print the hand with infill only (30% honeycomb) thus producing an attractive mesh effect.