@IrrationalMethod I've also been trying my old #Mindstorms set with my daughter a few weeks ago. The built in programs still worked. My IR sender seems to be broken, but maybe fixable. The connectors still work, but are in bad shape. Let me know if you have found a good method of protecting them. (Maybe taping is good enough?)

I guess you're aware of this project? http://webpbrick.com/

The author, @maehw, also has some valuable slides in German: https://www.luga.de/static/LIT-2024/assets/talks/20240420_LEGO_Mindstorms_RCX_reaktivieren__Entwick.pdf

@leon_p_smith
‘Mindstorms’ is full of quotable text, here’s just one:

“Imagine that children were forced to spend an hour a day drawing dance steps on squared paper and had to pass tests in these ‘dance facts’ before they were allowed to dance physically. Would we not expect the world to be full of ‘dancophobes’?Would we say that those who made it to the dance floor and music had the greatest ‘aptitude for dance’? In my view, it is no more appropriate to draw conclusions about mathematical aptitude from children’s unwillingness to spend many hundreds of hours doing sums.” — Seymour Papert (p. 43)

#mathematics #ITeachMath #MathematicsEducation #MathEd #MathsEd #SeymourPapert #Mindstorms

@leon_p_smith
Yes, I think programming can be a good way to learn mathematics (and more).

Seymour Papert wrote about this in Mindstorms (1980).

I was fortunate to learn Logo and turtle programming on a modest home computer in my early teens. I don't know which was cause and which was effect, but I still like geometry and programming today.

For those not familiar with Mindstorms, a good summary is at
https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/mindstorms-what-did-papert-argue-and-what-does-it-mean-for-learning-and-education-c8324b58aca4

#mathematics #programming #Logo #TurtleGraphics #ITeachMath #MathematicsEducation #MathEd #MathsEd #SeymourPapert #Mindstorms