The HandsBook: PTP

In these early stages of the project, a book was started to better communicate and develop it.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: From Motion to Notion 
• Art as a prerequisite of STEM fields
• Inner conversations lead to pseudo-code
• Activities which end up in final programs.
• Conclusion

Description

The Pen and Tablet Project (PTP) uses the Embodied Cognition philosophy. Concepts do not fall down from the sky, they enter the brain through the senses. Not only that, in the PTP, we emphasize the use of hands to direct neuronal connections, and the planned hand activities that lead to these brain structures.

At an anecdotal level, I can report my children's homeschooling activities during the past thirty years. The oldest one listened to a Fairy Tale tape at age three, and went ahead to produce a negative of it. That is, the bad witch became the good witch, and so on. The work was intense, listening to the tape several times, and then taping the new version. The younger one spent hours moving toys on the floor, and videotaping scenes one at a time, using stop motion. Thus developing the important notion of discrete steps. Eventually during high school, he did well in a programming class using Java.

Inner conversations do occur. Lev Vygotsky discovered the role of society in directing the child to eventually have full fledged inner conversations. The mentor leads the learner to pseudo-code.

At a later stage, once structured, computer languages are mastered, the student run final programs through their Pen and Tablet devices at servers in the Cloud.

This book presents work done over more than thirty years now. This is the time to put down on paper the results.  Based on hypotheses, more work is proposed to further the aims of the PTP. Central ideas of this work are the reality of Information (Jacob Bekenstein), and Knowledge (David Deutsch).

From OLPC to Computer Clusters: PTP

Hands: Pen and Tablet Project (PTP) is a continuation of work done in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, Mexico, at CIMATE.

There are several threads in the work. One is the use of Open Source, hardware, and software, and another is to delve into Mathematics Education. Professor Nicholas Negroponte, started the visionary One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. As I remember at that moment, there were no affordable  Asus computers for the Third World. Guerrero is one of the poorest states in Mexico. We used Sugar on a stick. Professor Negroponte spearheaded the birth of affordable computers. Thin Clients (Smart Phones), and Fat Servers (PC clusters).

There are two concurrent development at play here. Clusters and portable computing. Now the portable is already moving into the wearable; one can envision a Smart Pen, which will revolutionize the interaction with clusters of computers, better known as The Cloud.

Don Summers, my friend  from UCSB worked in experiment E791 at Fermilab, which I joined in 1994. The Experimental High Energy Physics Group of UCSB, even since 1973 , when I got there, already used the Internet, to communicate with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) laboratory: from Santa Barbara to Menlo Park. Don used TCP/IP since then. By the time he got to Fermilab he was an expert in that communication protocol. E791 collected 20 Terabytes, of data. The group decided to pursue, at least, two lines of approach, to build a supercomputer, or to connect PCs already in the market with TCP/IP. Professor Summers, succeeded in the second approach, saving the collaboration a big expense.

Nowadays Google, and CME Group, at least, use this invention. Cheap Supercomputers.

Hands (PTP) is a project connecting, as much as possible, The Cloud, with the Smart Pen. The PTP starts with the hypothesis, that we develop our abstract abilities, with concrete hand gestures, and manipulations. From Motion to Notion. Young people first draw on an electronic tablet, with an electronic pen, like the ones from Wacom.  Then use Turtle Geometry, by Hal Abelson, until the concept of breaking down a task in steps, is constructed in the nervous system.

The PTP is just starting.