The Education Vector

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 17

The Education Vector¶

January 1993

Editor Alan Mayer

This Education Vector has been reprinted from VECTOR Vol.9 No.3. VECTOR is the Quarterly Journal of the British APL Association. For more information about the British APL Association, please contact: Anthony Camacho, [address and telephone number omitted].

Contents¶

Dr. Alan Mayer
European Business Management School
University College of Swansea
Singleton Park
Swansea SA2 8PP Wales, UK

Ysgol Rheolaeth Busnes Ewropeaidd
Parc Singleton,
Abertawe SA2 8PP

Tel: 0792-205678 Ext.4274 Fax: 0792-295626 JANET: MAYER@UK.AC.SWAN.MS

Editorial¶

Happy New Year, and welcome once again to Education Vector. In this edition we have two substantial contributions from authors who have considerable experience in teaching with APL. I am grateful to them both for sharing their experiences with us.

Walter Spunde has been teaching I—APL programming to school children (I am informed that a “Grade 9er” approximately equates to Form Five in a British school), by developing computer fantasy games. His direct definition approach encourages good structure and allows initially very simple games to be developed into ever more complex strategies.

Howard Peelle uses APL to teach Mathematics, and his publications on APL will be well known to many of you. In this initial article, he describes the environment and equipment required, the design of introductory workshops and the constructivist teaching methods on which they are based. The actual teaching materials, of which he has a large variety, will be of interest to many readers, and a selection will be published in future editions of Education Vector.

I often have enquiries, especially from members of educational establishments, about low-cost APL interpreters. There are several to choose from, and each has advantages and disadvantages. I intend to publish a detailed comparison in the next edition, and will be pleased to hear from anyone who has experience (good or bad) that they would like to share with us. For now I offer the following list of products and sources:

• I—APL (free). Enquiries: [address omitted].
• TryAPL2 (free — specify disk size). IBM APL Development, M46/D12-278B Santa Teresa Lab, Box 49023, San Jose, CA 95161-9023 USA.
• APLIPC, APLI386 (requires 80386) and APLIWIN (requires WINDOWS 3.1). These products cost $30 each and are available from Iverson Software Inc., 33 Major Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and also from I-APL at the address above.

I am particularly interested to hear from anyone who has tried APLIWIN, which has only just been released.