[Artemisia] Harvest War Classes

[Bruce Padget]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2007 14:53, Sarah Natividad wrote:
> I can't make it to Harvest War, but just out of curiosity, is there any
> interest in medieval mathematics?  Outside of my own interest in the 
> topic,
> I mean.  Not that I'm qualified to teach a class, just curious.

Gentle lady, you sound like my kind of people. I have a bit of an 
interest in period math, particularly as it pertains to to probability, 
navigation/timekeeping, and business math.

A couple of great books are Cardano's _Book on Games of Chance_, and 
_Schooling in Renaissance Italy -- Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600_.  
As luck has it, I have a copy of each, and would be happy to share.  
Will you be at Coronation?

You say you lack expertise to teach, but your posts say otherwise.  I 
like to say that the word for someone who knows even slightly more than 
the person next to her is "teacher."  And it seems that you know more 
than slightly more than the people next to you.

Don Lot Ramirez, one of Caid's best teachers of the art of defense, 
describes his career thus:  "I learned one thing. I taught that one 
thing to everybody I could get to hold still.  Then I learned another 
thing.  So I taught two things to everybody I could get to hold still."

That describes my career, too.  When I first taught dance at an event, I 
knew three dances, and my only goal was to have something to do during 
long stretches of down time at events.  And look where I am now.  Okay, 
maybe that's not a good example :D

My point (and I do have one) is that you don't need to wait for 
"expertise" in order to teach classes.  I see three basic approaches to 
class design, all of which I have used with fair success:

1.  I am the expert. I teach, you learn.
2.  Here's a cool thing I've found.  I'd like to convince you to look 
into it, too.  Maybe we can look into it together?
3.  Here's a cool thing.  I have neither time nor inclination to pursue 
it in depth.  Would you like to run with it?

The second and third approaches are very productive when a new area of 
knowledge is coming into a kingdom - like, say, period math :D

Regards,
Niccolo
bapadget at yahoo.com