Hello Thomas!
Nice to hear from you again! And with this email you seem to enter "officially"
in the community of teachers using Thymio.
Yes, you are right, Thymio is mailny known in French-speaking regions: West
Switzerland and France.
But there is a fast growing interest in the German-speaking regions, mainly
because of the success of Thymio and because it is a good tool to address the
new topics included in the Lehrplan21. Christophe already answered for the
Swiss-german contacts.
Welcome again :-)
Francesco
On 10 nov. 2015, at 14:01, Thomas Schenker <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello everyone
>
> First of all, many thanks to Stephane Magnenat and all others who supported
> the realisation of the latest release. It’s really a nice tool know. I
> appreciate to have the opportunity to set several actions for one event. The
> decision to hide the timer function in the expert mode is also a wise
> decision because it makes more sense to introduce the timer together with the
> states. And finally, I appreciate the printing feature which is very useful
> for a teacher.
>
> I’m actually an electro and software engineer but I decided to find a new
> challenge in my life. I’d been working in the field of embedded systems
> development for more than 20 years. Finally, I started in summer 2013 a
> special study program at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of
> Northwestern Switzerland FHNW. This program was launched to gain experienced
> professionals to become teachers.
>
> So far, I’ve finished 80% of my studies and will finish the rest by next
> summer. My teaching subjects are mathematics, English and natural science for
> secondary school level 1.
>
> Last summer I started teaching at a secondary school in Schönenwerd in canton
> of Solothurn (between Aarau and Olten).
>
> For this school year a got basically IT lessons assigned. This means I’m
> teaching IT for several classes. Because not much is done in respect of
> ‘computational thinking’ at our school I decided to try something new with
> Thymio.
>
> I’ve just started with an introduction and some basic tasks with four
> different classes. We have only one lesson per week. For the IT lessens I
> have up to 12 students and I’ve got six Thymios. The Aseba update came just
> in time. I’ve just installed the new release yesterday and I’m looking
> forward to using it in the IT classroom tomorrow.
>
> In summer 2013 I got in touch with Francesco Mondada. We exchanged a few
> e-mails. Maybe he might remember it. I was asking about the production of
> Thymio because at that time I was still working in the electronic department
> of a large machine company (Müller Martini Electronics AG). I showed Thymio
> to some of my colleagues from the development team I was working with till
> summer 2014. We were discussing different aspects of production in our team
> when we examined the interior construction of Thymio. I always found favour
> in the idea of using Thymio for teaching. But during the last two years I was
> too busy with my studies and my start as a teacher.
>
> Finally I managed to start using Thymio in the classroom. I see that Thymio
> is quite popular in the French spoken part of Switzerland but I think there
> is not much activity in the German spoken part of Switzerland. I have the
> impression that Thymio is probably better known abroad than in the German
> spoken part of Switzerland. Many schools prefer buying expensive Lego-Robots
> instead of an inexpensive, compact Swiss made solution that is well suited
> for teaching basic concepts.
>
> Therefore, my question to everybody receiving this e-mail:
> Is there anybody in the German part of Switzerland who is using Thymio or
> favours the idea of using it. I would be glad to exchange my experience with
> others. I’m also open if somebody just would like to see how Thymio works in
> reality. Feel free to forward my request if you know somebody who could be
> interested to get in touch.
>
> I’d welcome any feedback and I send many thanks to the Thymio team who is not
> getting tired of making further improvements.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Thomas Schenker
>
> Zofingen, Switzerland
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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------------------------------
Prof. Francesco Mondada
Mobile robots architecture & design
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Laboratoire de Systèmes Robotiques (LSRO)
Postal address:
Francesco Mondada
EPFL - STI - IMT - LSRO
bureau MEB3426, Station 9
CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
tel: +41 21 693 73 57
fax: +41 21 693 78 07
http://lsro.epfl.ch
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