Hi Thomas,
Thank you very much for your mail and feedback! It's very interesting
and important for the community members to get to know each other :)
Thanks also for all the contacts and presentations you made, that just
great!
We have a bit of experience in holding workshops for teachers, don't
hesitate to ask us about that (we could Skype to discuss on how/what to
present, here is my Skype id: cbarraud1988) If you want to advertise
about this workshop, we could add an entry on the event page:
https://www.thymio.org/de:thymioworkshops (it's easy, I can show you how)
Concerning the PCB and support, I let you talk with Michael Bonani (more
generally, you can write at [email protected], it reaches the same
person ;) )
Concerning coordination on the Swiss-german area, you will be contacted
(or have already been) by Francesco Mondada. He wants to organise
something about that, he will keep you in touch.
Finally, if you want to share the drawings of your students, don't
hesitate to add a creation on this page:
https://www.thymio.org/de:creations (it's the same process as for the
workshop)
Really happy to have you around :)
Best
Christophe Barraud
Président de l'association Mobsya
/Robots au service de l'éducation/
Tél. bureau: 032 511 64 93
Tél. portable: 079 958 40 94
www.mobsya.org <http://www.mobsya.org/>
www.thymio.org <https://www.thymio.org/>
Le 18.07.2016 à 17:24, Thomas Schenker a écrit :
Hello to everybody in the Thymio community
I haven’t written for a long time but I was pleased to read that there
is so much interesting activity in the community. Specially the
activities in France are very encouraging.
I’m living in the North-western part of Switzerland in a small
historic town called Zofingen <http://www.zofingen.ch/?rub=9>.
In schools around here Thymio is still hardly known. But I’m still
actively using Thymio and I try to use every chance to make Thymio known.
But for the new members of the mailing list I first repeat my short
introduction:
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 in an electronic department
<http://www.mullermartini.net/mf/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-10017/8945_read-13341/>
of big machine company producing print finishing systems. Finally, I
started a special study program in summer 2013 at the University of
Applied Sciences and Arts of North-western Switzerland FHNW. This
program was launched to gain experienced professionals to become teachers.
During the past few month I was very busy finishing my studies and
finding a new job while teaching in a part time job. But now I’ve
successfully finished my studies.
During the last school year I used Thymio with four of my classes on
secondary level 1 in Schönenwerd (Kt. Solothurn). During my studies at
PH FHNW in Brugg I got in touch with people from /imedias
<http://www.imedias.ch/>//. /Imedias is an organisation that consults
schools and teachers in digital media. They also provide teaching
material and teacher trainings.
On 24 February 2016 I was invited to a meeting (/„3. Projekttreffen
Informatische Bildung“)/ in Brugg where I could present the features
and potential of Thymio. The first part of the presentation was done
by Dawn Suter. She showed how she uses the pre-programmed behaviours
in workshops with primary school kids. I followed with an
introduction to VPL and also explained the basic concepts of text
programming. Finally I presented a few applications in VPL and text
programming. My focus was the secondary school level application of
Thymio.
By the way, imedias bought a set of Thymios and they should be
available for lending by now.
On 11 April 2016 I got another chance to present Thymio. I was asked
if I could present Thymio in a team meeting of the
/Mathematikdidaktik-Team
<http://www.fhnw.ch/ph/isek/professuren/Mathematikdidaktik>/of Prof.
Dr. Helmut Linneweber-Lammerskitten at the PH FHNW.
With my presentations I could reach a few key people and make them at
least aware of Thymio. As a result I was asked by imedias to do a
teacher workshop for Thymio programming at the Stadtschule in
Solothurn on 10th of August 2016. There are not many participants but
I’m happy that the workshop will still take place.
Starting in August I’m going to deputize the IT lessons for a teacher
that is interrupting her work for half a year. I showed Thymio to the
head teacher of this school in Safenwil (Kt. Aargau). As a result he
agreed to my proposal to use Thymio in my lessons. For me it’s another
welcome chance to gain further teaching experience with Thymio and
hopefully involve other people.
I have got 6 Thymios that I bought myself. The school I just left was
not very open to new ideas and especially because it was clear that I
would leave the school this summer it wouldn’t have made sense to buy
something that’s not used afterwards.
So I decided to buy some robots for myself. This way I didn’t have to
explain and justify everything and I could just use it what most of my
students really appreciated.
I just think we should find ways to make more publicity for Thymio in
North-western Switzerland. If anybody has ideas or valuable
connections let me know. May be I could represent the Thymio concept
with my set of Thymios in other places in North-western Switzerland.
I took the following two pictures during my lessons:
This beautiful flower was drawn by one of my Thymios and the program
was written in VPL by a girl of my classes. There were many nice
drawings but the one above is definitely my favourite. For me it has a
kind of symbolic value. I gives me motivation for the coming school
year where I hope that other flowers with new students will grow.
Apart from the many positive things I experienced with Thymio there is
one negative point to mention:
Unfortunately, one of my Thymios failed. There must have been a short
circuit or a damaged component around the motor drivers. Is there a
possibility to get just a PCB as a spare part? I hope that there is
not a general quality issue in this product. When I opened the case I
discovered that the PCB was covered with many spots of soft solder
flux material that was spread over the PCB during the manual soldering
process of all the component that are not soldered in surface mount
technology. For me (used to Swiss quality standards) the PCB looked
just awful. I think they should at least cover the PCB somehow while
manually soldering.
Are there any plans for a redesign? May be with the direct integration
of the wireless module and the reduction of manual soldering?
Finally, I would like to thank all the people who make the Thymio
concept ‘flourish’. I spent quite some time writing this email but I
felt the urge to sharing my first year of teaching experience with
Thymio. May be this urge is also based on the fact that there are
almost any sparing partners around in the German-spoken part of
Switzerland.
Feel free to provide any feedback.
Best regards,
Thomas Schenker
Frohburgstr. 6
4800 Zofingen
Switzerland
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
Virenfrei. www.avast.com
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
_______________________________________________
Aseba-edu mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/aseba-edu
---
L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel
antivirus Avast.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________
Aseba-edu mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/aseba-edu
