Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
Thanks for this. In an after school environment, this strategy should work very well. It means that someone must be the firestarter, perhaps at a pre-school training session. I am not sure about how this could be accomplished where after-school programs are not feasible. At some of the schools I support, the teachers and students live too far from the school to stay after the normal day is over. These schools start later to enable students to have time to reach it in daylight and close early to give the students time to return home. In Lesotho, we observed students who walked three hours to and three hours back from school every day. I am trying to develop some introductory 'lessons' to act as the firestarter in Python, but it is very difficult to do effectively. Tony On 03/05/2015 08:18 PM, iaep-requ...@lists.sugarlabs.org wrote: Message: 2 Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 12:13:46 + (UTC) From: Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com To: Sora Edwards-Thros...@unleashkids.org, Gonzalo Odiard godi...@sugarlabs.org Cc: IAEP SugarLabsiaep@lists.sugarlabs.org, Tim Falconer timo...@immuexa.com,support-g...@laptop.org support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction Message-ID: 1578652867.4886132.1425557626158.javamail.ya...@mail.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Hi I agree with your first paragraph (although I don't know of really discoverable programming systems -- even Scratch has lots of conventions that are hard to discover). But I do agree that 5-10% of an population is better matched up to a given topic, and that the rest need more help of different kinds. But there are good materials for learning Etoys, especially in Spanish, and especially for teachers. The last part I don't agree with because it contains a misconception about how to teach Etoys, and especially programming, to children and adults. We found -- via many attempts -- that 1 on 1 -- then branching out -- works much much better than trying to teach a group. The Drive a Car project was invented to be the introduction, and it can be taught 1 on 1 in about 20 minutes. Now we have two teachers of Drive a Car. Then 4 etc. It is worth taking the 100 minutes to carry this out. The reason for this approach is found in your first paragraph, and the key is the 1 on 1 which allows the time needed for specific learnings and questions about the project. Once a class has gotten going, then should eventually be the first teachers for the next class, and now the whole new class can be handled in ~30 minutes for the first exercise. This use of peer teaching works in other areas also, but it is particularly effective in technique learning. It is not used nearly enough (many pro teachers feel a loss of authority, and that is more important to them that in how well the children are learning). Cheers Alan ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
Hi I agree with your first paragraph (although I don't know of really discoverable programming systems -- even Scratch has lots of conventions that are hard to discover). But I do agree that 5-10% of an population is better matched up to a given topic, and that the rest need more help of different kinds. But there are good materials for learning Etoys, especially in Spanish, and especially for teachers. The last part I don't agree with because it contains a misconception about how to teach Etoys, and especially programming, to children and adults. We found -- via many attempts -- that 1 on 1 -- then branching out -- works much much better than trying to teach a group. The Drive a Car project was invented to be the introduction, and it can be taught 1 on 1 in about 20 minutes. Now we have two teachers of Drive a Car. Then 4 etc. It is worth taking the 100 minutes to carry this out. The reason for this approach is found in your first paragraph, and the key is the 1 on 1 which allows the time needed for specific learnings and questions about the project. Once a class has gotten going, then should eventually be the first teachers for the next class, and now the whole new class can be handled in ~30 minutes for the first exercise. This use of peer teaching works in other areas also, but it is particularly effective in technique learning. It is not used nearly enough (many pro teachers feel a loss of authority, and that is more important to them that in how well the children are learning). Cheers Alan From: Sora Edwards-Thro s...@unleashkids.org To: Gonzalo Odiard godi...@sugarlabs.org Cc: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com; Tim Falconer timo...@immuexa.com; IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org support-g...@laptop.org Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2015 4:18 PM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 6:49 PM, Gonzalo Odiard godi...@sugarlabs.org wrote: We see that all time, is not surprising at all.Some (but not all) kids will try until find the way,and many adults are used to a more structured way of learning,and are afraid of break something. Everyone's capable of thinking critically and being creative, but not in the same ways. Within a class of 20 kids, you'll get maybe 3 max who can figure e-Toys out on their own (in our experience, working with 4th - 6th graders in Haiti). Then there's another kid in the class who's good at writing, another who's good at playing music, another who's a natural leader, and so on...people have different talents. In the developing world, there are kids who can figure out e-Toys on their own but in my experience the whole class of kids will not do that - maybe because it does not come naturally to them, maybe because they are not as interested in it, who knows? A good teacher will be able to guide the kids who are not excited about the software itself so that they can make something exciting with it. I agree, Gonzalo, that adults in general want more structure than kids. But another part of why teachers want a manual is so they can give their students advice on how to do specific things. A kid raises their hand with a question about how to do something; you want to be able to give them the answer. The materials that have already been created for e-Toys are great and we've used them. And it's not like things are that hard to do once you've learned. But just the way the menus work, the number of clicks it takes to get to something cool is unfortunately too many in a lot of cases. That's if you're looking to teach a class of 20 students at once, and you also want to teach other things besides e-Toys. Different models (targeting only advanced students, letting the kids play around on their own over months of time) would work differently. On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 5:04 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Interesting that 5th graders learn Etoys very easily but teachers find the learning curve too steep hmm Cheers Alan From: Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de To: Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com Cc: IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Tim Falconer timo...@immuexa.com; support-g...@laptop.org support-g...@laptop.org Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2015 11:57 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction On 04.03.2015, at 10:44, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi... Some thoughts about Etoys: Tim Falconer and other folks at Waveplace (deployments around the Caribbean) have made excellent use of Etoys and have made a series of lessons about its use available at:http://www.waveplace.com/courseware/basic-etoys/ However, I don't recall seeing anywhere that they use many other parts of Sugar with the students. So the question could become: does Etoys need to be packaged with Sugar. Something to consider in answering the question is that Etoys is available in a very portable version as Etoys to Go: http://www.squeakland.org/download/ One
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 7:13 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: But there are good materials for learning Etoys, especially in Spanish, and especially for teachers. What Spanish materials exist? The last part I don't agree with because it contains a misconception about how to teach Etoys, and especially programming, to children and adults. Thanks for reminding me that alternatives exist. That's what I was trying to get at with the vague different models would work differently but going into specific details, based on experience, is much more helpful and promising. It is not used nearly enough (many pro teachers feel a loss of authority, and that is more important to them that in how well the children are learning). Yes, we are talking about how to teach children but the real problem is teaching adults to give up control and certainty. On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 7:27 PM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.net wrote: I am not sure about how this could be accomplished where after-school programs are not feasible. At some of the schools I support, the teachers and students live too far from the school to stay after the normal day is over Thanks for reminding us about the other kinds of obstacles to implementing these programs. On 03/05/2015 08:18 PM, iaep-requ...@lists.sugarlabs.org wrote: Message: 2 Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 12:13:46 + (UTC) From: Alan Kayalan.n...@yahoo.com To: Sora Edwards-Thros...@unleashkids.org,Gonzalo Odiard godi...@sugarlabs.org Cc: IAEP SugarLabsiaep@lists.sugarlabs.org, Tim Falconer timo...@immuexa.com, support-g...@laptop.org support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction Message-ID: 1578652867.4886132.1425557626158.javamail.ya...@mail.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Hi I agree with your first paragraph (although I don't know of really discoverable programming systems -- even Scratch has lots of conventions that are hard to discover). But I do agree that 5-10% of an population is better matched up to a given topic, and that the rest need more help of different kinds. But there are good materials for learning Etoys, especially in Spanish, and especially for teachers. The last part I don't agree with because it contains a misconception about how to teach Etoys, and especially programming, to children and adults. We found -- via many attempts -- that 1 on 1 -- then branching out -- works much much better than trying to teach a group. The Drive a Car project was invented to be the introduction, and it can be taught 1 on 1 in about 20 minutes. Now we have two teachers of Drive a Car. Then 4 etc. It is worth taking the 100 minutes to carry this out. The reason for this approach is found in your first paragraph, and the key is the 1 on 1 which allows the time needed for specific learnings and questions about the project. Once a class has gotten going, then should eventually be the first teachers for the next class, and now the whole new class can be handled in ~30 minutes for the first exercise. This use of peer teaching works in other areas also, but it is particularly effective in technique learning. It is not used nearly enough (many pro teachers feel a loss of authority, and that is more important to them that in how well the children are learning). Cheers Alan ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
If we abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora, what has the end-user gained? We (SugarLabs) don't abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora. Fedora request a change on etoys, but Bert (who maintains etoys) is working for free, then we can't force him to dedicate hours to work on that. Would a GSOC effort be better devoted to moving from Scratch 1 to Scratch 2 than rewriting imageviewer? I don't know. Scratch 2 use Flash and need Adobe Air, then we need check how works in the XOs. I have read Scratch team is working in HTML5 version, that would be great. About rewrite imageviewer, if we want allow use Sugar to kids without XOs,we need move forward to HTML5/Js. Maybe Image Viewer is not a prioritary activity, but is a good task to introduce developers because is relatively easy. Anyway the proposed tasks for GSoC are only a start, you can propose other, and we will need do a selection when Google define how many projects will fund. Gonzalo ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
Hi... Some thoughts about Etoys: Tim Falconer and other folks at Waveplace (deployments around the Caribbean) have made excellent use of Etoys and have made a series of lessons about its use available at: http://www.waveplace.com/courseware/basic-etoys/ However, I don't recall seeing anywhere that they use many other parts of Sugar with the students. So the question could become: does Etoys need to be packaged with Sugar. Something to consider in answering the question is that Etoys is available in a very portable version as Etoys to Go: http://www.squeakland.org/download/ One nice feature about Etoys To Go is that you can put it on a thumb drive and move it from a Linux machine to a Windows machine to a Mac machine and the files will all be readable and usable! Also, it leaves nothing behind on the host machine. It is all on the usb drive! We can thank Bert Freudenberg for that! I'm adding him to this conversation so he might be able to give us an update on the latest news from Etoys… is a version for Android and/or IOS coming that would also be as portable as the current Etoys To Go? Universal portability would be a wonderful goal (for Sugar too)! Personally, like Sora, I have found the Etoys learning curve a bit steep. Once I did a workshop about Etoys To Go for a roomful of tech-saavy teachers. They just really didn't get it. I also tried to contribute to a project where some folks were making some science lessons in Etoys… but found it really difficult to get it to do what I wanted it too. Yet, my favorite little ecology simulation is an Etoys featured project Fish And Plankton. It is great fun to experiment with and can teach some powerful lessons! http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7303 Try letting it run overnight with different starting parameters and see what happens…. fun! Caryl Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 13:43:01 -0300 From: godi...@sugarlabs.org To: s...@unleashkids.org CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; tkk...@nurturingasia.com; tony_ander...@usa.net Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction If we abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora, what has the end-user gained? We (SugarLabs) don't abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora.Fedora request a change on etoys, but Bert (who maintains etoys) is working for free,then we can't force him to dedicate hours to work on that. Would a GSOC effort be better devoted to moving from Scratch 1 to Scratch 2 than rewriting imageviewer? I don't know. Scratch 2 use Flash and need Adobe Air, then we need check how works in the XOs.I have read Scratch team is working in HTML5 version, that would be great. About rewrite imageviewer, if we want allow use Sugar to kids without XOs,we need move forward to HTML5/Js. Maybe Image Viewer is not a prioritary activity,but is a good task to introduce developers because is relatively easy. Anyway the proposed tasks for GSoC are only a start, you can propose other, and we will need do a selectionwhen Google define how many projects will fund. Gonzalo ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
On 04.03.2015, at 10:44, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi... Some thoughts about Etoys: Tim Falconer and other folks at Waveplace (deployments around the Caribbean) have made excellent use of Etoys and have made a series of lessons about its use available at: http://www.waveplace.com/courseware/basic-etoys/ http://www.waveplace.com/courseware/basic-etoys/ However, I don't recall seeing anywhere that they use many other parts of Sugar with the students. So the question could become: does Etoys need to be packaged with Sugar. Something to consider in answering the question is that Etoys is available in a very portable version as Etoys to Go: http://www.squeakland.org/download/ http://www.squeakland.org/download/ One nice feature about Etoys To Go is that you can put it on a thumb drive and move it from a Linux machine to a Windows machine to a Mac machine and the files will all be readable and usable! Also, it leaves nothing behind on the host machine. It is all on the usb drive! We can thank Bert Freudenberg for that! I'm adding him to this conversation so he might be able to give us an update on the latest news from Etoys… is a version for Android and/or IOS coming that would also be as portable as the current Etoys To Go? Universal portability would be a wonderful goal (for Sugar too)! Supporting all the different platforms natively is too much work given our limited resources. Something that could become the universal version is this browser-based version (but that too needs work to optimize performance, and support other browsers than Chrome): http://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/etoys/ Personally, like Sora, I have found the Etoys learning curve a bit steep. Once I did a workshop about Etoys To Go for a roomful of tech-saavy teachers. They just really didn't get it. I also tried to contribute to a project where some folks were making some science lessons in Etoys… but found it really difficult to get it to do what I wanted it too. Yep. Etoys was designed with extensive teacher training in mind, but that training never happened on a large scale. Scratch learned from that lesson, and while as a result it is not as powerful as Etoys, it is much more approachable and discoverable. Btw, recently Tim Rowledge worked on the ARM version of Squeak for the Raspberry Pi, which both Etoys and Scratch benefit from. That should benefit the XO-4 too. Yet, my favorite little ecology simulation is an Etoys featured project Fish And Plankton. It is great fun to experiment with and can teach some powerful lessons! http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7303 http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7303 Try letting it run overnight with different starting parameters and see what happens…. fun! Yes, that's a nice one. It even works in Etoys/JS (if you can wait long enough for it to finish loading): http://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/etoys/#fullscreen=truedocument=http://freudenbergs.de/bert/squeakjs/FishAndPlankton.017.pr http://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/etoys/#fullscreen=truedocument=http://freudenbergs.de/bert/squeakjs/FishAndPlankton.017.pr - Bert - Caryl Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 13:43:01 -0300 From: godi...@sugarlabs.org To: s...@unleashkids.org CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; tkk...@nurturingasia.com; tony_ander...@usa.net Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction If we abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora, what has the end-user gained? We (SugarLabs) don't abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora. Fedora request a change on etoys, but Bert (who maintains etoys) is working for free, then we can't force him to dedicate hours to work on that. Would a GSOC effort be better devoted to moving from Scratch 1 to Scratch 2 than rewriting imageviewer? I don't know. Scratch 2 use Flash and need Adobe Air, then we need check how works in the XOs. I have read Scratch team is working in HTML5 version, that would be great. About rewrite imageviewer, if we want allow use Sugar to kids without XOs,we need move forward to HTML5/Js. Maybe Image Viewer is not a prioritary activity, but is a good task to introduce developers because is relatively easy. Anyway the proposed tasks for GSoC are only a start, you can propose other, and we will need do a selection when Google define how many projects will fund. Gonzalo ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
Interesting that 5th graders learn Etoys very easily but teachers find the
learning curve too steep hmm
Cheers
Alan
From: Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de
To: Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com
Cc: IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Tim Falconer
timo...@immuexa.com; support-g...@laptop.org support-g...@laptop.org
Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2015 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
On 04.03.2015, at 10:44, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote:
#yiv4324170632 #yiv4324170632 --.yiv4324170632hmmessage
P{margin:0px;padding:0px;}#yiv4324170632
body.yiv4324170632hmmessage{font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri;}#yiv4324170632
Hi...
Some thoughts about Etoys: Tim Falconer and other folks at Waveplace
(deployments around the Caribbean) have made excellent use of Etoys and have
made a series of lessons about its use available
at:http://www.waveplace.com/courseware/basic-etoys/
However, I don't recall seeing anywhere that they use many other parts of Sugar
with the students. So the question could become: does Etoys need to be
packaged with Sugar.
Something to consider in answering the question is that Etoys is available in a
very portable version as Etoys to Go: http://www.squeakland.org/download/
One nice feature about Etoys To Go is that you can put it on a thumb drive and
move it from a Linux machine to a Windows machine to a Mac machine and the
files will all be readable and usable! Also, it leaves nothing behind on the
host machine. It is all on the usb drive!
We can thank Bert Freudenberg for that! I'm adding him to this conversation so
he might be able to give us an update on the latest news from Etoys… is a
version for Android and/or IOS coming that would also be as portable as the
current Etoys To Go? Universal portability would be a wonderful goal (for Sugar
too)!
Supporting all the different platforms natively is too much work given our
limited resources. Something that could become the universal version is this
browser-based version (but that too needs work to optimize performance, and
support other browsers than Chrome):
http://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/etoys/
Personally, like Sora, I have found the Etoys learning curve a bit steep. Once
I did a workshop about Etoys To Go for a roomful of tech-saavy teachers. They
just really didn't get it. I also tried to contribute to a project where some
folks were making some science lessons in Etoys… but found it really difficult
to get it to do what I wanted it too.
Yep. Etoys was designed with extensive teacher training in mind, but that
training never happened on a large scale. Scratch learned from that lesson, and
while as a result it is not as powerful as Etoys, it is much more approachable
and discoverable.
Btw, recently Tim Rowledge worked on the ARM version of Squeak for the
Raspberry Pi, which both Etoys and Scratch benefit from. That should benefit
the XO-4 too.
Yet, my favorite little ecology simulation is an Etoys featured project Fish
And Plankton. It is great fun to experiment with and can teach some powerful
lessons! http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7303 Try letting it
run overnight with different starting parameters and see what happens…. fun!
Yes, that's a nice one. It even works in Etoys/JS (if you can wait long enough
for it to finish
loading):http://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/etoys/#fullscreen=truedocument=http://freudenbergs.de/bert/squeakjs/FishAndPlankton.017.pr
- Bert -
Caryl
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 13:43:01 -0300
From: godi...@sugarlabs.org
To: s...@unleashkids.org
CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; tkk...@nurturingasia.com; tony_ander...@usa.net
Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
If we abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora, what has the
end-user gained?
We (SugarLabs) don't abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora.Fedora
request a change on etoys, but Bert (who maintains etoys) is working for
free,then we can't force him to dedicate hours to work on that.
Would a GSOC effort be better devoted to moving from Scratch 1 to Scratch 2
than rewriting imageviewer?
I don't know. Scratch 2 use Flash and need Adobe Air, then we need check how
works in the XOs.I have read Scratch team is working in HTML5 version, that
would be great.
About rewrite imageviewer, if we want allow use Sugar to kids without XOs,we
need move forward to HTML5/Js. Maybe Image Viewer is not a prioritary
activity,but is a good task to introduce developers because is relatively easy.
Anyway the proposed tasks for GSoC are only a start, you can propose other, and
we will need do a selectionwhen Google define how many projects will fund.
Gonzalo
___IAEP -- It's An Education
Project (not a laptop
project!)IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.orghttp://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 6:49 PM, Gonzalo Odiard godi...@sugarlabs.org wrote: We see that all time, is not surprising at all. Some (but not all) kids will try until find the way, and many adults are used to a more structured way of learning, and are afraid of break something. Everyone's capable of thinking critically and being creative, but not in the same ways. Within a class of 20 kids, you'll get maybe 3 max who can figure e-Toys out on their own (in our experience, working with 4th - 6th graders in Haiti). Then there's another kid in the class who's good at writing, another who's good at playing music, another who's a natural leader, and so on...people have different talents. In the developing world, there are kids who can figure out e-Toys on their own but in my experience the whole class of kids will not do that - maybe because it does not come naturally to them, maybe because they are not as interested in it, who knows? A good teacher will be able to guide the kids who are not excited about the software itself so that they can make something exciting with it. I agree, Gonzalo, that adults in general want more structure than kids. But another part of why teachers want a manual is so they can give their students advice on how to do specific things. A kid raises their hand with a question about how to do something; you want to be able to give them the answer. The materials that have already been created for e-Toys are great and we've used them. And it's not like things are that hard to do once you've learned. But just the way the menus work, the number of clicks it takes to get to something cool is unfortunately too many in a lot of cases. That's if you're looking to teach a class of 20 students at once, and you also want to teach other things besides e-Toys. Different models (targeting only advanced students, letting the kids play around on their own over months of time) would work differently. On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 5:04 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Interesting that 5th graders learn Etoys very easily but teachers find the learning curve too steep hmm Cheers Alan -- *From:* Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de *To:* Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com *Cc:* IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Tim Falconer timo...@immuexa.com; support-g...@laptop.org support-g...@laptop.org *Sent:* Wednesday, March 4, 2015 11:57 AM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Future Direction On 04.03.2015, at 10:44, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi... Some thoughts about Etoys: Tim Falconer and other folks at Waveplace (deployments around the Caribbean) have made excellent use of Etoys and have made a series of lessons about its use available at: http://www.waveplace.com/courseware/basic-etoys/ However, I don't recall seeing anywhere that they use many other parts of Sugar with the students. So the question could become: does Etoys need to be packaged with Sugar. Something to consider in answering the question is that Etoys is available in a very portable version as Etoys to Go: http://www.squeakland.org/download/ One nice feature about Etoys To Go is that you can put it on a thumb drive and move it from a Linux machine to a Windows machine to a Mac machine and the files will all be readable and usable! Also, it leaves nothing behind on the host machine. It is all on the usb drive! We can thank Bert Freudenberg for that! I'm adding him to this conversation so he might be able to give us an update on the latest news from Etoys... is a version for Android and/or IOS coming that would also be as portable as the current Etoys To Go? Universal portability would be a wonderful goal (for Sugar too)! Supporting all the different platforms natively is too much work given our limited resources. Something that could become the universal version is this browser-based version (but that too needs work to optimize performance, and support other browsers than Chrome): http://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/etoys/ Personally, like Sora, I have found the Etoys learning curve a bit steep. Once I did a workshop about Etoys To Go for a roomful of tech-saavy teachers. They just really didn't get it. I also tried to contribute to a project where some folks were making some science lessons in Etoys... but found it really difficult to get it to do what I wanted it too. Yep. Etoys was designed with extensive teacher training in mind, but that training never happened on a large scale. Scratch learned from that lesson, and while as a result it is not as powerful as Etoys, it is much more approachable and discoverable. Btw, recently Tim Rowledge worked on the ARM version of Squeak for the Raspberry Pi, which both Etoys and Scratch benefit from. That should benefit the XO-4 too. Yet, my favorite little ecology simulation is an Etoys featured project Fish And Plankton. It is great fun to experiment with and can teach
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
Hi, Gonzalo Must we rewrite 300 Sugar activities because Python is obsolete? If we are committed to Android, have we looked at making Python viable there? Are we facing lock-down on these machines or can we run Fedora/Sugar on a tablet without Android? If I understand you, then Etoys no longer works on Fedora independent of Sugar. If I understand James Cameron correctly, the benefits of the new web activities will not be available on XO-1 and XO-1.5. This is getting to be a very distressing situation. Tony On 03/05/2015 12:43 AM, Gonzalo Odiard wrote: If we abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora, what has the end-user gained? We (SugarLabs) don't abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora. Fedora request a change on etoys, but Bert (who maintains etoys) is working for free, then we can't force him to dedicate hours to work on that. Would a GSOC effort be better devoted to moving from Scratch 1 to Scratch 2 than rewriting imageviewer? I don't know. Scratch 2 use Flash and need Adobe Air, then we need check how works in the XOs. I have read Scratch team is working in HTML5 version, that would be great. About rewrite imageviewer, if we want allow use Sugar to kids without XOs,we need move forward to HTML5/Js. Maybe Image Viewer is not a prioritary activity, but is a good task to introduce developers because is relatively easy. Anyway the proposed tasks for GSoC are only a start, you can propose other, and we will need do a selection when Google define how many projects will fund. Gonzalo ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
Hi, Caryl Etoys is also supported by a web site: http://etoysillinois.org/ which is somewhat comparable to the Scratch site. If Etoys to Go works on an XO, then the contents of the usb drive could be copied to a folder on an XO and run from there. The 10 videos from Waveplace provide an approachable introduction to Etoys and are on the school server. Perhaps, some additional videos are needed to introduce other features. As Bert pointed out years ago, EToys has built in tutorial projects in addition to those at Illinois. I am becoming more curious about this topic. Perhaps someone has some technical details on what Fedora has done to break etoys and why. Tony On 03/05/2015 02:44 AM, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi... Some thoughts about Etoys: Tim Falconer and other folks at Waveplace (deployments around the Caribbean) have made excellent use of Etoys and have made a series of lessons about its use available at: http://www.waveplace.com/courseware/basic-etoys/ However, I don't recall seeing anywhere that they use many other parts of Sugar with the students. So the question could become: does Etoys need to be packaged with Sugar. Something to consider in answering the question is that Etoys is available in a very portable version as Etoys to Go: http://www.squeakland.org/download/ One nice feature about Etoys To Go is that you can put it on a thumb drive and move it from a Linux machine to a Windows machine to a Mac machine and the files will all be readable and usable! Also, it leaves nothing behind on the host machine. It is all on the usb drive! We can thank Bert Freudenberg for that! I'm adding him to this conversation so he might be able to give us an update on the latest news from Etoys… is a version for Android and/or IOS coming that would also be as portable as the current Etoys To Go? Universal portability would be a wonderful goal (for Sugar too)! Personally, like Sora, I have found the Etoys learning curve a bit steep. Once I did a workshop about Etoys To Go for a roomful of tech-saavy teachers. They just really didn't get it. I also tried to contribute to a project where some folks were making some science lessons in Etoys… but found it really difficult to get it to do what I wanted it too. Yet, my favorite little ecology simulation is an Etoys featured project Fish And Plankton. It is great fun to experiment with and can teach some powerful lessons! http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7303 Try letting it run overnight with different starting parameters and see what happens…. fun! Caryl Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 13:43:01 -0300 From: godi...@sugarlabs.org To: s...@unleashkids.org CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; tkk...@nurturingasia.com; tony_ander...@usa.net Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction If we abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora, what has the end-user gained? We (SugarLabs) don't abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora. Fedora request a change on etoys, but Bert (who maintains etoys) is working for free, then we can't force him to dedicate hours to work on that. Would a GSOC effort be better devoted to moving from Scratch 1 to Scratch 2 than rewriting imageviewer? I don't know. Scratch 2 use Flash and need Adobe Air, then we need check how works in the XOs. I have read Scratch team is working in HTML5 version, that would be great. About rewrite imageviewer, if we want allow use Sugar to kids without XOs,we need move forward to HTML5/Js. Maybe Image Viewer is not a prioritary activity, but is a good task to introduce developers because is relatively easy. Anyway the proposed tasks for GSoC are only a start, you can propose other, and we will need do a selection when Google define how many projects will fund. Gonzalo ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
Hi, Gonzalo My sense is that a lot of the work in the past seven years has been in keeping Sugar up to date with the upstream system - getting Sugar as a desktop in Fedora was a major effort. As you point out, this effort was essential. Moving to first-class support for html5/css/javascript is an important step. Adding the Gnome Desktop has been very helpful in selling educators that the XO is an effective lead-in to their Windows Office oriented secondary school curriculum. There have been many valuable additions to the library of Sugar Activities. I just think we should ask more often - what will this change do to improve the educational outcomes of primary school children? If we mount a major effort to rewrite Sugar in Python 3 - what is the delivered benefit to the user? If we rewrite Turtle Blocks in html5/css3/javascript, how have we improved its capabilities in the classroom? If we abandon etoys to maintain compatibility with Fedora, what has the end-user gained? Would a GSOC effort be better devoted to moving from Scratch 1 to Scratch 2 than rewriting imageviewer? Tony On 03/03/2015 08:41 PM, Gonzalo Odiard wrote: This begs the question, what has changed between Sugar 0.82 and 0.104 that significantly improves the value of the XO in primary school education in the Give 1 world? Ouch. Really? We worked for 5 years for nothing? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
