Hi,
Some of you may be interested on the point of view of a teacher-developer on the Dynabook concept. Here is a little writing about it
http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/The-Dynabook-Concept
Hilaire
On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 04:12:54PM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
Hi,
Some of you may be interested on the point of view of a teacher-developer on the Dynabook concept. Here is a little writing about it
Thanks Hilaire,
This is a really interesting post, and your "Active Essay" page at http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/Dr.-Geo-and-Dynamic-media is good to read also.
Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the project can comment further, but that was my impression.
Dave
Hi Dave,
Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys controllable artifacts.
What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of teacher oriented support/care/attention.
By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.
All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.
Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.
Thanks
Hilaire
Le 19/07/2018 à 18:58, David T. Lewis a écrit :
Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the project can comment further, but that was my impression.
Hilaire,
I see, it makes perfect sense now. I am looking forward to more of your writings :-)
Dave
On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:41:28AM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
Hi Dave,
Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys controllable artifacts.
What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of teacher oriented support/care/attention.
By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.
All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.
Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.
Thanks
Hilaire
Le 19/07/2018 ?? 18:58, David T. Lewis a ??crit??:
Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the project can comment further, but that was my impression.
-- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu
Hi Hilaire
The Dynabook concept is often linked to the Etoys concept and implementation. I think it is important that you remind us that Etoys is constructivism oriented and as such is not the only learning model. So it actually results in the conclusion that the field of application of the Dynabook idea is much wider. In the sense of a 'Dynamic book' read and used on an electronic device.
A question then is
Do we think of a 'Dynamic note book'?
A note book comes with initially blank pages and this is what the current Squeak/Pharo/Cuis releases represent at the moment.
If the answer is 'no' as I understand you it means that
a) dynamic essays have to be written by teachers and the students read them and use the animations to explore the field of a particular topic. [1]
b) the teacher on the other side may rely on a collection of dynamic essays - or we may as well say - 'lessons' or 'teaching units' to choose what to present to the students.
c) a dynamic book may be used for self study of a topic. That means that the student selects for a possibly large collection of dynamic essays what to study and learn
What does 'writing a dynamic essay' mean?
As with traditional text book writing there is a) formatted text and b) graphics. What comes in addition are c) short scripts relying on existing material to produce graphics and animations. d) sound e) video
Then a last question which I think should be investigated thoroughly be looking also at past efforts.
What makes such an endeavour successful?
As a contribution towards an answer I have
a) "ease of use".
- This is mostly about the language and DSL used for scripting - And for this to happen it also means that there is a considerable collection of examples.
b) availability of a "lesson / teaching units collection" .
In terms of downloads, your Dr. Geo implementation of a Smalltalk based scripting environment for producing teaching and learning artifacts is successful. So the question may as well be
"What will make it MORE successful?"
--Hannes
[1] In terms of implementation _one option_ is that the content is assembled in the Smalltalk environment and then an exported version in HTML/CSS/JavaScript is produced to be read on the web.
On 7/20/18, David T. Lewis lewis@mail.msen.com wrote:
Hilaire,
I see, it makes perfect sense now. I am looking forward to more of your writings :-)
Dave
On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:41:28AM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
Hi Dave,
Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys controllable artifacts.
What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of teacher oriented support/care/attention.
By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.
All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.
Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.
Thanks
Hilaire
Le 19/07/2018 ?? 18:58, David T. Lewis a ??crit??:
Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the project can comment further, but that was my impression.
-- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu
I think the original concept is more like a steadily evolving bag of bits than something created from scratch; closer to what DNA editors do with CRISPR in microbiology today. Of course, without the ethical issues.
Regards .. Subbu
On Tue 24 Jul, 2018, 11:09 AM H. Hirzel, hannes.hirzel@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Hilaire
The Dynabook concept is often linked to the Etoys concept and implementation. I think it is important that you remind us that Etoys is constructivism oriented and as such is not the only learning model. So it actually results in the conclusion that the field of application of the Dynabook idea is much wider. In the sense of a 'Dynamic book' read and used on an electronic device.
A question then is
Do we think of a 'Dynamic note book'?
A note book comes with initially blank pages and this is what the current Squeak/Pharo/Cuis releases represent at the moment.
If the answer is 'no' as I understand you it means that
a) dynamic essays have to be written by teachers and the students read them and use the animations to explore the field of a particular topic. [1]
b) the teacher on the other side may rely on a collection of dynamic essays - or we may as well say - 'lessons' or 'teaching units' to choose what to present to the students.
c) a dynamic book may be used for self study of a topic. That means that the student selects for a possibly large collection of dynamic essays what to study and learn
What does 'writing a dynamic essay' mean?
As with traditional text book writing there is a) formatted text and b) graphics. What comes in addition are c) short scripts relying on existing material to produce graphics and animations. d) sound e) video
Then a last question which I think should be investigated thoroughly be looking also at past efforts.
What makes such an endeavour successful?
As a contribution towards an answer I have
a) "ease of use".
- This is mostly about the language and DSL used for scripting
- And for this to happen it also means that there is a considerable
collection of examples.
b) availability of a "lesson / teaching units collection" .
In terms of downloads, your Dr. Geo implementation of a Smalltalk based scripting environment for producing teaching and learning artifacts is successful. So the question may as well be
"What will make it MORE successful?"
--Hannes
[1] In terms of implementation _one option_ is that the content is assembled in the Smalltalk environment and then an exported version in HTML/CSS/JavaScript is produced to be read on the web.
On 7/20/18, David T. Lewis lewis@mail.msen.com wrote:
Hilaire,
I see, it makes perfect sense now. I am looking forward to more of your writings :-)
Dave
On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:41:28AM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
Hi Dave,
Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys controllable artifacts.
What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of teacher oriented support/care/attention.
By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.
All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.
Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.
Thanks
Hilaire
Le 19/07/2018 ?? 18:58, David T. Lewis a ??crit??:
Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very
active
and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development
seemed
to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in
the
project can comment further, but that was my impression.
-- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu
CRISPR-CAS9 and DNA are all but empty bags of technology and sciences. Following your analogy, a question is what could the minimum content of the Dynabook bag to make it an evolving entity?
To find a bit about that, I try to follow the learning models path.
Hilaire
----- http://drgeo.eu -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Squeak-Dev-f45488.html
Le 24/07/2018 à 06:39, H. Hirzel a écrit :
The Dynabook concept is often linked to the Etoys concept and implementation. I think it is important that you remind us that Etoys is constructivism oriented and as such is not the only learning model. So it actually results in the conclusion that the field of application of the Dynabook idea is much wider. In the sense of a 'Dynamic book' read and used on an electronic device.
A question then is
Do we think of a 'Dynamic note book'?
A note book comes with initially blank pages and this is what the current Squeak/Pharo/Cuis releases represent at the moment.
For me they are programming Smalltalk environment.
What does 'writing a dynamic essay' mean?
As with traditional text book writing there is a) formatted text and b) graphics. What comes in addition are c) short scripts relying on existing material to produce graphics and animations. d) sound e) video
f) Glueing together simulation with Smalltalk code
Then a last question which I think should be investigated thoroughly be looking also at past efforts.
What makes such an endeavour successful?
As a contribution towards an answer I have
a) "ease of use".
- This is mostly about the language and DSL used for scripting
- And for this to happen it also means that there is a considerable
collection of examples.
b) availability of a "lesson / teaching units collection" .
c) matching the teacher needs
d) ease of re-usability of simulation
f) ease to glue simulations together build meta-simulation
g) in-situ documentation and guiding
In terms of downloads, your Dr. Geo implementation of a Smalltalk based scripting environment for producing teaching and learning artifacts is successful. So the question may as well be
"What will make it MORE successful?"
Not sure.
Hilaire
--Hannes
[1] In terms of implementation _one option_ is that the content is assembled in the Smalltalk environment and then an exported version in HTML/CSS/JavaScript is produced to be read on the web.
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