[etoys-dev] FW: CS4K8 Etoys Workshop

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 2013-05-22, at 14:46, "Harness, Kathleen" <kharness at illinois.edu> wrote:

> So, is Hopscotch on the iPad a scion of Scratch?

It's "inspired" by Scratch, completely independently done by Jocelyn Leavitt and Samantha John, but they did talk to John in the beta phase:
http://blog.gethopscotch.com/post/46882959883/papa-scratch

> I played with it, is is very simple and limited but it is for very young kids.

They do plan to make it more powerful. For a first version, I thought it was a good idea to start with the essentials.

> Still, it reminded me of how grateful I am that Etoys did not include cartoonish characters.

The Hopscotch designers believe the tool should try "Forcing Your Users To Make Something Beautiful":

http://blog.gethopscotch.com/post/21032692227/opinionated-tools-forcing-your-users-to-make

> Kodable is cast as a game, with music, but I can't picture many kids doing it for very long. 
> Kathleen

I have the impression that the App eco system is aimed mostly at a teacherless environment, so they try to avoid the "hard fun" learning curve. Gamification might be a way around that, but I have not seen a good example yet.

- Bert -

> ________________________________________
> From: etoys-dev-bounces at squeakland.org [etoys-dev-bounces at squeakland.org] on behalf of Bert Freudenberg [bert at freudenbergs.de]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 7:15 AM
> To: etoys-dev at squeakland.org dev
> Subject: Re: [etoys-dev] FW: CS4K8 Etoys Workshop
> 
> On 2013-05-22, at 00:52, "Jecel Assumpcao Jr." <jecel at merlintec.com> wrote:
> 
>> Kathleen,
>> 
>>> It is beginning to seem more urgent that Etoys adapt to these new rather
>>> closed box machines.
>> 
>> Etoys has been adapted, but isn't allowed by Apple to be distributed to
>> its users.
> 
> 
> That's not exactly true: we did not even try to submit the iPad version to Apple. One reason is indeed that Apple might object to the built-in project sharing, but the more severe reason is that the current Etoys UI does not work well on a touch-only device. Nobody has seriously tried to do anything about that, yet.
> 
> (It is true that Apple rejected the "Scratch Viewer", see http://mobilewikiserver.com/Scratch.html )
> 
> - Bert -