[squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Wednesday 02 Jun 2010 1:53:41 am kharness at illinois.edu wrote:
> Subbu,
>Usually we take a
> class period to move around from computer to computer to try other
> people's projects. Sometimes this causes changes based on new good ideas
> or problems they recognize in others but not in their own until they see
> them. Lastly no trash can or trash left in the project
> unless it has a purpose.
We tried this in the beginning but teachers found it difficult to control 
crowding around a computer. Remember these are village schools with erratic 
electricity and students have to share one or two laptops. Now the students 
have evolved sharing norms for personal, undisturbed sessions on the computer 
(like reading a book from the library). A beneficial fall out is that students 
tend to spend more time with physical models and ruminating on their ideas.

> You mentioned font problems for Kannada. Would something like this letter
> slate project be useful? http://www.etoysillinois.org/library.php?sl=194 
> was done a few years ago but I still see children open those projects and
> write messages with the letters; good for titles, labels, or short poems.
Very interesting! Kannada script[1] is much more complex so a slate would not 
be sufficient :-(. Linux shaping engine was not yet perfected for Kannada and I 
learnt early on that middle schoolers have a sharp eye for shape defects ;-). 
When I added a LaTeX Etoy to the Catalog, the precise shapes they got with it 
was sufficient motivation for them to pick up the complexities of encodings. The 
same logic can be used for Math like equations and formulae so the extra effort 
pays off in the long run.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_script

Subbu