etoys-dev February 2010

etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

15 participants
25 discussions

Re: [squeakland] Re: the reasons for ranking
by Karl Ramberg 09 Jun '10

09 Jun '10

On 2009-09-30 17:20, Kim Rose wrote: > Hey, John, > > Nice to see you are still around and interested -- hope you are doing > well. Thanks for the comments. > > As for me and Viewpoints -- there is one reason only for ranking and > that is filtering in an attempt to bring the best educational examples > and those illustrative of etoys' strengths to the attention of the > community. So, I, for one, am hoping that those "voting" are not > voting for any particular child, author or person, but for the example > itself -- I hope those voting/ranking are asking "is this a fine > exemplar to help teach a concept, principle, or powerful idea?". The > more the example answers back with a "yes" the higher the rank. Also, > the more complete an example the higher the rank. How disclosing of > what the Etoy is meant to do is in the example? Does it have an > explanation of what it is? If it is a game does it have instruction > on how to play and the goal of the game? A googlish way of ranking is to use links/ references to a projects. If teachers/users could make a group or curriculum of projects on the site, we could rank from the refs to projects. I tried to rank a few project, but it's quite hard to do. There are to many things to consider. I'm not a teacher, so for me to rank appropriateness of a project for a classroom situation is not really realistic Karl > > I hope that teachers who encourage their students to upload projects > will *only* allow sharing if their student provides an "About" flap, > or some intro/explanation of the Etoy and some instruction on where to > start, the aim of the project, etc. The most beautiful simulation of > something will fall completely flat with someone if they have no real > idea of what they are looking at or what the script they are playing > with is meant to do. Etoys are intended to teach and help us learn; > learning cannot occur without context. No author should assume their > project will be self disclosing; it will not. Our users have a > variety of levels of expertise in both Etoys and subject matter areas; > providing more context can only help. > > If there is no "ranking" in place and everything is posted the > offerings soon get overwhelming and most difficult to navigate. We > found this years ago when we had an active "super-swiki". Projects > that were no more than a single sketch with no script at all were > posted and only "muddied the waters" for those wading in an attempt to > find something with some meaningful content. > > I hope the community will bear this in mind when "ranking" what gets > uploaded and understand that not everyone can be represented in a > featured showcase. > -- Kim > > > On Sep 30, 2009, at 7:58 AM, voiklis wrote: > >> Hello all, >> >> I apologize for joining this conversation so late; I am a longtime, >> though recently quiet, member of the community. >> >> I understand that the ranking system is an attempt to enable people >> to judge the quality of a contribution (or contributor) based on some >> directly observable measure of reputation. On first sight, one could >> argue that such a system overcomes the problem that in the >> face-to-face world reputation is not directly observable. In order to >> get an honest assessment of a person's reputation, one has to invest >> a lot of time building trust with the people familiar with that >> person. Even then, a trustworthy assessment requires direct >> observation of the person's actions. >> >> A ranking system would appear to reduce that effort by half; knowing >> the person's reputation among his/her peers, one only needs to assess >> the work. >> >> The problem with that reasoning is that electronic ranking systems >> are highly susceptible to manipulation. Building reputation becomes >> the goal of the activity for many people and they use all sorts of >> seemingly harmless social and technological means to inflate their >> numbers. Our lab has been studying this phenomenon through both >> observational studies of online communities and laboratory >> experiments. The two papers below report on the phenomenon as it >> presents itself in Digg, the news aggregation site. >> >> The first paper demonstrates that a tit-for-tat game of reciprocity >> inflates the reputation of contributors and their contributions >> without reflecting anything substantive about their contributions. >> The second paper really brings out the negative consequences of this >> phenomenon. The paper reports on an experiment where people judged >> how interesting they found the contribution. The ranking values of >> the articles were set by the investigator; sometime the rank of the >> article was set high, at other times low. Experimental subjects rated >> higher-ranked contributions as more interesting than lower ranked >> contributions. The same article was rated as highly interesting when >> its rank was set high and uninteresting when ranked low. Duncan Watts >> (of small-world networks fame) observed the same phenomenon with >> music rating. >> >> What this means in the present discussion is that people will likely >> ignore low ranking contributions. Worse still, when they do actually >> look at those contributions they are likely to see what the ranking >> value led them to expect rather than the qualities of the >> contribution itself. >> >> Unless we can find scientific research that demonstrates any benefits >> to ranking, I think we should be wary of using such systems. >> >> All best, >> >> John >> >> Sadlon, E., Sakamoto, Y., Dever, H. J., & Nickerson, J. V. (2008). >> The karma of Digg: Reciprocity in online social networks. In R. Gopal >> and R. Ramesh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th Annual Workshop on >> Information Technologies and Systems. >> http://cog.mgnt.stevens-tech.edu/~yasu/papers/reciprocity.pdf >> >> Sakamoto, Y., Ma, J., & Nickerson, J. V. (2009). 2377 people like >> this article: The influence of others' decisions on yours. In N. >> Taatgen, H. van Rijn, L. Schomaker, and J. Nerbonne (Eds.), >> Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science >> Society.http://cog.mgnt.stevens-tech.edu/~yasu/papers/cogscidigg1.pdf >> >> Salganik, M. J., Dodds, P. S., and Watts, D. J. (2006). Experimental >> study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural >> market. Science, 311(5762):854-856. >> http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1121066[/url] >> >> >> >> >> -------------------- m2f -------------------- >> >> (from forum) >> http://squeakland.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=11554#11554 >> >> -------------------- m2f -------------------- >> _______________________________________________ >> squeakland mailing list >> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland > > > Viewpoints Research is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to > improving "powerful ideas education" for the world's children and > advancing the state of systems research and personal computing. Please > visit us online at www.vpri.org > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Squeakland mailing list > Squeakland(a)squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >

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etoys-dev meet today at 19:00 GMT on #etoys
by Timothy Falconer 09 Jun '10

09 Jun '10

Hi everyone, As before, we'll be having a software meet on the IRC freenode channel #etoys at 19:00 GMT (3pm ET, 12 PT). You can also attend by clicking "chat" on squeakland.org. It might be helpful to watch the two preview videos here: http://squeakland.org/resources/audioVisual/ Also, have a look at the current Etoys 4 roadmap: http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ?report=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.sy… Take care, Tim

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popups in project-info
by Scott Wallace 31 May '10

31 May '10

Hi, Tim, and all, Attached is a fileout providing changes to the project-info dialog as requested for the benefit of the "showcase" on Squeakland.org. Basically, the "project info" dialog now contains three "enumerated" items, "Subject", "Age", and "Region". These three are all governed by pop-ups (in local language) rather than by type-ins. The results are included in the project manifest. Important notes: (1) It is essential that this be filed in to an image updated at least through update 2246PolygonFix-kfr. If filed in to an earlier image, subsequently loading updates will clobber some of the changes provided here. (2) Yoshiki is also modifying code in the EToyProjectDetailsMorph area in this same time-frame, so integration is likely to be necessary before our two fileouts are published. (3) There are a few obvious rough edges which someone may wish to tweak, though I don't know of any show-stoppers. For example, this has always been an English-only dialog, but now that the field names are localized, there may be layout issues in some languages (once translations are available.) Also, for the pop-up fields, if they've never been set they show as blank, whereas once they've been set to "(none)" (equivalent to blank) they show the text "(none)". Probably we should always show "(none)" when values for these three popups have not been supplied. Also, since some of the fields are now type-in and some are pop-ups, perhaps some UI convention (slight color difference?) should be used to hint at whether a field functions as a type-in or a pop-up. (4) This turned out to involve quite a bit of code, most of it written with a fever and at very late hours. So there's the distinct possibility of errors. I did test it briefly and it seemed to work as I expected. HOWEVER: it really needs verification by someone else. (5) The Preamble (please read if planning to test or use): -=------ Change Set: projectInfoPopUps-sw Date: 8 August 2009 Author: Scott Wallace Changes to the project-info dialog, in support of new data desired for the 'showcase' on squeakland.org: - 'Sub-Category' removed. - Subject, Age, and Region are added as pop-ups. - Choices for Subject, Age, Region popups, and corresponding codes, obtainable from web-site. - Project manifest now includes Age, Subject (category,) and Region info. The codes are strings of numbers, e.g. '554' as a Subject code means 'Language Arts' (look in #defaultAgeTriplets, #defaultSubjectTriplets, #defaultRegionTriplets on class-side of EToyProjectDetailsMorph.) - Names of fields are presented to the user in localized form. - Choices for values of pop-up fields are presented to the user in localized form. Notes: - There is support provided for obtaining up-to-date lists of the subject, age, and region alternatives from the web site (see EToyProjectDetailsMorph class updateTripletsFromWebSite) but it is not actually called at this point, out of concern for potential for long delay if connection to web site is slow. - The *region* codes are at present *not* obtained from the web-site (even when the user explicitly calls #updateTripletsFromWebSite,) but rather a 'fake' set of regions, basically the continents, is provided. This is probably temporary. We have no reasonable way to confront the user with a pop-up showing 250 choices. However, as per Tim's request, I have made it a point to include Antarctica in the region list. (Tim: look at method #defaultRegionTriplets for the current point of departure, if you want to adopt that, temporarily at least, on the web site. And/or of course change any defaults as needed. ----------- Cheers, -- Scott

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Packaging Etoys
by Karl Ramberg 01 Mar '10

01 Mar '10

Hi, I have worked on packaging the Etoys image and saved them to source.squeak.org/etoys. I'm new to Monticello and hope I did not screw up too badly. Karl

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How can you play a particular sound based on text value
by Steve Thomas 28 Feb '10

28 Feb '10

I created a Teleprompter for kids to rehearse plays, create and learn stories in response to a request on the IAEP list at Sugarlabs. See http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9498 for the project and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgAMo-a9NcY for a how to use video. I would like to add the ability for them to record their parts (using sound recorder) and then have those parts automatically play when their line is displayed. So for example say there is a play with four kids in a scene. The kids could record their lines in the project (and automagically store that sound in the Holder for playback when that line is cue'ed). For example when a line is displayed there could be a button "Record line" (can do this now). Then have a way to store a reference to that sound in the holder such that you can write a Script that plays that sound. (This is the part I need help with how to store a reference in the Holder and play the sound based on the reference item). Then when they go home rehearse their parts by having the other kids recordings play when their lines come up. Thanks, Stephen

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Great Pythagorean Theorem Demonstration
by Steve Thomas 26 Feb '10

26 Feb '10

Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIGCdOtfd7E by some guy named Bert. (FYI, this may be a great way to publicize and educate folks on Etoys) This is a great way to demonstrate the power of Etoys and teach how to use it. Unfortunately this kind of demonstration can't be done in Event Theater (see http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-561). Any suggestions on Screencasting software for Macintosh? FYI, I am cheap and usually prefer open source (aka free) software but in this case am willing to double my expenses ;) Stephen

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[ANN]EtoysDevMonticello
by Karl Ramberg 22 Feb '10

22 Feb '10

Hi, lacking a better name I made a page on the wiki http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/EtoysDevMonticello Its a start at packaging the Etoys image so we eventually can merge with Squeak Trunk with block closures and all the other stuff. Karl

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etoys software meet today at 3:00pm ET (20:00 GMT)
by Timothy Falconer 22 Feb '10

22 Feb '10

Hi everyone, After a month of distraction due to our efforts to help Haiti, I'm back to being able to attend our weekly software meets on IRC. Join me at 3:00pm ET (20:00 GMT) on #etoys on freenode for an hour. I'll be bringing up some snags we experienced in our recent Etoys double-header pilot here in Cambridge MA. We'll also be talking about Etoys 5 priorities again. Thank you all for your patience. It's really been a BUSY month. Take care, Tim -- Timothy Falconer Squeakland Foundation http://squeakland.org 610-797-3100 -- "Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do." ... piaget

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Re: Merging Etoys
by karl ramberg 22 Feb '10

22 Feb '10

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:37 PM, K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Friday 19 February 2010 12:36:25 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote: >> 3.8 was the last common release. That's why Etoys doesn't even have MC. I >> think the very first step would be to repackage Etoys, just like Andreas >> did with 3.8. Since 3.9 the main line uses MC. > Repackage which Etoys? Etoys from Etoys trunk or the Etoys in Squeak trunk? > > I have 422 patches from 1900htmlColor-bf.cs till 2340*.cs (so far) that I can > try to manually merge into Etoys/Squeak. For some time we will have to deal > with two Etoys - Etoys/Etoys and the emerging Etoys/Squeak. > > So the Todo list will look like: > A. Excise Etoys/Squeak into a loadable package and unload it from the > current Squeak trunk. > B. foreach Etoys changeset from Etoys/Etoys updates.list > apply it to this new package > load it in Squeak and make it pass a smoke test. > C. Rebase Etoys/Etoys to this new package. > > I get stuck in Step A. Where does one draw the boundary between Morphic and > Etoys? Does one have to start from scratch or is there a partially excised > version somewhere? > > BTW, I do like the Karl's proposal to have two images - etoys-dev and etoys > (runtime). Runtime image should not be burdened with scaffolding code. > > Subbu > Loading the change sets into trunk and resolving all conflicts is also a way of doing it. Etoys is a seperate package in trunk image that can be unloaded, btw Karl

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TED - Alan Kay - Example(8:44)
by Gustavo Ibarra 20 Feb '10

20 Feb '10

Hello everybody, I am trying to simulate the example "Or This A2+b2=c2" used by AK en the TED conference (8:44) but unfortunelly I am not arriving to the expected results. Does anybody know if the etoy project (I just need the example: A2 +b2=c2, not the complete presentation) is available in the web? Link TED - A powerful idea about ideas: http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.html -- Saludos, Gustavo.-

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etoys-dev February 2010