etoys-dev March 2010

etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

15 participants
29 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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Re: [sq-education] repeat-tile
by Steve Thomas 10 Apr '10

10 Apr '10

Rita, If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile. The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles: - "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does - "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes the next tile Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile. FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2 <http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9497> which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method. I have included the developer list to get their comments as well. Stephen On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita(a)isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote: > > On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote: > > Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in > iterating through objects in a collections. > > What was the specific problem? > > Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys > philosophy? > > > The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script > happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in > a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one > after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is > confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. > So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking > at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from > looking at the script, I think. > > Rita > > > Stephen > > On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg < > rita(a)isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get >> when you click on the supplies icon in a script. >> During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, >> because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which >> is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about >> removing it, since it is mostly confusing? >> >> It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still >> work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object >> catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. >> What do you think? >> >> Greetings, >> Rita > > > >

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Fwd: [Sugar-devel] [RELEASE] Etoys 4.0.2340-2
by Bert Freudenberg 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

FYI - Bert - Begin forwarded message: > > From: Bert Freudenberg <bert(a)freudenbergs.de> > Date: 30. März 2010 00:23:02 MESZ > To: Sugar-dev Devel <sugar-devel(a)lists.sugarlabs.org> > Subject: [Sugar-devel] [RELEASE] Etoys 4.0.2340-2 > > This release only updates translations (de, hi, mn, ta, vi) > > == Sources == > > http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/etoys/etoys-4.0.2340-… > > http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/fructose/Etoys/Etoys-115.tar.… > > == Packaged for OLPC XO == > > http://etoys.laptop.org/rpms/etoys-4.0.2340-2.noarch.rpm > > http://etoys.laptop.org/rpms/Etoys-115.xo > > == Changes since 4.0.2339 == > > 4.0.2340-2 (29 Mar 2010) > > * added translation: hi, ta > * update translations: de, mn, vi > * no code changes > > 4.0.2340-1 (17 Jan 2010) > > * use compressed sources file (EtoysV4.stc) > > - Bert - (for the Etoys team) > _______________________________________________ > Sugar-devel mailing list > Sugar-devel(a)lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel

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Re: [etoys-dev] Animation support
by karl ramberg 27 Mar '10

27 Mar '10

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr <jecel(a)merlintec.com> wrote: > Bert, > > what about the "follow path" thing? I have always used that for > animations. It has a bunch of problems (like having one path that you > can't see or edit) but seems like a reasonable starting point. Most annoying is that everything else stops while one path is executing. If you make the path a PolygonMorph you can edit it. It's just like a one line change i a method. Karl

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Squeakfest 2010 - Save the Date!
by Rita Freudenberg 25 Mar '10

25 Mar '10

Greetings, we are happy to announce that University of North Carolina Wilmington will be the host for this year's Squeakfest! We invite you all to a face to face gathering, sharing of experiences and materials relative to the usage of Etoys. We will have two great keynote speakers this year: Walter Bender from Sugar Labs and Julian Lombardi from Duke University. Squeakfest USA July 26, 27 and 28th Wilmington, NC University of Wilmington We'll have more info on the Squeakfest website shortly, but until then, please save the date! Please forward this email and share with friends and colleagues. This will be a gathering of users and practitioners of Etoys -- teachers, researchers, and developers to share and learn. Newcomers to Etoys are most welcome too! We hope to see you in Wilmington in July! More to come...

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Re: [etoys-dev] script tiles in Greek problem
by kharness＠illinois.edu 25 Mar '10

25 Mar '10

Bert, Thanks, I will include the SqueakDebug.log in the future. Automatic bug reporting would be an excellent idea. Regards, Kathleen ---- Original message ---- >Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:25:15 +0100 >From: Bert Freudenberg <bert(a)freudenbergs.de> >Subject: Re: [etoys-dev] script tiles in Greek problem >To: <kharness(a)illinois.edu> >Cc: etoys-dev(a)squeakland.org > >On 25.03.2010, at 02:48, <kharness(a)illinois.edu> wrote: >> >> Hi, >> I selected Greek as the language. >> I dragged out a rectangle from Supplies, dragged out a script tile and dropped it but, it did not turn into a tile in a scriptor. It did provide an error message. > >Happens here, too. > >Makes me wonder ... anybody trying this on a Mac or PC must have run into the problem (I guess it works in Linux). But nobody bothered to tell us developers so far. Which I guess is normal for users. I think we need to add automatic bug reporting. I thought we even had a ticket for that, but I couldn't find it? > >But kudos to Kathleen for reporting! :) > >> When I tried to publish the project so you could look at it with dev-eyes another error message appeared and the project would not save. I use a PC and this happened with the Etoys software I downloaded today. > >Yes, you can't save a project with the pink error window. If you encounter such an error, please rather attach the "SqueakDebug.log" file from the Etoys directory. It is created whenever such an error happens. The next error overwrites the file, so before continuing you should move it away (maybe rename to remind you of the incident, or attach to a ticket or an email). I'm attaching the one for this incident, and I also created a ticket: > >http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-683 > >- Bert - > >________________ >SqueakDebug.log (6k bytes)

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script tiles in Greek problem
by kharness＠illinois.edu 25 Mar '10

25 Mar '10

Hi, I selected Greek as the language. I dragged out a rectangle from Supplies, dragged out a script tile and dropped it but, it did not turn into a tile in a scriptor. It did provide an error message. When I tried to publish the project so you could look at it with dev-eyes another error message appeared and the project would not save. I use a PC and this happened with the Etoys software I downloaded today. Regards, Kathleen

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Fwd: script tiles in Greek problem and now the PNG
by kharness＠illinois.edu 25 Mar '10

25 Mar '10

Sorry, I clicked send too soon. kh

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etoys-dev March 2010