Jecel, Thanks for the information. Matt's comment about Chromebooks in Unit 4 was not the first district in our area to buy sets of these computers. It is not an isolated trend, is it?
The closed shop policy of Chromebooks is in direct contradiction of Google's efforts to increase the number of people who know how to program.
We are presenting our 4th year workshop, Introduction to Programming with Etoys, with a CS4HS grant from Google. It has made a difference we can see and has built connections between the university and public school districts who are trying to include more young students in some kind of CS course. Our middle schools piloted Etoys this year and I have seen some terrific projects from 6-8th graders. Next year we are piloting Etoys in an elementary school where 20 of the teachers studied Etoys in a five day workshop. They will learn Etoys and how to adapt it to their instructional materials and classroom routines.
I have looked at Snap but still prefer Etoys.The big companies have money to burn and we do not have a cent. If we had the money, what would developers do with Etoys. Kathleen ________________________________________ From: etoys-dev-bounces@squeakland.org [etoys-dev-bounces@squeakland.org] on behalf of Jecel Assumpcao Jr. [jecel@merlintec.com] Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 5:52 PM To: etoys-dev@squeakland.org Subject: Re: [etoys-dev] FW: CS4K8 Etoys Workshop
Kathleen,
There is already very simple App that looks like Scratch called Hopscotch for the iPad. So, how are they getting Scratch on Chromebooks and iPads?
Note that Scratch 2.0 (being released right now) uses Flash, so it won't run on iPads. I would guess that Chromebooks wouldn't have any problems with it, but am not sure. But there is a version in Javascript, called Snap!, that works just fine on all these machines.
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.
-- Jecel
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Kathleen,
Thanks for the information.
And thanks to Bert for correcting the part about Etoys and the Apple app store.
Matt's comment about Chromebooks in Unit 4 was not the first district in our area to buy sets of these computers. It is not an isolated trend, is it?
When I was looking for a computer to run Squeak on at Best Buy I was seriously tempted to get a Chromebook. I was hoping that I would be able to figure out how to get Squeak and Etoys running on that, but if I couldn't there were instructions on the web on how to install Ubuntu Linux on those machines (specific models) and that would be a way to having Squeak on them. In the end, I bought an HP laptop instead (due to the larger screen, mostly).
The closed shop policy of Chromebooks is in direct contradiction of Google's efforts to increase the number of people who know how to program.
I didn't look into this very much, but my initial impression was that it isn't as closed as the Apple stuff.
We are presenting our 4th year workshop, Introduction to Programming with Etoys, with a CS4HS grant from Google. It has made a difference we can see and has built connections between the university and public school districts who are trying to include more young students in some kind of CS course.
I am very glad to hear that.
Our middle schools piloted Etoys this year and I have seen some terrific projects from 6-8th graders. Next year we are piloting Etoys in an elementary school where 20 of the teachers studied Etoys in a five day workshop. They will learn Etoys and how to adapt it to their instructional materials and classroom routines.
It is too bad that I haven't heard much about Etoys here in Brazil since the 2009 SqueakFest. On the other hand, I hadn't heard about what you just wrote either until just now. So it could be that I am out of touch.
I have looked at Snap but still prefer Etoys.
Snap has some extra stuff for serious programming that Etoys and Scratch lack. But that might be pushing the visual style too far - the examples that use these feature seem very bloated and awkward. Though I support both Scratch and Etoys, I always use the latter in my own projects.
The big companies have money to burn and we do not have a cent. If we had the money, what would developers do with Etoys.
I plan to find out.
Cheers, -- Jecel
On May 22, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Harness, Kathleen wrote:
I have looked at Snap but still prefer Etoys.The big companies have money to burn and we do not have a cent. If we had the money, what would developers do with Etoys.
I think that it would be great if there were developers who could build Etoys in JavaScript, maybe using Dan Ingalls' Lively. What do the developers think?
Rita
Kathleen
On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 04:13:32PM +0200, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
On May 22, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Harness, Kathleen wrote:
I have looked at Snap but still prefer Etoys.The big companies have money to burn and we do not have a cent. If we had the money, what would developers do with Etoys.
I think that it would be great if there were developers who could build Etoys in JavaScript, maybe using Dan Ingalls' Lively. What do the developers think?
Rita
That is a really interesting question. I expect that it is quite feasible, though probably not a small project to accomplish.
Dave
David T. Lewis wrote:
On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 04:13:32PM +0200, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
I think that it would be great if there were developers who could build Etoys in JavaScript, maybe using Dan Ingalls' Lively. What do the developers think?
That is a really interesting question. I expect that it is quite feasible, though probably not a small project to accomplish.
It depends on the scope. There are many Scratch clones and Scratch-like systems around and they were all reasonably small projects. So why was the Scratch 2.0 reimplementation in Flash such a big deal? Because (unless I misunderstood) they want the new system to be able to read in all the old projects. This task was easier than it might have been thanks to the limits they have been imposing all this time to allow things like the Java based "player" to exist.
So something very close to Etoys in Javascript built on top of the Lively Kernel should be simple enough. None of the current Etoys projects would work, however. While Scratch is completely isolated from the underlying Squeak Smalltalk, Etoys lets the base language poke through in some (very few) places.
It might be interesting to discuss what makes Etoys a better option than Snap!, for example. If compatibility with current projects isn't a requirement, a more reasonable approach might be to add to Snap! whatever is needed. I'll list what are the most obvious differences to me and hope other can tell me what I missed:
- multi-level nested colored blocks vs easy to expand rows of uniform blocks - explicit loops vs stepped scripts - very structured build mode vs mostly freeform - tabs vs halos and inspectors (I don't remember what these are called)
-- Jecel
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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David T. Lewis -
Harness, Kathleen -
Jecel Assumpcao Jr. -
Rita Freudenberg