squeakland February 2004

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29 participants
36 discussions

DVD translation for Italian?
by Michael Rueger 05 Feb '04

05 Feb '04

Hi all, we getting closer to making a release of the Squeakers DVD with a bunch of subtitle languages: http://squeaklet.com:8080/m17n/7 But, we seem to be missing a volunteer for Italian! Anybody out there willing to volunteer? Cheers Michael

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Observations from a parent Squeaker
by Kim Rose 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

Hello - I've been corresponding with Daniel Vareika, a parent in Uruguay, who has been playing with Squeak with his 7 year old son. I asked his permission to share his comments and observations as I thought you might find them of interest. I think many of you have/will have similiar experiences with your children. I am sure Daniel would appreciate your comments, too. cheers to all, Kim >Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 11:32:38 -0300 >Subject: Re: Buying book and DVD >From: Daniel Vareika <dvareika(a)redfacil.com.uy> >To: Kim Rose <kim.rose(a)squeakland.org> > >Dear Kim, > >The day before yesterday and yesterday I was able to start playing with my >son, Gaston with Squeak. >Right now he is on vacation (here it is summer) and he was with my wife on >another city next to the beach (I had to remain working). > >>From the experience of this past two days I only can tell you that we.. >LOOOVE SQUEAK!!! >Even my son jokes about both being Squeakers!!! >It really helped a lot the book "Powerful ideas.." and the DVD was excellent >for me to wholly understand what is Squeak about and used for. > >My son didn´t like much the DVD (he thought it was a game, not a movie) and >latter on was impatient with the book, because he wanted to build a car >right away. > >>From this little experience I have several observations: >******************************************************** >I have found that on one hand, my son being only 7 (he will be on >02/07/2004) and not being very fluent in reading (both in English and in >Spanish - still need more practicing) nonetheless he was able to start all >by himself, at least painting the car and finding his way around!! > >Latter on, I found that wanting to make things (like in a hurry) doesn´t >help much learning the big concepts, he has too much hurry wanting to >achieve things that he has seen on the DVD!!! > >Still I was really amazed how quickly he picked up concepts like x and y >axis positive and negative numbers (a little more difficult) and the concept >of building scripts (I don´t know whether he understand the concept of >connecting objects or finds it to be completely natural). > >Still what I see is that he learns more buy doing, maybe not fully >understanding the concepts like connecting two objects, and knowing his way >around, more buy knowing what this button does than buy reading what it >says. > >We encouraged him to explain to my wife the concepts that he has learned so >far and he did on the other hand beautifully though he lacked vocabulary. > >Summing up: >*********** >a) On one hand he is truly learning by playing. >b) On the other he might be too young to show sometimes some patience. >c) He still has a little difficult in reading both in his native tongue and >in English. >d) It is difficult to see him seat still on a chair that swings in front of >the computer and one is not sure how much attention he is paying. >e) He is young comparing the kids on the DVD (7 versus 10). >f) He remembers things by position, not by what it says. >g) He seems to be in a hurry. > >Question: >********* >Sorry this mail is kind of a mess... Am I doing the right thing? > >To be truthful, being a teacher of adults is one thing, trying to teach a 7 >year old is another, and being him my son probably another. > >On one hand I love how quickly he is going, on the other I am afraid he will >learn "nice tricks" like a monkey but not "concepts". > >Please let me know what you think about. Your input is invaluable to me! > >Yours, > >Daniel > >Kim Rose wrote: > >> Hello, Daniel - >> I am delightged you have received the DVD -- I >>hope you and your son enjoy it! >> best regards, >> Kim

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Reply to those helping me learn to save my projects.
by RATZEL, MARSHA 03 Feb '04

03 Feb '04

Thanks so much for everyone's help. My district uses Windows XP. Our students are setup on their own server called the N server. Each student has their own folder and inside that folder they have a Tech Ed folder where they store all their work for my class. I think we have the newest version. When it has prompted us to update, we always reply with a yes. Is there someway I can check just to make sure. I'll do it if I know how. And no I don't think I knew about holding the mouse down. Tomorrow when I get to school I will try that first thing. Maybe this will be the thing that I discovered last semester by accident and got it to work but just don't remember right now. I knew I should have written it down, but I thought I wouldn't forget. Ha! Too much to remember. Kim, your directions would be great if I had a Mac. And I will go on a hunt for one tomorrow. But they are scarce in my district. I think I can find a conversion program, though and try and use that to read the file you sent. I appreciate the help. Thank you to all that have offered their assistance. This is quite an adventure. So many of my colleagues kind of laugh at me because they think I go to too much trouble. But I think it's worth it because my kids see that I'm learning right alongside them. Especially when I show them that I have to ask questions of others just like they ask me questions. Isn't that the whole point? Anyway, thanks for everything and I'll be hoping that I can get things to save tomorrow. marsha Please send some more information about your setup offline (Are you using Windows, Mac OS 9 /X, how do your network folders appear to the kids (drive or volume name). Please make sure to have the newest version of the plugin (just go to squeakland and point to "get updates"). After wondering why your are having such a hard time it occurred to me, that you simply forgot about the "click and hold" oin the navigation bar? When you clikc on the publish or find button, but hold the mouse button down then a menu will appear after a short moment. This menu has entries for e.g. publish as, find (more places) etc. Even if this solves your problem, please still send the extra information so I can help you with finding a better setup. Cheers Michael _______________________________________________ Squeakland mailing list Squeakland(a)squeakland.org http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland

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eToys scalability
by Jecel Assumpcao Jr 03 Feb '04

03 Feb '04

My sister is the "coordinator for technology in education" at a school in São Paulo, Brazil (http://www.colband.com.br/edutech/index.htm in Portuguese only, sorry) and decided to do an EToys project with 9th grade students. She is interested in doing an ecosystem simulation like in the old Vivarium project. I was wondering about how many players you can have before performance drops to an unacceptable level. Her students will be using Pentium IV machines with 1.4GHz and up which are far faster than the computers I have around here, so I can't test this myself. Another limitation is the fixed size of the world. Unless the players are really tiny (like the dots in StarSqueak) it probably isn't practical to have more than a few on the screen at a time. Since the project schedule is from February 26 to June 3 and then from August 5 to October 28, perhaps one solution would be to use EToys in the first semester and then move the simulation to OpenCroquet in the second? That would allow a really large environment. -- Jecel

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Help in saving projects
by RATZEL, MARSHA 03 Feb '04

03 Feb '04

OK....I'm back and working this again. The basics are my bugaboos again. I have a whole new group of students and I'm even using them as my Action Research subjects to prove to my district that this kind of thinking and teaching has real merit. But, believe it or not, I can get launched because I can't figure out how to save projects. I know I figured it out last semester, but now I can't remember how I did it. I click on Publish It. And I want my students to be able to save the projects in their network folders. But no where can I find a way to browse to them. Does anyone have directions that I can use? Simple ones? This is the most confusing part of Squeak and it always throws me for a big loop and I get so frustrated. Sorry to vent but I really want this to work and for folks to be excited. And I don't mean to be so critical but I'm not a dummy and I've sat here for 2 class periods trying to figure it out with my kids and now another 45 minutes with my computer teaching partner and we can't figure it out. So it isn't that intuitive. Please can someone show me the trick to this? It's got to be something that I am missing. And I want to continue tomorrow. We're just working through the tutorials and I have a couple of days to figure it out before it becomes critical. Thanks in advance for all your help. marsha

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Re: Squeaking Homeschoolers?
by Alan Kay 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Hi Aaron -- This would be a nice email to send to the squeakland.org list. I'm copying over there. At 1:20 AM -0500 2/1/04, Aaron Lanterman wrote: >On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, David T. Lewis wrote: > >> You are on the right list for the kinds of student you have in mind, >> but you should also be aware that Squeak is being used for some very >> innovative educational purposes for younger kids. See www.squeakland.org. > >When I picked up the Squeakers DVD, which shows BJ Allen-Conn's work with >Squeak, I also picked up a couple of copies of their "Powerful Ideas for >the Classroom" book. > >Just curious: has there been any effort to "market," so to speak (in the >sense that one markets something free) Squeak to the homeschooling >population? (My wife and I don't have kids yet, but when we do we plan to >homeschool. My wife taught 7th and 8th grade French for three years, and >then went into tech support to get good pay and respect... after she left >teaching she started researching homeschooling.) > >I've read every one of Alan Kay's essays on the squeakland.org site. I >doubt he intended this, but if you really put together his arguments, they >form an incredibly powerful argument for homeschooling, which emphasizes >personal exploration of ideas on one's own timetable. Homeschoolers tend >to be all about "getting their hands dirty" - i.e. if you want to learn >how to make pots, you don't really get far by reading about making pots, >or even by watching someone else make pots. You won't really get anywhere >until you stick your fingers in the clay - and I think Squeak could be >characterized as a "Clay of Ideas." The first aims for the Squeak etoys were at what we called "lapware" (a parent with a child on their lap). And we have been wanting to do a major push for homeschoolers for quite a few years. I think we now have enough content for the K-5/6 range, but we really lack enough of the direct and ancillary materials that parents need. This is especially acute in the earliest ages, where the advice to parents needs to be particularly rich in order for them to be good scaffolders (this is also true for teachers in the earliest grades). We've found that moderate levels of help (such as BJ's and Kim's book) seems to work fine with 4-6 graders. To take a later example, 7th and especially 8th graders can cover a tremendous amount of ground, and here again we need lots more scaffolding for the helpers in areas such as science and math. So the effort graph kind of looks like a smile with 5th grade being a pretty good sweet spot in which to get started. I have been toying around with notes for a more complete "5th grade for homeschoolers" curriculum but even this is daunting with our small resources (also we like to test our curricula for 3 years before thinking we have results that can be trusted). > >When I showed my wife the Squeakers video, she said two things that really >struck me: > >1) "Wow, if someone had taught me math _that_ way, I would have really >gotten into it!" (she historically hated math in school, all the way >through) That's because most schools in the US simply don't teach math. They try to teach pattern-matched calculation skills which are not much fun. Math is beautiful and fun. > >2) "They could NEVER have done that at a public school like the one I >taught at." That was in reference to the gravity experiment - she said in >disgust that at the school she taught at, one could never get permission >from the various powers that be to do such a thing. In particular, there >was a kid who stayed writing down his obervations once the experiment was >over. My wife said that at the school she taught at, and probably most >public schools, someone would have been screaming at the kid to get his >butt inside along with all the other kids according to schedule. A neat side note is that the Open Charter School is a public LAUSD school, but was set up as a Magnet school when busing was a big issue. And Magnet schools in LA were allowed to have much more control by the parents, teachers and principal as to how they did their thing. > >It seems to me that what lets Squeak take hold in BJ Allen-Conn's world is >the philosophy underlying the Open School that she teaches at. In a world >of public school mediocrity, particularly in the realm of math and science >- which Dr. Kay so eloquently exposes in his essays and in the speeches >I've seen on line - a world strangled by things like the No Child Left >Behind act (i.e. Every Teacher Screwed Over Act) - the power of Squeak >will have trouble taking hold. > >Sorry, I got a bit overexcited there... it's just so thrilling to find >people so dedicated to creating new educational experiences to share ideas >with. I was very glad to meet Mark Guzdial, who was the first person I met >at Tech that I could seriously sit down and talk about these issues with. Nice to be working and playing with you! Cheers, Alan > >- Aaron > >----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Dr. Aaron Lanterman, Asst. Prof. Voice: 404-385-2548 >School of Electrical and Comp. Eng. Fax: 404-894-8363 >Georgia Institute of Technology E-mail: lanterma(a)ece.gatech.edu >Mail Code 0250 Web: users.ece.gatech.edu/~lanterma >Atlanta, GA 30332 Office: GCATT 334B --

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squeakland February 2004