squeakland November 2007

squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org

33 participants
43 discussions

Re:Can the American Mind be Opened?
by Richard Karpinski 17 Nov '07

17 Nov '07

Thanks, mmille10, for an interesting discussion. I recall an allegation that ninety percent of everything is crap. Further, I personally recall that if even ten percent of my classmates were interested and engaged in any particular class, then it was a delightful exception to the general rule. Indeed, it is my understanding, perhaps shallow and incomplete, that the constructionist/constructivist intent behind OLPC is to counter that trend toward useless education by getting students engaged in individual or team projects. With the engagement comes attention and intention which together make the learning both deeper and broader as well as very much faster than the typical classroom setting accomplishes. One hopes that every level of education fosters a love of reading, thinking, conversing, and acting in its participants, no matter how often that turns out not to happen. Literacy, numeracy, and critical thought all demand bi-directionality. One must not only read but also write, not only be able to calculate but also choose to calculate about new topics, not only think and reason but also act in support of those conclusions. Otherwise, one is a mere observer without a life of her own worth living, worth the air breathed and the space taken in the bio-sphere. Fortunately, in the first world at least, we have convenient access to tremendous educational resources outside the formal institutions putatively dedicated to that purpose. That access is exactly what we hope to spread into and outside of the formal institutions of education outside the first world, is it not? No wonder politicians are a bit leery of enthusiastic support for this effort in their own domains. It could foster uncontrolled activities by students and even teachers. Pretty scary. Richard Karpinski, Nitpicker dick(a)cfcl.com 148 Sequoia Circle, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 Home +1 707-546-6760 Cell +1 707-228-9716 http://cfcl.com/twiki/bin/view/Karpinski ps Put "nitpicker" in the subject line to get past my spam filters.

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pong etoys tutorial
by Bill Kerr 16 Nov '07

16 Nov '07

http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/11/making-pong-in-etoys.html This is a long-ish tutorial with lots of screenshots and detail because I wanted to explain how to make a game in the etoys OLPC image for someone who is relatively new to using it. -- Bill Kerr http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/

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Re: [Etoys] [Olpc-open] squeaky tales and waveplace vision
by Luke Gorrie 16 Nov '07

16 Nov '07

On 16/11/2007, Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki(a)vpri.org> wrote: > Luke posted a solution but that looks, err, brute-force^^; It's the natural way that any Erlang programmer would write it. :-)

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Re: [Etoys] [Olpc-open] squeaky tales and waveplace vision
by Timothy Falconer 16 Nov '07

16 Nov '07

Yoshiki, Thanks for your suggestions and kind comments. At the end of #19, I actually say something like, "I've run into a roadblock, something I don't know, which is very common in programming. The thing to do at this point is send an email asking for help on the squeakland mailing list." Instead of doing this, though, I go on to show a short-term workaround .... the "right now" answer versus the "right" answer. Part of my point throughout is to show the real experience of programming, which definitely involves roadblocks and workarounds. I'm trying to convey a sense for what it's really like being a programmer using Etoys. > I might be missing what you're explaining around 7 minutes, but > you *can* put the variable "tot11's turnHolder into the place of > any player-type variable (such as the left hand side of "cursor > increase by 1". What I couldn't figure out in #19 was "tot11's totHolder's cursor increase by 1" I knew how, but "cursor" simply didn't appear on the list, I'm guessing because only Player stuff shows there. > Around 4:30 minutes into the movie, you say something like: > "... unless there some good reasons..., you should always use the > commands for the same object." Is that because you are using siblings > and have been bitten by the issue? (I think so.) Hmm... I think my point there was to train people to default to using the "self" receiver for each message .... if it's tot11's script, use tot11 as the receiver of everything unless you have a good reason not to, such as tot11 telling some other object what to do. There are several commands that really don't require the exact right receiver, such as sibling sends and "clear pen trails", etc. I'm just making the point that people should train themselves to stay consistent. > I have no idea what causes the magnification issue. So strange. > You have siblings and copies, right? If so, yes, that could be > hard. The last issue you have seems to be related to it. Yes, the visual stuff in the holder were copies and the active players are siblings. If the magnification is a by-product of siblings/dupes co-existing, it's a good thing to know. > Perhaps, I'd add a variable to these guys that holds a number, > and each of them compares the number with page5's timeTicks to > figure out what to do. In this way, the script may be shorter. Yeah, the stuff in the timeline script in the page could be farmed out to the objects on the page. I choose the massive if-statement approach to make the sequencing clearer to newcomers. I might move to a scratch-like event sending approach in the future .... marmie sends "settleDownClass" message to the tots and the tots respond to the message, rather than have it all be time driven. Any hints on how I'd do asynchronous multi-recipient event passing like this? (on "settledDownClass" do ...) One other request ... a "wait" tile ... with seconds. Could go in "basic".

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Re: More Squeak in Kathmandu
by Luke Gorrie 15 Nov '07

15 Nov '07

On 15/11/2007, Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki(a)vpri.org> wrote: > > By the way! Squeakers may get a kick to see the job advertisment that > > we're currently running in Kathmandu to bring our full-time Nepali > > Squeak-programmer staff up from two people to four (plus me): > > Wow. This would be almost ideal for a guy like Yokokawa-san, except > that he is Japanese^^; He's more than welcome to get in touch if he's seriously interested! Foreigner visitors who can teach us tricks would be really valuable and there's plenty of hacking to go around :-) I'm Australian myself. > It's a long shot, but folks are organizing a Squeak/Etoys gathering > in Nagasaki, Japan on December 9th. This is worth mentioning! I don't think it's practical right now but I will check for bargain flights :-) The main plan I have for meeting Squeak hackers is to come to C5 in France mid-january (i.e. the distant future). Is this the right idea? (And do I understand correctly from the website that registration isn't open yet?) Cheers, -Luke

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More Squeak in Kathmandu
by Luke Gorrie 15 Nov '07

15 Nov '07

Hi Yoshiki, On 15/11/2007, Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki(a)vpri.org> wrote: > BTW, you know Madhur Shrestha and Hayasaka-san, right? There are a > lot of heavy Etoys users in Japan. It would be fantastic if JICA or > some organization can fund one of these hackers to fly... Yes, thanks to Alan and Kim I do know Madhur and I've visited his nifty Squeak saturday-school. I don't know Hayasaka-san but Madhur did mention that a Japanese friend had put him on to Squeak in the first place. Let me make a standing invitation that if any Squeak/Etoys guru finds themself in south asia we'd be more than happy to entertain them in the beautiful Kathmandu valley while they teach us a few programming tricks - but they must be prepared for tough questions :-) By the way! Squeakers may get a kick to see the job advertisment that we're currently running in Kathmandu to bring our full-time Nepali Squeak-programmer staff up from two people to four (plus me): Job description: Develop children's learning activities for the One Laptop Per Child XO using Squeak Smalltalk and Etoys. Skills: * Experience with an object-oriented programming language such as Smalltalk, Python, or Ruby. * Demonstrated ability to write good software quickly. * Self-motivated, eager to learn new technologies, experienced at working in a team environment. Preferred: * Experience with Linux and working on open-source projects. * Interest in education. You will quickly learn Squeak Smalltalk programming and Etoys end-user scripting on the job. You can get a sense of what this is like from reading our blog and running our demonstration.

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integrating textual scripts
by Randall Caton 14 Nov '07

14 Nov '07

I have a few example of etoys projects I created that "integrate textual scripts" in the etoys environment. http://www.squeakland.org/project.jsp?http://www.pcs.cnu.edu/~rcaton/freefa… http://www.squeakland.org/project.jsp?http://www.pcs.cnu.edu/~rcaton/NZgps3… http://www.squeakland.org/project.jsp?http://www.pcs.cnu.edu/~rcaton/hersch… http://www.squeakland.org/project.jsp?http://www.pcs.cnu.edu/~rcaton/acRCLs… I hope they are useful. Randy Caton -- The views expressed in this email are my own and not necessarily those of CNU. Randall Caton PCSE Department Director of the CNU Institute for Science Education Christopher Newport University 1 University Place PCSE Gosnold Hall 220 Newport News, VA 23606 voice: 757-594-7188 department: 757-594-7065 FAX: 757-594-7919 email: rcaton(a)cnu.edu web: www.pcs.cnu.edu/~rcaton

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Re: [Squeakland] Re: A Hero for OLPC [kids should be ambassadors soon!]
by ax 14 Nov '07

14 Nov '07

On Nov 11, 2007 3:51 PM, Blake <blake(a)kingdomrpg.com> wrote: > ...all those who are pursuing the OLPC goals are heroic in their way... > ...Having said that, it probably was just a play on the fact that he's on > "Heroes" and apparently has quite a cult following. > Once XO machines reach kids, we should expect OLPC folks taking video footage of kids really doing something with them - and those great footage would go around the globe - right? Kids themselves become proof - ambassadors. So that much of the degenerated (er, for example, tv watching) adults and teachers and geeks would sit up straight and say "okay, we have to live bit differently from now on. we have to use computers in bit more worthwhile, thoughtful ways." (no? revolution won't arrive that way? ...it might come a little earlier if we make kids ambassadors. Or that's too cheap? ) ax@still don't understand why Squeak website has no section made and run by kids(or youth)!

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squeaky tales and waveplace vision
by Timothy Falconer 14 Nov '07

14 Nov '07

Hi all, Today I posted my twentieth Etoys tutorial in the Squeaky Tales series, bringing the total to five hours of ten planned. http://waveplace.com/movies/ Each fifteen-minute screencast forms the basis for an hour of hands- on instruction with a child, with the mentor first presenting the concepts in their own fashion, then leading the class for the remainder of the time. The videos themselves are aimed at the mentor, not the students, though I suspect older students could watch the videos on their own. Now half done, I've been spending time on techniques to manage complexity. Just like a real software project, the beginning is fresh with clean white designs, but midway through it's a mangled mess of coalescing code. I also posted a 25 minute video of me talking into a camera, explaining the Waveplace vision. http://waveplace.com/vision/ I've had the same conversation about two hundred times in the last six months, so I figured it'd be good to get the rap down on tape. The video breaks down into ten minutes on education, five minutes on the XO, and ten minutes on Waveplace. Let me know if you find it helpful. Timothy

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Give One. Get One. Now!!
by Ron Teitelbaum 13 Nov '07

13 Nov '07

Hi All, This is just a reminder that you can now help the OLPC project by purchasing XO laptop's. You will give one to a child in the developing world and get one for yourself. The Give One. Get One. program is only available for a limited time so don't delay. http://news.squeak.org/2007/11/13/give-one-get-one-now/ Or go directly to: http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php Check out a cool review: http://news.squeak.org/2007/10/05/pretty-cool-nytimes-olpc-review/ Thanks, Ron Teitelbaum

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squeakland November 2007