squeakland September 2009

squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org

20 participants
48 discussions

Pictures from Squeakfest USA wanted!
by Rita Freudenberg 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

Hi, I'm looking for pictures from Squeakfest! I didn't take some by myself, but I remember many others doing it. So maybe someone has a gallery on Flickr or somewhere else? I could use some pictures for a book OLPC is doing this week. Especially pictures from the kids workshop would be great! Thanks, Rita Rita Freudenberg rita(a)isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de

1 0

account signup fields
by Timothy Falconer 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

Hi everyone, We're debating which squeakland.org account fields to include when people sign up for a showcase account. Such signup could occur within Etoys itself ("create an account, it's free!") or on the website itself. Some constraints that have come up in the current conversation: 1) we want to limit the fields within Etoys because of vertical space limitations in the dialog box 2) we want to limit the mandatory fields to allow quicker signup 3) we want to assure that private information from children remains private (last name, other descriptive stuff, perhaps photos) Here's the central issue at hand, from my perspective . . . Signup is the key moment for Squeakland and Etoys from a community- building, user research, and publicity standpoint. It's the time when we'll get the largest number of people to: 1. subscribe to our newsletter 2. tell us about themselves (where they live, how they're using etoys, etc) 3. allow us to later email them questionnaires or announcements (squeakfest), etc. The vast majority of people that signup for a showcase account WILL NOT join the forums, or separately subscribe to the newsletter, or visit the chat channel, or join a mailing list. The people that will do these things should be considered "enthusiasts", and hence, people that we really don't need to convince ("preaching to the choir"). We could allow people to come back to their profile page and add this stuff, but MOST won't. Only enthusiasts, people we don't need to convince. Imagine hundreds of people who are mildly curious . . . the signup to check out their daughter's project on the showcase, which is otherwise hidden. They're intrigued enough to download Etoys. Like MOST PEOPLE, they go to sleep and forget all about it for months. Then comes our quarterly newsletter, and they read a cool story about Uruguay. The open up Etoys again and start playing around again. Maybe this time they'll stick with it. This is the essence of publicity and marketing . . . the drumbeat, the heartbeat, of our own activity, reminding people we're still here and doing great stuff. So that said, here's the fields we're considering: * username * password (twice) * email address These are the bare minimum, and the only required fields. More fields: * first name * last name * tell us about yourself These are currently on the newsletter subscribe form. Currently, none of this collected information appears on the website. We can keep these fields private in account profiles as well, to protect children. Nearly everyone who signs up for the newsletter writes a very useful description about their location, interest in Etoys, affiliated organization, etc. We have hundreds of these comments, which is invaluable for our community-building work. I'm strongly in favor of keeping the "tell us about yourself" field and not showing it unless explicit permission is given. * checkbox for newsletter * checkbox for general announcements * checkbox for weekly showcase highlights We want as many YES's for all three as we can get. More YESes mean more audience. People can always opt-out from any mailing, but it's in our best interest to at least ask them for a YES. To keep the in-Etoys box short, we could leave these out, but the question remains . . . what's the default? If all NO's, then we lose a major source of people who would otherwise have said YES. (I know that most of us have grown accustomed to always saying NO to such forms, but in our case, with our worldwide enthusiastic audience, it's more likely people will say yes, than no.) Other fields we could add by flipping a switch: * organization * address * address_two * city * state * zip/postal code * country * time zone * home phone * work phone * want my friends to see my friends * show my first/last name to public * show my friend list to public * photo/avatar The address fields were used for squeakfest registration, but likely shouldn't appear in showcase accounts, except perhaps for country. Likewise with the phones . . . we shouldn't ask. The last three are things we could add to the profile, defaulting to the most private settings. The underlying software has much of the functionality of sites like Facebook, etc. My current plan is to allow people and groups to "friend" other people, which will allow them to see their private Etoys projects. Such a thing happens when you "tell a friend" and include a message that's email to someone, which is a great way to build community. Lastly, we have full questionnaire support as well, so we can add any questions we want, though only to the web profile. Again, most people won't go back to fill out their profile, but we *can* send an announcement saying "Tell us more about yourself, fill out this quick questionnaire", but only if someone has said YES to general announcements. Anyway, let me know what you think about all this. We want this to be a community conversation. Take care, TIm

1 2

creative commons on the showcase
by Timothy Falconer 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

I forgot about another field, and topic for discussion. We also have a "use creative commons" checkbox that can go in the account profile. As things are now, it's an all or nothing deal, either all your projects are CC or none are, but I can pretty easily add the ability to be CC on a project-to-project basis. We want to encourage everyone to use CC, but this is a sticking point for quick signups, for the people that don't know what CC is. Options: 1. mandate that all projects shared to the showcase are CC, with some text (and a license link) in the publish box, or signup form. 2. put a "use CC" checkbox within Etoys signup box, defaulting to checked (and same for web signup form) 3. default to "no CC" and allow people to checkmark CC on a project to project basis (or change their profile after the fact). Choice #1 ... the largest use of CC by far. Choice #2 ... much greater use of CC Choice #3 ... relatively little use of CC . . . the people that will take the extra step have to know what it is, and believe in it's use. Anyway, what's your feeling? We really want to encourage use of projects by everyone, everywhere. Take care, Tim

2 3

K-12 OpenMinds October 6-7 in Michigan
by Rita Freudenberg 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

Hi all, I just found out about the K-12 Open Minds - a conference in Michigan that is free to attend. They say that there will also be "conversations and gatherings around topics of interest in various areas of OpenSource", so that might be a possibility to talk about Etoys? If you are interested in this conference, you can find out more about it here: http://k12openminds.org/news/2009/08/24/announcing-k-12-open-minds-2009-now… Greetings, Rita -- Rita Freudenberg Squeakland Foundation

1 0

education meeting notes
by Rita Freudenberg 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

Hi all, to let you know what we did talk about on our meeting yesterday here are the notes: http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/2009/09/03/education+team+meeting+Sep… Greetings, Rita ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Upcoming events (conferences, who plans to attend? who would like to submit a paper? what about the panel at SXSW) A list of conferences is at the wiki here http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Conferences^ for CUE conference: contact Mulholland Middle school NECC: Kathleen Harness plans to go and present, Tim plans to got, has high priority Constructionism: we will submit a paper, let us know when you would like to co-write. Focus: what is special about Etoys? What can be done with Etoys but not with other construcionist tools like Alice, Scratch, Logo etc. We should start brainstorming that on the mailing list, put the results on the wiki Northern Virginia Home Education Conference: Randy will ask friends about this conference, we will find out more about home schooling community and how to get involved, which conferences to attend etc. 2. start organizing next Squeakfest - what do you think we should/could do early? Date for next year Squeakfest should be scheduled, Tim will take care of that. As soon as the date is fixed we shoudl send announcements to local schools and advertise it. Cherry proposed: How about a Squeak Fare? Where the kids from NC can show off/demo their work? 3. Template for courseware. Randy used Kathleens template with one of his projects, we can talk if that will be the template to describe the courseware. If so, we could start writing the other courseware components ... Randy did use the template. We will talk to Kathleen Harness about his ideas. Tim proposed to send Randys project to Bruno and Marta to get feedback. We talked about which standards to use in the project description. Cherry did ask which standards we use: NETS for students: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForStudents/2007Standards/N… We will look up UNESCO and other sources to find more international standards (ask people from Plan Ceibal, OLPC etc.) http://www.education-world.com/standards/^ http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=51850&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&U… <http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=51850&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&U…> 4. OLPC book sprint next week in Washington http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Class_Acts#Needs^ Plans are that Rita and Bruno from Brazl will participate. Rita will contact Carlos about that to get one more chapter about use of Etoys on the XO. 5. Consider whether we should bundle DrGeo II with this month's Etoys release, perhaps as a main item in the Supply Bin. The software team is generally in favor of it. The education team also likes the idea. Tim told us about release dates: Etoys 4.0 ... Sep 16th; Etoys 4.1 ... Feb 21st; Etoys 4.2 ... July 21st; Etoys 4.3 ... Dec 21st; Etoys 4.4 ... June 21st 6. showcase categorization regions and subjects are ok. Randy suggested instead of ages: concrete learning, transitional learning, abstract learning All categories should allow multiselection, because there are cross-subject projects, projects suitable for all age groups, even projects from participants from different countries. Tim will talk with the software team about that. Tim asked about ranking projects? Will be done manually by the education team, rank will not not be shown, it's just a sorting criterion. Will we have tagging? Rita would like to have it on the public showcase, not on the official one. We will talk about that when we can see the showcaes and try things out. Comments for projects will be enabled, but moderated. 7. update on John Stout's Nigerian project. Randy believes it has great possibilities for broader application. His idea: "I believe we can go beyond developing courseware just for Nigeria and create a general introductory set of lessons that help students learn to use those tools in etoys that are useful in working with GIS information to better understand their country, help solve some of its problems and become skilled in using GIS data. They can use those tools to work with data on their country's resources, economics, politics, social systems, environment, climate, etc. If we use gobal GIS data in the courseware, the units could be a starting point for learners in any country are they could develop a better understanding of their country from a global perspective. This has the potential to produce some very skilled and productive citizens that could make valuable contributions to their country's future. Does anyone know if there are any OLPC projects with this focus using etoys? If not, I believe we should consider this approach. I would appreciate any comments. Randy did some more sample projects for John Stout, just with Etoys, no Squeak programming needed yet. Cherry told us about an exhibition in Santa Barbara museum about water contingencies all over the world. Could be a partner for us? Here's the project that she mentioned during the meeting: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-124^ 8. Talk about any changes we want in the Etoys gallery of projects . . . might be nice to include projects from other sources such as EtoysIllinois and USeIT. What would you remove? What would you replace it with? The projects meant are these which come with Etoys. Next release is Spe 16th, so which projects wpould you like to see? We will ask people who presented great projects at Squeakfest, would like to have not just english projects, but at least one multi-language project: daemon castle. Who will help us translate it? We then talked about where to put DrGeo and started talking about names of categories in the object catalogue. That will be something to talk about for release in Feb. Next meeting next week, doodle to find a date. -- Rita Freudenberg Squeakland Foundation http://www.squeakland.org

3 2

windows 98
by Marta Voelcker 06 Sep '09

06 Sep '09

Hello! There is a municipality near Porto Alegre, where school´s computers run windows 98. A teacher that attended Squeakfest Brasil is asking me if the current version of Etoys would run on windows 98, does it? Marta

2 1

Call for Papers: C5 2010 - La Jolla California
by Hideyuki Takada 05 Sep '09

05 Sep '09

Apologies if you received multiple copies of this CFP. ----- The Eighth International Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing (C5 2010) January 25-28, 2010, La Jolla, CA, US http://www.cm.is.ritsumei.ac.jp/c5-10/ CALL FOR PAPERS Computers, networks, and other forms of technology are now pervasive in our information-based society. However, most users still function as passive consumers of technology. To evolve into a true knowledge society, it is critical that we transform computer-based human activities to engage users in the active process of creating, connecting, and collaborating together. The C5 conference is for researchers, technology developers, educators, and technology users who are concerned about developing and enabling human-oriented creation, connection, and collaboration processes. C5 is an international forum for presenting ongoing work as well as new work currently under development and for discussing future needs and directions in creative computing and multimedia authoring environments. We welcome equally the submission of theoretical and technical papers, practitioner/experience reports and papers that bridge the gap between theory and practice. C5 2010 invites submissions of full papers in the following categories (but not limited to): - Collaboration & Communication - Technology-Human Interaction - Visualization - Virtual Worlds - Social Networks - Learning Full papers must report original work that has not been previously published. Papers must present reports of significant work in research, development and applications with regards to one or more of the conference topics of interest. All submissions will be reviewed by a distinguished international program committee. Paper Submission Paper Format A full paper with a limit of eight (8) pages, formatted in two columns and 10 point font, should be submitted by the paper submission deadline. Each paper will be reviewed by the program committee, and authors will be notified regarding acceptance. Accepted authors must submit a camera ready version of the full paper with an eight (8) page limit by the camera-ready copy deadline. Papers should follow the formatting instructions provided by 8.5" x 11", Two-Column Format of "IEEE Computer Society Press - Proceedings Author Guidelines" (please refer to INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS in Conference Publishing Service). Submitted papers and camera-ready papers should be sent electronically in PDF through our online submission site below. Online Paper Submission Site http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=c510 Publication of the Proceedings A preliminary version of the proceedings will be distributed during the conference. The formal version of the proceedings will be published by the IEEE Computer Society (requesting) and sent to authors after the conference. For each accepted paper, at least one of the authors needs to attend the conference and deliver the presentation; otherwise the paper will not be included in the formal proceedings. Important Dates - Full paper submission: October 23, 2010 - Notification of acceptance: November 23, 2010 - Full paper camera-ready copies: December 18, 2010 Web presence and Contact Website: http://www.cm.is.ritsumei.ac.jp/c5-10 If you have any questions or comments, please contact the program chairs. -- Hideyuki Takada, Ph.D Department of Computer Science College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University

1 0

1. What is special about Etoys? (Rita Freudenberg)
by Santiago Mañas García 04 Sep '09

04 Sep '09

eToys, Scratch, and Alice, are member of a saga and share the same heritage: Squeak. However, even Scratch or Alice are Squeak versions limited to some functions (3D in Alice, children or easy programming in Scratch) eToys preserves most of the author tools of Squeak. In my opinion eToys is a no-risk version of Squeak, You have almost the full power abilities of Squeak without it inherent risks. Santiago El 04/09/2009, a las 18:01, squeakland-request(a)squeakland.org escribió: > Send squeakland mailing list submissions to > squeakland(a)squeakland.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > squeakland-request(a)squeakland.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > squeakland-owner(a)squeakland.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of squeakland digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. What is special about Etoys? (Rita Freudenberg) > 2. Re: we have officially overtaken etoys.com in google > (Timothy Falconer) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:54:49 +0200 > From: Rita Freudenberg <rita(a)isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> > Subject: [squeakland] What is special about Etoys? > To: "squeakland.org mailing list" <squeakland(a)squeakland.org> > Message-ID: <4AA10009.9010108(a)isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > That is one of the questions we came up with at yesterday's education > team meeting. When I talk about Etoys, I can most often just say "it > is > a constructionist tool" and that sets it apart from many other tools. > But what is special about Etoys compared to Alice, Scratch, StarLogo > etc.? > First thing what comes to my mind: you can do in Etoys what you can do > in the other tools, and then more. But we should have examples and be > more concrete. So please tell us about your experiences, send your > examples where you say: you could never do that in one of the other > languages etc. > > We will collect everything on the wiki here: > http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Etoys+in+comparison > > Greetings, > Rita > > -- > Rita Freudenberg > FIN-ISG > Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg > http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/isg/rita.html > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 10:04:30 -0400 > From: Timothy Falconer <timothy(a)squeakland.org> > Subject: Re: [squeakland] we have officially overtaken etoys.com in > google > To: "squeakland.org mailing list" <squeakland(a)squeakland.org> > Message-ID: <838A63AE-A487-4090-9DD2-1326BA5D1006(a)squeakland.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; delsp=yes > > On Sep 3, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote: > >> On 03.09.2009, at 22:52, Timothy Falconer wrote: >> >>> Hi everyone, >>> >>> Something surprising and new . . . >>> >>> http://www.google.com/search?q=etoys >>> >>> We're #1, ahead of etoys.com. This is a pretty clear indication of >>> word spreading about us. (Yes etoys.com still sells toys.) >> >> Not from here ... it's #1 on google.de but #2 on google.com. > > > The Etoys.com advertisement sometimes comes before us, but I'm > consistently seeing squeakland over etoys.com on google.com. > > Anyone else seeing this? > > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > squeakland mailing list > squeakland(a)squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland > > > End of squeakland Digest, Vol 77, Issue 6 > *****************************************

1 0

Re: [squeakland] we have officially overtaken etoys.com in google
by Timothy Falconer 04 Sep '09

04 Sep '09

On Sep 3, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote: > On 03.09.2009, at 22:52, Timothy Falconer wrote: > >> Hi everyone, >> >> Something surprising and new . . . >> >> http://www.google.com/search?q=etoys >> >> We're #1, ahead of etoys.com. This is a pretty clear indication of >> word spreading about us. (Yes etoys.com still sells toys.) > > Not from here ... it's #1 on google.de but #2 on google.com. The Etoys.com advertisement sometimes comes before us, but I'm consistently seeing squeakland over etoys.com on google.com. Anyone else seeing this?

1 0

What is special about Etoys?
by Rita Freudenberg 04 Sep '09

04 Sep '09

That is one of the questions we came up with at yesterday's education team meeting. When I talk about Etoys, I can most often just say "it is a constructionist tool" and that sets it apart from many other tools. But what is special about Etoys compared to Alice, Scratch, StarLogo etc.? First thing what comes to my mind: you can do in Etoys what you can do in the other tools, and then more. But we should have examples and be more concrete. So please tell us about your experiences, send your examples where you say: you could never do that in one of the other languages etc. We will collect everything on the wiki here: http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Etoys+in+comparison Greetings, Rita -- Rita Freudenberg FIN-ISG Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/isg/rita.html

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

squeakland September 2009