squeakland October 2010

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18 participants
41 discussions

Teaching in digital society vs industrial society
by Carlos Rabassa 21 Apr '11

21 Apr '11

I have just watched a most interesting video a friend pointed out to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlAnkExQabY The ideas presented in the video seem to be correct and most interesting. Even more, it seems to me the opportunity of having all those XOs already distributed, we might have the perfect opportunity to apply these ideas. Of course, I am just a volunteer. I would really like to listen to the opinion of teachers, educators and other experts. Mi impression is that, as Mr. Toffler says, the problem he describes in the U.S., is not an exclusive problem of this country. We will see it in other countries as they go from industrial to digital societies. Who is the speaker in this video_ ¿Quién es el orador en este video? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler Carlos Rabassa Volunteer Plan Ceibal Support Network Montevideo, Uruguay

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Re: [squeakland] changing language in Etoys with Russian font (K. K. Subramaniam)
by Liliya Makarevitch 22 Nov '10

22 Nov '10

Hello! I have many Cyrillic fonts on my computer, and I tried to load fonts from Etoys, but in all cases I get the same message - Cannot load additional fonts. I don't know which fonts are needed for Etoys. I have Russian Windows on my second computer, but the same problem is with it. Your advices do not work. What additional ideas do you have? Thank you, Lilia

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Free - Free music for Etoys projects
by Carlos Rabassa 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

Many of those who know us as Squeakers, frequently send us questions. Someone recently asked how to add music to an Etoys project. The question was more specific. It had two attached files: - An mp3 file with the music to be attached. - The Etoys project they wanted to add it to. There were two problems: The incompatibility of the mp3 format with the XOs. The music they sent us is copyrighted. Will very much appreciate any comments that might help us, with either or both problems: 1) Best way of transferring an mp3 file to a format acceptable to the XOs. 2) Best places where children may download legally and without charge, music for their Etoys and other XO projects. Thanks!! Carlos Rabassa Volunteer Plan Ceibal Support Network Montevideo, Uruguay

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Música Libre - Libre para usar en Proyectos Etoys
by Carlos Rabassa 31 Oct '10

31 Oct '10

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Etoys at NDSU
by Bert Freudenberg 31 Oct '10

31 Oct '10

Hi all, I just found this interesting project: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/Fargo_to_Sudan While that proposal does not mention Etoys, their project blog posts do: http://fargoxo.wordpress.com/ Chris Triggs, principal at Madison Elementary, writes on his blog: "On November 18th, 2010 our student technology team will begin working with North Dakota State University to develop electronic books using the E-Toys application." In fact their main focus appears to be on Etoys, teacher training begins in 2 weeks: http://fargoxo.wordpress.com/project-schedule/ Maybe it would be a good idea to offer help, invite them to this list etc? They surely will have questions sooner or later ... Or just ring them up? I'll leave that to the educators though. http://english.ndsu.edu/faculty/kevin_brooks/ - Bert -

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Re: [squeakland] [etoys-dev] (SQ-749) and Kathleen's question on "What do you mean by Artifacts?"
by Steve Thomas 30 Oct '10

30 Oct '10

I have been reading Alan Kay's Thoughts About Teaching Science and Mathematics To Young Children<http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2007003a_thoughts.pdf> : > I think one of the trickiest issues in this kind of design is an analogy to > the learning of science itself, and that is *"how much should the > learners/users have to do by themselves vs. how much should the > curriculum/system do for them?"* Most computer users have been mostly > exposed to "productivity tools" in which as many things as possible have > been done for them. The kinds of educational environments we are talking > about here are a*t their best when the learner does the important parts by > themselves, and any black or translucent boxes serve only on the side and > not at the center of the learning.* What is the center and *what is the > side will shift as the learning progresses, and this has to be accommodated. > * By exposing everything in Etoys as "First Principles" (which in this particular case I understand to mean, that we have a minimal set of scripting tiles and objects from which everything can be built) we avoid the "productivity tools" issue because everything is exposed. It is also a beautiful, elegant and exposes a powerful idea. The challenge in a system where everything is done from "First Principles" is that when you are designing an"educational environment" "lesson", or "Artifact" ( better terms might be "playthink" and/or "tool to think with"), it can take a lot of work to build those preferably translucent boxes. And to paraphrase another Alan Kay quote on user interface design: "If it takes one step I'll do it, If it takes two steps I might do it, if it takes three or more steps forget about it!" No, I am not arguing to make things easy for everyone, we need find ways to get kids to have "hard fun." Hard work and ragging a problem are good habits. I also strongly believe that giving kids a "blank canvas" and a great set of brushes and paints is an excellent and preffered method, but not the only one we should use. I am arguing (and struggling) with is how in a "First Principle" system like Etoys, we can find ways to make it easier for teachers/designers (ie: make them more productive). I fear I see in some folks (none on this email list of course) a tendency towards what I initially saw (and fell into myself) as the constructivism trap. Where I encountered people who thought kids should construct all knowledge themselves from Scratch (pun intended ;). As I recall Alan (and others pointing out) we can't expect kids to do that, they will repeat the same mistakes people did over thousands of years. My initial thoughts are a repository of Artifacts that teachers can use along with a set of scripts (the problem with the set of scripts idea is that the scripts in Etoys are not decoupled from the ?morphs? (not sure of the correct term here, but basically the pixels visually representing the object). Bert's idea that we have a Player Variable and the scripts that operate on it is a good one, but I think there may be some bugs there, need to test more. Now I will more directly address Kathleen's question: "What do you mean by "Artifacts". I will switch from "Artifacts" to the term "Playthinks" (which I encountered in the "The Big Book of Brain Games<http://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Brain-Games-Mathematics/dp/0761134662>" by Ivan Moscovich). One of the best and simplest "Playthinks" for teaching I ever encountered was Robert B. Davis' classroom warm-up (which I showed at Squeakfest and have wrote about here<http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/2009/12/taking-tic-tac-toe-to-next-leve…>.) Basically it involves drawing on the board a 4 x 4 grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Then having kids pick two numbers and using those two numbers as X and Y counting from 0 at the origin point in the lower left and then If they land on the board marking an X or O until one team wins. Some of the keys to this "Playthink" are: - you let kids puzzle it out for themselves, they figure out the rules, you don't tell them - it contains a powerful idea - it can be easily extended to other concepts (negative numbers, a number is all the ways you can name it, is this game fair ...) - *its fun * Other examples of "Playthinks" would be cuisenaire rods, pentagrams, area blocks, other good "virtual manipulatives" and my feeble attempts Circle Explorer <http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=10212> and Pattern Blocks and Tools <http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=10216>. *Bert*, your comments on SQ-749 sparked my writing this, I will address it more specifically in a separate email after some more thought. Including *Alan* so he can correct any misinterpretations and hopefully comment FYI: A lot of other excelent writings from VPRI are here<http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.php>, most are Computer Science related but a number deal with educational issues and Etoys. Stephen On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 5:02 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert(a)freudenbergs.de>wrote: > > On 12.08.2010, at 10:32, Steve Thomas wrote: > > > On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 3:32 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert(a)freudenbergs.de> > wrote: > >> This would likely be simple to implement, but could break existing > projects. E.g. the morphing stuff in the showcase. Maybe you could take a > look? > > > > Checked "Morphing" by Kazuhiro Abe and that should be fine. Each Polygon > in the holder has the same number of vertices and the script simple changes > the positions of the vertices one at a time. > > > > "The Walkers" and associated remixes by P.A. Dreyfus uses a special > category "morphing" which would be great to get into Etoys (although I would > suggest the addition of some way to show/manage the frames) to make the > invisible more visible and to make it easier to create these kind of > animations. Anyway, whether this would be a problem or not depends on how it > is implemented. If he stores complete information about the polygon in each > frame, I see no problems. If he only stores differences and > adds/removes/repositions each vertex that MAY cause a problem. > > > > Anyway if it is a simple change and you can make it, I think I can easily > test the change by opening the project, then file-in the changes and see if > anything breaks. Or you could also ask P.A. Dreyfus (master of polygon's and > connectors) what he thinks as he knows and can check the changes against his > implementation. > > > > Stephen > > Thinking about this more I do not like the proposal. It would makes the > system less predictable. > > Having the new vertex remain at the same position is the only sensible > choice. It matches the "copy" behavior of regular objects, which also appear > in the same position. It would not scale anyway - see this image where I > only inserted 4 vertices. The position quickly converges to the next vertex > position. > > > > > Also, I'd argue that "add a vertex at beginning" and "add a vertex at end" > tiles are not needed in the first place. To be useful they would, as you > noticed, have to be "set cursor to beginning and insert vertex" and "set > cursor to end and insert vertex", because otherwise one cannot assign their > position immediately. But that makes them perform two operations that are > available separately. There is no good reason to coalesce those steps into > one. > > In any case, inserting a vertex should not change the cursor. If you want a > cursor change to occur, insert a tile. > > So my counter-proposal is: remove the "add vertex at beginning" and "add > vertex at end" tiles. (to not break existing projects, the tiles would only > be hidden) > > - Bert - > > > > _______________________________________________ > etoys-dev mailing list > etoys-dev(a)squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev > >

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changing language in Etoys with Russian font
by Rita Freudenberg 30 Oct '10

30 Oct '10

Hi everyone, here is a message from Lilia about how to change language from English into Russian. Who can help her? Greetings, Rita Anfang der weitergeleiteten E-Mail: > Von: Lilia Makarevich <lmakarevitch(a)yahoo.com> > Datum: 25. Oktober 2010 20:26:32 MESZ > An: squeakland staff <webcontact(a)squeakland.org> > Betreff: squeakland contact > > Hello! > I'm from Russia. I have Microsoft Windows XP English version. I can not change language in Etoys 4.0 or 4.1 from English into Russian. I get a message that program can't to load fonts. What should I do? > Thanks. Rita Freudenberg rita(a)isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de

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Etoys Minute - Word Sort
by Steve Thomas 27 Oct '10

27 Oct '10

This was created in response to a request on the OLPC site. It is a word sort project in Etoys, here is a blog entry on the project Etoys Minute - Word Sorts<http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/2010/10/etoys-minute-word-sorts.html> the actual project is posted on the Squeakland site here<http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=10354> . And here is video of the project http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht4-NiB_sfQ I tried to create the project so it can be easily modified with minimal knowledge of Etoys, but it can also make a nice entry point for teachers and kids to create their own Etoys scripts and projects. I should have shown folks how to duplicate a page instead of creating a button to do it, (a case of making it too easy :( Any questions/suggestions/requests for improvements send me an email or comment on the project. Thanks, Stephen

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Copy/Paste Graphic from Clipboard in MSWin
by Darius Clarke 26 Oct '10

26 Oct '10

Hello dev team, I've tried to copy and paste a graphic (print screen for example) from the Windows clipboard buffer into eToys 4.1.1 in both Win7 and XP. I get a walkback that ExtendedClipboardWinInterface doesn't understand #openClipboard called from #readAvailableFormats .... which is true that the method isn't in the image. I've found #openClipboard in the Sophe code and imported it. Now the FFI call to 'user32.dll' fails. Any suggestions how to get the call to user32.dll in #openClipboard to work? Cheers, Darius

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[Olpc-uruguay] Congratulations to a group of uruguayan teachers
by Carlos Rabassa 25 Oct '10

25 Oct '10

Translation of message we published in the spanish language forums: The "vincularte" project shared in Squeakland's Etoys showcase: http://squeakland.org/showcase/everyone/?viewBy=date has received the "Weekly Wow" designation. To explain who are the authors of this project, let us copy what they wrote themselves when sharing this project: "We are a group of uruguayan teachers. This is our final project for the course "Planification, production and management of knowledge in conjunction with the Information and Communitcation Technologies: multimedia authoring environments". The course took place at Universidad de la República. It was conducted by Prof. Lidia Barboza. Congratulations and thanks for sharing with us! Carlos Rabassa Volunteer Plan Ceibal Support Network Uruguay Begin forwarded message: > From: squeakland website <noreply(a)squeakland.org> > Date: October 25, 2010 12:02:58 PM EDT > To: Carlos Rabassa <carnen(a)mac.com> > Subject: {squeakland} The Weekly Wow > > > > The Weekly Wow > > Here's one of our favorite Etoys project submitted the week before last. Click through to see it yourself. Be sure to leave the author some comments! > > > > vincularte (2010-Oct-12 18:45 EDT) > > by Castelli, Lallo, Martínez, Silva, Trujillo <anatru> > > PROYECTO FINAL > > We do not give, sell, or trade personal information, including e-mail addresses. > To unsubscribe or change your profile, click here. _______________________________________________ Olpc-uruguay mailing list Olpc-uruguay(a)lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-uruguay Carlos Rabassa Volunteer Plan Ceibal Support Network Montevideo, Uruguay

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squeakland October 2010