squeakland June 2010

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14 participants
43 discussions

How can I duplicate a script?
by Steve Thomas 22 Jun '10

22 Jun '10

I have created a script to inscribe a circle with a series of isosceles triangles. I want to create a copy make some changes to circumscribe the circle. I could copy each individual tile or recreate from scratch, but that is time consuming and dull work. Is there an easy way to duplicate a script? Stephen

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Guias Rapidas de Etoys
by kharness＠illinois.edu 22 Jun '10

22 Jun '10

Hello, Guias Rapidas de Etoys are Spanish translations of the Quick Guides by Sdenka Salas Pilco of OLPCPuno-Peru. EtoysIllinois is grateful for her work and for allowing us post them on our site. http://www.etoysillinois.org/library.php?tags=Guias%20Rapidas%20de%20Etoys Find out more about the OLPC project in Peru: http://olpcpuno.ning.com If you are working on translations of the guides, please let me know and we could share the work. If you provide translations, I will make the interactive guide projects. I know the format details very well. Regards, Kathleen Harness

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Gift from Kabul for everyone
by Carlos Rabassa 22 Jun '10

22 Jun '10

Received Content Creation Guidelines http://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1ngWdB2VZIlzLCXLBVE9RxT3efsjShXs-cye… Carlos Rabassa On Jun 22, 2010, at 4:54 AM, Mike Dawson wrote: > Dear All, > > Following on from the great conference call on content I have tried to > piece together a set of Guidelines for those who are not educationalists > creating educational content (e.g. programmers, new volunteers, etc). > Building on what Caroline mentioned about basing our approach on fact > (e.g. spoon feeding can lower rather than improve scores) I have put a > base attempt together here: > > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Education_Team/Content_Creation_Guidelines > > For this in particular would really welcome contributions / suggestions > from those educators out there so that we can be setup to make the > content that is going to achieve the educational impact that we are > looking for. > > Regards from Kabul, > > -Mike > > PS: I'm trying to keep this one Pedagogy Agnostic - perhaps we could > have pedagogy specific supplements for creation of constructionist / > instructional materials. > > >

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Re: [squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog
by kharness＠illinois.edu 22 Jun '10

22 Jun '10

Hi Hilaire, I looked at the png of the die, dot in table, and fraction box and wonder, are they objects like the polygon with a dedicated set of tiles or a halo menu of options? The label Artifacts is confusing me; in schools here the label artifacts can mean educational materials used for assessment or, do you mean ready-to-use objects? The Object Catalog and Supplies have similar things. Will DrGeo be a new tab in the Object Catalog? Do you propose another new category called Artifacts in the Object Catalog and then do you plan to add many objects to the next release of Etoys? Will they all be of special interest to math teachers and/or science teachers and at what grade levels? Do you know the USEIT adaptations of Etoys in use at the University of North Carolina Wilmington? The UNCW adaptations are for middle and high school science teachers. Are these similar to your ideas? Would they fit your category of Artifacts? I am growing more uncertain about what Etoys will become if many specialized objects are added. To be useful, some of these objects require more knowledge in math and science. For example, the particles are amazing and whenever I show them to science teachers they are a wonderful example of using Etoys to explore ideas in physics. They are however, sophisticated and difficult for students to use without instruction. They are not intuitive unless you are already know physics. My elementary students click on them in the Object Catalog and then are at a loss, they have neither the science knowledge nor the programming skills to use them. Are the teachers you know using Etoys for math instruction? The microcosm of the school where I work has not shown any interest in using Etoys to teach math even though the teachers are always impressed with the math students use to make projects. The teachers are more concerned with following a rigid curriculum that pre-tests, introduces concepts, post-tests, bench-marks, and quarterly assesses. And all of that instruction/assessment is, of course, focused toward the standardized tests given in March. Their curriculum is too large, time is too short, and each concept and skill is given too little time to mature. But, that is a problem for the math establishment and one of the reasons I like Etoys is that it is so much more open ended and so much less prescriptive and so much outside of the whole assessment environment that is consuming education in the US today. The god of assessment has always had clay feet and Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010) gives me hope that we will see less emphasis on multiple-choice-single-right-answer-learning. I would urge that we (Etoys) not spend very much time developing subject area electronic worksheets and mechanisms that count right/wrong answers and keystroke attempts to be part of the software. Book publishers routinely provide such materials that are specific, sequenced, and aligned and, from what I can see, teachers are hard pressed to use everything that is already available. If new artifacts are being considered as potential objects for the next release of Etoys, we should start talking about our vision for Etoys and what the core of it will be. Etoys thrives on mathematics and, on imagination, but to put too much emphasis on teaching a core curriculum of math or science will limit the other uses and imagination. My students use math in their projects and are indeed learning concepts at a deep level but they are not learning the math curriculum for their grade. For example, my 2nd-5th grade students routinely use test statements, create variables, and add random number generator tiles to projects. They use xy coordinates fluently because they want to control locations of objects and to position objects with reset scripts. Most of the Races and Mazes in EtoysIllinois were made by elementary students and show these kinds of applications of learning. Unfortunately, standardized assessments do not assess for this kind of learning and certainly not in elementary grades in dynamic environments. My sense is that subject area teachers everywhere are bound by local, state, and national requirements. My hope is that Etoys provides collections of projects that show examples for deep learning and that as schools react to the growing need for more and more people who can program, who can use the language of the computer to express ideas, who are creative and, who will thrive in the future or, in careers that use programming skills, that Etoys would be in a position to be adopted as the tool for teaching programming in K-12 schools. Etoys is certainly powerful enough to grow up with children from elementary to high school . . . without a doubt. It was one of the reasons I first considered Etoys, that is, it can not be outgrown or worn out in a year or two. I have written materials that show how easy it is to integrate Etoys into core curriculum but in every case I find that the core curriculum is already full, too full, and very well planned by curriculum specialists and that there is no room for Etoys in their view of their subject. I said this at a MSTE Board of Advisors meeting a year ago and Chip Bruce said: if there was no room at the table we should make our own table. It seems to me, Etoys could make its own table and in doing so raise the rather low expectations for what is currently passing as computer literacy. Keyboarding and using the internet are at a much lower level than the most basic Etoys project. The K-12 cs/programming discipline is very new and that is good for us. It is an opportunity for us to define what should be. If we can provide a cogent set of projects that develop good habits of mind, creative, and logical thinking we might find Etoys adopted by schools who are looking ahead for their students' futures. I would much prefer that we build our own table rather than try to squeeze Etoys as one more topic into other disciplines already full curricula. My hope is that schools will see the need for specialists to teach the subject of programming, just as music and art specialists focus on providing an excellent general education for all. Wouldn't it be grand if children routinely went to the computer lab to learn Etoys, just as they go to the music room to learn music. You may know, I was a music teacher and taught music to everyone in the school every year. It was not a course with preliminary requirements of talent, IQ, skill, interest or, potential for becoming a professional musician. Music is part of what it means to be educated. If we can align with that kind of belief, that knowing how to program, how to use the computer creatively to express ideas rather than being passive users or used by it, then we will have achieved something of value. I know this note is too long but I hope we can start talking about some of these ideas. Regards, Kathleen ---- Original message ---- >Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 09:22:40 +0200 >From: Hilaire Fernandes <hilaire.fernandes(a)edu.ge.ch> >Subject: [squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog >To: "squeakland.org mailing list" <squeakland(a)squeakland.org> > > Dear all, > > In the latest Artifacts package at > (http://www.squeaksource.com/LearningArtifacts) I > added a category Artifacts as a place holder for the > artifacts. > See the attached screenshot. > > I also added an Artifact DotInTable to represent > collection of token in row and column. It can be > used to represent graphically the multiplication of > two integers. The column, row and dot color are all > Etoys scriptable. > Again as an artifact, teacher can invent new way to > use it and to combine it with other artifacts for a > teaching purpose. > > By the way, I tried these artifacts with Squeak 4.1 > and it works perfectly well from there, and the > Squeak environment is more pleasant to write > Smalltlak code. > > I will continue to add artifacts to this package. > > Hilaire > > -- > http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire >________________ >ArtifactsObjectCatalog.png (16k bytes) >________________ >_______________________________________________ >squeakland mailing list >squeakland(a)squeakland.org >http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland

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Thoughts on Assessment
by Steve Thomas 22 Jun '10

22 Jun '10

Assessment is a tough problem. I share the frustrations with the current forms of assessment (especially in Math) that others have expressed. While I am constantly assessing while teaching (as I am sure you are too) it is not in a way that produces evidence that could be used to facilitate appropriate comparisons. While I have many problems with assessment, I fear "its the worst form of figuring out what works, except for all the others" The problem, to quote Peter Drucker "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" Society (ie: people, parents, politicians, school board members, even teachers) need to have a way of knowing how well their kids are learning and I would argue that they are right to demand it. The challenge for educators (and it is in no way an easy one, otherwise it would have been solved already) is to come up with an appropriate way to measure. The folks at CRESST (well actually I only know of the work I saw by Greg Chung, which I saw at G4L, the following is my limited understanding of what they are trying to do) have a potentially interesting approach where they set up environments (where they design in from the beginning methods of assessment) that records "events" (actions taken by the kids within a given "micro-world") then use those events to analyze understanding and what works and what doesn't work. I would expect in the future they will take those events in real time, analyze them and provide feedback to the micro-world (thus to the user) to facilitate a customized learning environment (like customized search) based on what works (and yes what works can differ, just as customized search differs). Stephen On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 1:04 AM, Avigail Snir <avigail(a)snir.org> wrote: > And we can probably repeat word by word when speaking about current and > future attempts to introduce Etoys into school life. > > I wish our society will not be as obsessed about standard measuring as a > way to define accountability and evaluate achievements. I feel it is > counterproductive. > > > > *From:* stevesargon(a)gmail.com [mailto:stevesargon@gmail.com] *On Behalf Of > *Steve Thomas > *Sent:* Sunday, May 30, 2010 11:56 PM > *To:* Avigail Snir > *Subject:* Re: FW: also this article > > > > Thanks. I agree with the one comment in the article you attached: > > "the problem of training teachers in new mathematics topics and new > pedagogic approaches was never solved, especially for the large contingent > of teachers in elementary grades" > > > > The other hard challenge is figuring out how to do good assessment. > Especially doing it in a way that has a realistic chance of being used given > time and cost constraints. > > > > Stephen >

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Re: [squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog
by kharness＠illinois.edu 22 Jun '10

22 Jun '10

Kim, I came across Lockhart's Lament last year; it is very good. Math education is a chaotic arena and at this point I don't think it is a good place for Etoys. They have somehow pulverized the joy mathematicians find in their subject and are just offering dry husks to children. When a school is ready to add computer science, that is where we fit. That means for many school buildings just one teacher, like for music, art, and phys ed. So a district like Unit 4 with ten elementary schools would not have to in-service 500 classroom teachers to teach Etoys, but rather just find ten teachers who could/would. Just ten teachers reach 5000 students; very efficient and very effective. Sadly, we are still searching for those districts. Have you read the Ravitch book yet? It is too bad she didn't foresee the consequences of the policies she so ably advocated and now renounces. At least she has the courage to say she was wrong. Education is slow to change and the testing industry will not go quietly. Our group here is working to have a curriculum ready for the time when people realize they need one. You know, of course, there is a difference of kind between an assortment of experiences/projects and a curriculum. This summer we are working on a set of materials for HS computer science and we will see what teachers think of them in our August workshop. The prerequisites require that they already know one programming language and are already teaching CS. We are looking forward to some interesting discussions with them; their knowledge and experience will be invaluable to us. --------------------------------- Call for Applications! CS4HS: Summer Workshop for Computer Science teachers! Generous stipends! Supported by Google and the University of Illinois, this workshop is aimed at teachers who are looking for exciting content for teaching beginning programming at the high-school or middle-school level. Join us as we explore the Etoys programming language as a platform for attracting students into the field of computing. Dates: August 3-5 Location: University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Details and Application: cs4hs.mste.illinois.edu -------------------------------------------- Thanks for the cheerful note. Regards, Kathleen ---- Original message ---- >Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 10:53:28 -0700 >From: Kim Rose <kim.rose(a)vpri.org> >Subject: Re: [squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog >To: "<kharness(a)illinois.edu>" <kharness(a)illinois.edu> >Cc: "Hilaire Fernandes" <hilaire.fernandes(a)edu.ge.ch>, "squeakland.org mailing list" <squeakland(a)squeakland.org> > >Beautifully stated, Kathleen -- hear, hear! > >For additional reading, I'd also like to recommend "A Mathematician's >Lament" by Paul Lockhart. > >A (shorter-than-the-book PDF version is available here: www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf >, but also highly recommend reading the (slightly) longer book. > >Kim > >On May 29, 2010, at 8:45 AM, <kharness(a)illinois.edu> <kharness(a)illinois.edu > > wrote: > >> The god of assessment has always had clay feet and Diane Ravitch's >> book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How >> Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, >> 2010) gives me hope that we will see less emphasis on multiple- >> choice-single-right-answer-learning. I would urge that we (Etoys) >> not spend very much time developing subject area electronic >> worksheets and mechanisms that count right/wrong answers and >> keystroke attempts to be part of the software. Book publishers >> routinely provide such materials that are specific, sequenced, and >> aligned and, from what I can see, teachers are hard pressed to use >> everything that is already available. If new artifacts are being >> considered as potential objects for the next release of Etoys, we >> should start talking about our vision for Etoys and what the core of >> it will be. >> >> Etoys thrives on mathematics and, on imagination, but to put too >> much emphasis on teaching a core curriculum of math or science will >> limit the other uses and imagination. My students use math in their >> projects and are indeed learning concepts at a deep level but they >> are not learning the math curriculum for their grade. For example, >> my 2nd-5th grade students routinely use test statements, create >> variables, and add random number generator tiles to projects. They >> use xy coordinates fluently because they want to control locations >> of objects and to position objects with reset scripts. Most of the >> Races and Mazes in EtoysIllinois were made by elementary students >> and show these kinds of applications of learning. >

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Mathematical Challenge
by Carlos Rabassa 22 Jun '10

22 Jun '10

Randy Caton already met the Mathematical Challenge!! E18 - Mathematical Challenge http://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=12evRFZcKNa_zMldAWfumgn5-L6X99vgdWgL… E18S - Responses to Mathematical Challenge http://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Y0JwfPNXzOEzahM7E27u3q4IEfU4e41IRR1… Congratulations Randy!!

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Re: [squeakland] kedama tutorial by linda kao
by kharness＠illinois.edu 21 Jun '10

21 Jun '10

Hi Offray, Do you know Sdenka Salas Pilco, OLPCPuno, translated the Quick Guides into Spanish? Sdenka let me align them to 4.0. I think they will be part of the next release of Etoys but they are available now. She has them and they are posted on EtoysIllinois http://www.etoysillinois.org/library.php?tags=Gu%C3%ADas%20R%C3%A1pidas%20d… Or, if you prefer, I could send a zip file. Regards, Kathleen ---- Original message ---- >Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:36:45 -0700 >From: Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas <offray.luna(a)javeriana.edu.co> >Subject: Re: [squeakland] kedama tutorial by linda kao >To: squeakland(a)squeakland.org > >Hi, > >Just to let you know I have a Spanish translation of the Kedama tutorial >that I made as part of my master thesis on 2007 and will be available as >soon as we get the new web portal for our Squeak/Etoys experience ready >(but I don't know how much It will take... sometime in the next semester). > >Cheers, > >Offray > > >On 11/25/2009 02:26 PM, Korakurider wrote: >> It is really great we finally "rescue" historical contents! >> >> The tutorial have example projects attached. Where will we maintain >> them (revised for newer version of Etoys)? >> of course Showcase is one option, but it seems better if flossmanuals >> can manage such materials for translation and distribution, >> >> /Korakurider >> >> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Kim Rose<kim.rose(a)vpri.org> wrote: >> >>> Yes, this work was created by Viewpoints and a graduate student at UCLA who >>> was an intern for us at the time. >>> We hope it can prove helpful to any Etoys users. >>> >>> Kim >>> >>> On Nov 25, 2009, at 10:22 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: >>> >>> >>>> At Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:25:56 +0100, >>>> Karl Ramberg wrote: >>>> >>>>> On 2009-11-25 18:08, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: >>>>> >>>>> The "source" of the PDF version, the Word document file was found. >>>>> So, I uploaded the file to: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> http://wiki.squeakland.org/pages/viewpageattachments.action?pageId=16844 >>>>> >>>>> -- Yoshiki >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> squeakland mailing list >>>>> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >>>>> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >>>>> >>>>> Great, >>>>> can we use this on http://en.flossmanuals.net/ ? >>>>> >>>> Kim (the executive director of VPRI, who funded making the >>>> document) says it is perfectly fine to make it public so it should be >>>> fine to use it for the FLOSS manual. >>>> >>>> -- Yoshiki >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> squeakland mailing list >>>> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >>>> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >>>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Squeakland mailing list >>> Squeakland(a)squeakland.org >>> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> squeakland mailing list >> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >squeakland mailing list >squeakland(a)squeakland.org >http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland

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Re: [squeakland] kedama tutorial by linda kao
by Korakurider 21 Jun '10

21 Jun '10

It is really great we finally "rescue" historical contents! The tutorial have example projects attached. Where will we maintain them (revised for newer version of Etoys)? of course Showcase is one option, but it seems better if flossmanuals can manage such materials for translation and distribution, /Korakurider On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Kim Rose <kim.rose(a)vpri.org> wrote: > Yes, this work was created by Viewpoints and a graduate student at UCLA who > was an intern for us at the time. > We hope it can prove helpful to any Etoys users. > > Kim > > On Nov 25, 2009, at 10:22 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: > >> At Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:25:56 +0100, >> Karl Ramberg wrote: >>> >>> On 2009-11-25 18:08, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: >>> >>> The "source" of the PDF version, the Word document file was found. >>> So, I uploaded the file to: >>> >>> >>> http://wiki.squeakland.org/pages/viewpageattachments.action?pageId=16844 >>> >>> -- Yoshiki >>> _______________________________________________ >>> squeakland mailing list >>> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >>> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >>> >>> Great, >>> can we use this on http://en.flossmanuals.net/ ? >> >> Kim (the executive director of VPRI, who funded making the >> document) says it is perfectly fine to make it public so it should be >> fine to use it for the FLOSS manual. >> >> -- Yoshiki >> _______________________________________________ >> squeakland mailing list >> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland > > > _______________________________________________ > Squeakland mailing list > Squeakland(a)squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >

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Mathematical Challenge
by Carlos Rabassa 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

We read an article including an excellent interactive game. We thought how interesting it would be to do it with Etoys but, we never tried. Maybe some of you could become interested in accepting the challenge and, Why not meeting the challenge together with other members of the Etoys world wide community? The attached image shows what the player sees when starting the game: A radius-1 circumference and two squares, the circumscribed and the inscribed ones. The user may select the number of sides for the polygons inscribed and circumscribed in the circumference. The circumference never changes, its diameter is always 1 and then its perimeter is the number Pi. Each time the player selects a new number of sides, the polygons change automatically. The perimeters of the polygons is prominently shown, at all times, one next to the other. It becomes quite clear the difference between the two perimeters goes down as the number of sides increases. It is so clearly shown, we probably will never forget what we saw. It is also quite clear and difficult to forget, both perimeters approach Pi, more and more. May I propose each participant shares the project in the Squeakland Showcase, on this page http://squeakland.org/showcase/everyone/ It would be nice if all start the names of the projects with the same word, such as "Quadrature". This will make it easier to find all the projects at the same time. Etoys proyects may be completely original, the author starts from scratch. Or, you may select someone else's project, and save it under your name, just giving proper credit to the original author. Then you may offer variations or improvements to the original project. ¿What do you think? ¿Who wants to go first? If anyone is not familiar with the Etoys Showcase, and how to use it, here we have a detailed bilingual explanation: Save, Publish, Find, Own or Others' Project http://docs.google.com/View?id=dg7q79cx_577dfz55mcv There will be no price except world wide recognition and all you will learn and teach while doing it. You will be your own judge by watching all the projects in the showcase. We may all leave comments and suggestions to encourage and help the authors and for us to learn too. Carlos Rabassa Volunteer Support Network to Plan Ceibal http://rapceibal.ning.com/ Montevideo, Uruguay

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squeakland June 2010