2009/6/4 Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de:
Yes, I think that this would be interesting. Do you think about something particular or rather about how to add new things on top of Etoys in general?
My though is we can have more pedagogical added value in Etoys if it comes or proposes more higher level artifacts, like Kedama, DrGeo.
I know very well the primary school teachers there, the easier they can get to produce content, the most they will use Etoys. As it is now, the proposed artifacts in Etoys are for most teachers too low level. Understand, it need too much investment from the teachers to produce something tangible, so most of the time they think "nice, but no thanks, I can't afford it".
Of course, we can alway expose situation where teachers take the opportunity, but if you look at these situations, there are important outside support, not exactly the average situation, in the average school.
I have many though about what kind of artifacts will make Etoys more teacher friendly. Those ones does not need to be as complex as Kedama or DrGeo.
I wrote a note about this overall idea of artifacts in Etoys. http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire/index.php?post/2008/05/01/Operational-thinking
It sure would be a good idea to have both, teachers and developers, discussing these kind of things!
Absolutely.
Hilaire