I am working in a project that gives, using Squeak, some special tools for the teacher in the classroom. In fact, this is a project for foreign language teacher. The teacher prepares a project with the vocabulary and grammar the student must use, gives him a subject, based on a known book, and the student must create something similar to a cartoon inside Squeak, using some of the tools included in squeakland image and some others I am developing.
After this small brief, my doubts are coming thinking about how the teacher can give the information to the students. An immediate idea was publishing the project the teacher prepares in some swiki, and students can pick it up from the swiki. This is good in a perfect world, but internet access usually are slow and, due to Murphy's laws, use to be down just when the teacher begins the exercises. I would like to have something like this: - The teacher prepare the Squeak project, press a button and says 'I'am Mr. Smith'. - The students press a button in their squeak images and say 'look for Mr. Smith's project', and it gets loaded inside their squeak image and can begin to work immediately. So simple, so fast using the LAN classroom.
I really don't know if this is already done, if there would be better ways to do it. Maybe most of the needed tools are already done and inside Squeak ¿netmorphs, collaborative tools?. Probably, Croquet would be the solution, but most classrooms don't have openGL cards in their computers... Can anybody put some light on my mind?
Jose,
Swikis are very easy to set up. One fast and dirty solution would be to put a swiki server on one of the classroom computers (they can run on any kind of desktop machine!), and then use that one just while everyone is in the classroom.
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki/15
A longer solution would be to set up a SuperSwiki server in your classroom. Then you could give the students images which have a pointer to that server already loaded. I don't know the details of setting up your own SuperSwiki server....
Finally, it would be wonderful if the specific interactions you describe were possible. "BadgeMorphs" are a step in this direction, but there might be more to do.
Lex
I know swiki setup is quite easy, but I must avoid teachers trying to learn something that is not related to what they teach. If you try to show how to setup a swiki to a french, latin, history teacher it could be hard for you and for the teacher. I want this project to be used in many high schools and it should be a debian package installed with apt, with no other setup needs.
After studying it, I have decided to go for the fridge and badge morphs. I have try the badge morph and works perfectly. My idea now is using fridge, but this morph is not totally finished, and doesn't behave very well. I am thinking of how to decide the way the teacher knows who are his students. In my case, we are working in totally connected classrooms, with more than 400 pc in every high school, and I have to find the way a teacher can send the projects or morphs only to his students. I am thinking of using a strategy similar to what netmorphs do: - The teacher says to his students his pc network name (we have internal dns servers in the schools, so I don't need the teachers to know anything about ip addresses). -The students press a botton that asks for the teacher pc name. Then, the students image send to teacher's image their own ip's and these ip's are stored in the teacher image for the session. - During the session the teacher can send using a modified fridge morph whatever he wants to the students that are stored in his list.
Another approach would be: - The students press a botton saying 'I am receiving'. In that case the students image open a tcp port. - Whenever the teacher wants to send something can use the address/netmask combination to explore his LAN, search for the open tcp port in the students image and if it is open it sends the morph or project.
I think the first aproach is quite faster, and it is not harder to code. So if nobody has a better idea I will implement it during the next weeks.
Regards.
El dom, 10-04-2005 a las 12:05 -0400, Lex Spoon escribió:
Jose,
Swikis are very easy to set up. One fast and dirty solution would be to put a swiki server on one of the classroom computers (they can run on any kind of desktop machine!), and then use that one just while everyone is in the classroom.
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki/15
A longer solution would be to set up a SuperSwiki server in your classroom. Then you could give the students images which have a pointer to that server already loaded. I don't know the details of setting up your own SuperSwiki server....
Finally, it would be wonderful if the specific interactions you describe were possible. "BadgeMorphs" are a step in this direction, but there might be more to do.
Lex _______________________________________________ Squeakland mailing list Squeakland@squeakland.org http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
José L. Redrejo Rodríguez wrote:
be hard for you and for the teacher. I want this project to be used in many high schools and it should be a debian package installed with apt, with no other setup needs.
I've packaged a superswiki for the PC, which isn't much help for a debian package though. You also need to add the server entry to every client.
After studying it, I have decided to go for the fridge and badge morphs. I have try the badge morph and works perfectly. My idea now is using fridge, but this morph is not totally finished, and doesn't behave very well. I am thinking of how to decide the way the teacher knows who are his students. In my case, we are working in totally connected classrooms, with more than 400 pc in every high school, and I have to find the way a teacher can send the projects or morphs only to his students. I am thinking of using a strategy similar to what netmorphs do:
...
The badge morphs already do what you describe: - a kid needs to grab a badge from the object catalog - as a name provide the teacher'name - click on the IP number and provide the teacher's PC name
You can also prepare a project at a well known location for the kids to load that has the teacher's badge already set up.
Then they can get another badge, provide their own name and drop that badge onto the teacher's badge.
Michael
squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org