Hi all again,

(Sorry for the cross posting, but I would like to have feedback from an advice from a newbie to programming from the perspective of an expert and also feedback from the perspective of an educator).

As I said in another mail, this semester is starting and I'm planning the activities for the courses. One of them is for people related with Informatics Technologies and Education (Virtual Learning) as I wrote previously* and the other one if for freshmen students in University (most of them). For the second one group I'm thinking in some kind of collaborative game development, following the ideas of the previous semester with the Pingus/Lemmings Clone [1]. This time I want to go quickly on Etoys and use the Bots Inc. environment to write more code overpassing the restrictions intended for Etoys and younger children.

[1] http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html

At the same time, I'm interested in study the collaborative solving of problems from a theoretical, computational and educative perspective. The idea is to make some kind of Squeak simulation on how collective problem solving its carried and see, in the classroom, if the model, in some way, its related with reality. From the previous semester work I have some ideas and hypothesis (thanks to the community on these list for educational reflexion, multiagent hints and specially to Scott Wallace for his "coordination" code for messages to stars).

I would like to hear what do you think of this ideas for student projects:

- To make some kind of robocup: There will be two competing teams that are trying to make a point putting a "ball" in the goal of the opponents. I'm not so interested in thing like perception (where is the ball), but I'm on coordination between Robots and how they solve, in a collective fashion, a problem. In that sense I have thought this other project also,

- To make some kind of Maze Squad: It's some kind of pingus clone, but using Bots instead of Etoys. The robots are lock in a maze and you can see the maze from upside (a la Pacman). They're relatively dumb (if they found a wall they just bounce and go back, if they found a hole they just fall into it), but there are some special bots which can be selected to accomplish special task and help the others to get out of the maze.

I'm not a programmer and with Squeak I'm relearning the experience of programming with my students. But I have no problem learning and exploring with them. We don't even need to solve the problem (programming the all game). I just want to build with my students a nice place to learn and to probe ideas and see "emergent behavior". My bet is on the second project, but may be you have more hints to share with my and my students.

Cheers,

Offray

Pdt: * I'm still waiting for ideas or pointer on collective hypermedia authoring... :-)