Bryan: It takes a long time to train teachers to use Etoys who have never used a computer before. Etoys _requires_ mastery of the touchpad and that was more than we could teach in 2 weeks of training. Dragging and dropping is a non-trivial skill.
I think we can train teachers familiar w/ computers how to use Etoys. Unfortunately, 95% of the teachers we deal and will deal w/ are not very familiar w/ computers. This is one of the major differences b/w Nepal's deployments and those of more developed countries like Uruguay Walter: I presume the same thing applies to Javascript and Flash that uses drag and drop? Bryan: It is does if you require a lot of dragging-and-dropping together w/ right-clicking. For example, our teachers got the hang of Draw during training but they struggled w/ Etoys. They could do point-click-activities like GCompris, E-Paath, Maze, etc. w/out a problem Bill: If you did a usability study comparing the etoys interface with the scratch interface you'll find that scratch provides for a much easier startup This includes the touchpad issue (eg. in etoys you have to draw and keep a sprite before you can begin to program) but also there are many other factors which makes scratch easier to use for a beginner eg. * colour coding of different function * all the function areas are visible to start with * clear physical separation of blocks palette from scripting area from stage * easier, more intuitive to see how blocks fit together I recently had a collaborative session with some xos and was introduced to the excellent etoys collaborative features (etoys chat and ability to pass scripted objects b/w users). These are great. I'm just arguing here about the getting started features which have impacted on the Nepal teacher training.
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