On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 23:28, Bill Kerr <billk...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Bert Freudenberg <b...@freudenbergs.de> > wrote: >> >> On 07.11.2009, at 04:48, Bill Kerr wrote: >> >> > On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <to...@sugarlabs.org> >> > wrote: >> >> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:10, Bill Kerr <billk...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> > http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:107 >> >> > How come scratch is no longer available for sugar? >> >> > (the link is to the programming category of sugar activities) >> >> >> >> You mean Scratch was available in ASLO but isn't any more? >> >> >> > No but it should be there since Scratch has a far better UI than Etoys >> >> Agreed on the "should be there" part. >> >> As for "better UI": Scratch does what it does incredibly well. If all >> you want to do can be done in Scratch then it is an excellent tool. >> >> Etoys is way more powerful, but comparatively hard to get into. > > thanks for replying Bert > I'm not sure what you mean by Etoys being way more powerful. I would agree > that Kedama, the parallel tile particle system, is way more powerful than > anything in Scratch. > Did you have something more in mind? > For teachers the ability to make an easy start with a program is very > important. When teaching a group then if several students encounter > something they can't solve then it creates huge problems, especially for > difficult to manage classes. And even for more advanced students features > that are easy to find and work smoothly are important so that they can focus > clearly on the challenging learning (scripting) rather than hunting around > for where the tools are. There are a whole lot of features in Scratch that > makes this possible (as you acknowledge). I haven't spelt out those features > in detail here but will run some more tests and attempt to do so soon. One > of my students mentions some of them here: > http://soeasyman123.blogspot.com/2009/11/great-race.html > > "I found Etoys very troublesome for a few reasons. > 1. was because whenever I tried to save it would just close the program and > I would jsut simply lose all my work. this occurred to me 3 times. > 2. I couldn't view the scripts while having the cars move because the > scripts would get in the way of the test. > 3. the scripts were always in the way of the pictures so i had to close them > everytime i finished with them which was very time consuming. > 4. the drawing tools on Etoys aren't the greatest tools you could get. > Although these reasons were troublesome I found Etoys interesting because > there were so many scripts and other things to play with" > > My inclination has been to try to transition students from scratch to python > - but it doesn't work all that well I think in part because Scratch is > *entirely* visual drag and drop tiles and the transition to text based > programming is too abrupt for many. It might work better with etoys if the > intended transition was from etoys to smalltalk (squeak). That might be a > better way to go but a harder sell in a school environment (since python is > a better known language and also fits in with Sugar) > I think that GameMaker (proprietary but a free version is available) handles > this issue best - it has drag and drop for beginners and a code window for > more advanced and you can mix and match scripts using both features > together. I know that etoys has a code window but I found it very difficult > to use successfully. > >> >> OTOH >> Etoys does integrate into Sugar reasonably well, unlike Scratch. If >> platform conformity was the sole criterium for "better UI" then Etoys >> would win hands down, with its Journal and Collaboration support. > > ok - with SoaS my efforts to enable collaboration on our school network have > not been successful so although I have seen these features (in a session > organised by Donna Benjamin in Melbourne a year ago) my students haven't > been able to enjoy them unfortunately >> >> But another, maybe even more important difference is that Etoys is an >> open-source community project. So if there is an Etoys itch you know >> how to scratch (pun intended): patches welcome :) > > Yes, I suspect this (the license) is the main issue which I raised with > Mitch Resnick (and on this list) last year and wrote a blog summing it up: > http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/11/scratch-license-disappointment.html > The last word in the comments on my blog comes from Tom Hofmann: > > "Neither license is a free or open source license. The binary one limits > modification, the source one limits use and redistribution. They're just > unfree in different ways." > > So I guess it's really up to the Scratch team at MIT to improve the license > and their failure to do that has resulted in Sugar Labs downgrading its > distribution perhaps not consciously but as a "slipping into darkness" event
It's like anything else, things will happen if someone makes it happen. Sugar Labs is a community and what gets done is because someone from that community really wanted to get that done. In this case, I can see Bill or an OLPC users or someone from the Scratch team uploading a .xo to ASLO. Of course I could do it myself, but this is not scaling. Regards, Tomeu > >> >> - Bert - >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) >> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > > > > > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep