Re: New Forth Lesson
On Tue, September 20, 2011 4:54 pm, Mitch Bradley wrote: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Forth_Lesson_23 Contains some random recipes. Please add your favorites. I like your lessons. I have an idea to implement some of them using the stack primitives in Turtle Art, both for its inherent value and as a starting point for transitioning from TA to FORTH, just as we are doing for Logo, Smalltalk, and Python. However, just at the moment I am entering some math books in APL at booki.treehouse.su. You would be welcome to do a FORTH resource there for the Replacing Textbooks program. Probably we should go looking for more volunteers. -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Sugar Commander
On Sat, July 23, 2011 8:41 am, Walter Bender wrote: On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:06 AM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: You can see the contents of thumb drives and SD cards as a hierarchical file system instead of as imitating the Journal. You can copy files into the Journal from anywhere on the file system. It is my idea of what the Journal should be like. You can check it out here: *thank god* I'm sorry, I don't mean to ruffle any feathers, but the flat journal is a really broken model when you stick in a USB stick with 2000+ files in hierarchical directories and you want to copy files to XO's journal (like ebook pdfs). It just becomes plain unusable. I have not found it to be so. I find that the Journal's search capability is frequently more useful than a hierarchical view of my files. When I want to look at the file system directly, apart from trying to teach it to students, I prefer the Midnight Commander. It's fine when you have a few files on your USB stick, but if it's a USB stick that's in common use with hundreds of files and you just want to sneakernet a few files to XOOS-Sugar from one machine to the XO, it's a real pain (so much so that I just backed up the contents of my USB stick, deleted everything except the files I wanted to transfer to XO-Sugar, then did the transer). You can archive a group of files for transfer under a name that will appear at the top of the list, or one easy to remember and search for. Telling people to just use the command line or midnight commander is not a solution, it's a hack because you're breaking out of the sugar model/system. The Terminal command line is deliberately included within Sugar for several important reasons. I don't see what makes it a hack. You could just as well say that Write is a hack because we try to minimize the use of words in other Sugar activities. The Sugar design guidelines are not meant to be laws. The better solution would be something like the above, an alternate file browser that's a native sugar app. I still prefer Midnight Commander for some purposes, while being delighted with Sugar Commander. YMMV. Kudos! Nothing wrong with providing alternative approaches Agreed. (a similar activity was written by Ceibal in 2007 for exactly this purpose as I recall) and fixing corner cases (I think the USB indexing issue was addressed in more recent Sugar builds), but please do not confine the vision of the Journal as simply a replacement for the file manager. I don't know that anybody ever said it was. I believe that the idea is that the Journal is easier for indexing work in progress than a hierarchical file system, and that we preferred to teach the use of the search facilities in the Journal rather than file system navigation. The new Unity 2D UI that Ubuntu defaults to makes the same decision, and it works well. Please see http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4437 It is my idea of what the Journal should be like. regards. -walter -- carlos nazareno http://twitter.com/object404 http://www.object404.com -- poverty is violence Agreed. See Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, and Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Both, in my opinion, should be required reading in all schools at an appropriate level. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] TurtleArt problems in Ubuntu
On Sun, May 22, 2011 9:45 pm, James Cameron wrote: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 09:27:12PM -0400, Edward Cherlin wrote: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/turtleart/+bug/731133 TurtleArt 98.1, as packaged for Ubuntu, is missing essential files and cannot start. Who is responsible for this package? I am pleased to report that later versions of Turtle Art work perfectly on Ubuntu. http://packages.ubuntu.com/turtleart ... http://packages.ubuntu.com/natty/turtleart ... shows that the maintainer is Ubuntu MOTU Developers (Mail Archive) ubuntu-m...@lists.ubuntu.com apt-cache show turtleart shows that the maintainer is Ubuntu Developers ubuntu-devel-disc...@lists.ubuntu.com with original maintainer Matthew Gallagher mattv...@gmail.com The Debian package also has a maintainer of Luke Faraone. http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/universe/t/turtleart/turtleart_98-1/changelog -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Air Jaldi wifi and summits
On Mon, June 27, 2011 6:11 am, Samuel Klein wrote: Air Jaldi seems to maintain one of the larger rural wifi neworks, in the Indian mountains. Has anyone heard of people who have attended one of their summits? Yes, OneVillage Foundation is strongly interested and some of their people, including Joy Tang, the founder, have attended a summit. I also know Tim Pozar of BAWUG (Bay Area Wireless User Group). Clif Cox of SFNET designed a wireless system implemented across Bhutan to provide e-mail service to valleys with no roads coming in. I could also put you in touch with the NGO that provided wireless service to Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria, including its IT school. They replaced a satellite connection that reportedly cost more than $1700 a month. The OLPC program requires that somebody solve the general problem of wireless broadband to the village for every inhabited terrain and climate, and likewise renewable electric power. The phone companies have gotten the idea of providing cell service to villages, but not Internet, except in OLPC partner countries such as Uruguay and Rwanda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirJaldi http://drupal.airjaldi.com/node/86 SJ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Scopes (was Re: Other tests)
On Sun, June 19, 2011 9:41 am, Kevin Gordon wrote: Folks: Still working on testing the issues with the external VGA adapters on the XO 1's, but while waiting for the flashing of the machines, in the interim I ran most of the rest of my other tests: The LDUSB-based Vernier sensors continue to work 1.0/1.5 Build 23 Sugar and Gnome. The Veho UVC USB external microscopes continue to work 1.0/1.5 with cheese on both Sugar and Gnome, Build 23. Excellent. Have you tried a USB telescope? For software people, can we connect microscopes and telescopes to Record? The new wizard for attaching a USB 3G modem on the Gnome side1.0/1.5 is brilliant. Just plugged the little Sierra Wireless stick in, waited for it to be shown as recognized by lsusb, then ran the wizard from the network icon drop-down. I used defaults for Rogers here in Canada, and it connected first time, and reliably every time after that! Haven't tried that on the Sugar side. Have not done the guvcview testing or cups HP printing tests, anywhere, yet. Last but not least, on networking, WPA2 to Airport and Cradlepoint, and USB wired-ethernet adapters to router work 1.0/1.5, Gnome and Sugar, Build 23. KG ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal files
On Sun, June 19, 2011 11:22 am, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: On 20 June 2011 00:30, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote: I presume this doesn't do what you are looking for? Doesn't scale particulary elegantly, but I find it useful http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Copy_to_and_from_the_Journal It does the basic job of copying to/from the Journal. However, it needs to be an easy GUI feature. Anything that requires a terminal is far beyond what we can expect a teacher or child to do. I have recommended the Midnight Commander file manager for this purpose. sudo yum install mc It is a full-screen character-mode program that runs in Terminal, so it needs no Sugarizing. Among its features are sorting, filtering, selecting multiple items or groups of items, and two-click copying or moving of selections, whether files or whole directories. We would need to write some lesson plans in order to give this to children. MC is not suitable for copying to and from the Journal, but it handles everything in plain files, and simplifies using the scripts given on the page you referenced. See also http://booki.flossmanuals.net/command-line/edit/ written for the Free Software Foundation. (I am one of the authors.) Unlike conventional command-line textbooks and manuals for those planning to be developers or sysadmins, this describes only what users need to know. It is not directly suitable for young children, but again we could use it as the basis for lesson plans. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
-referential environments alive and relevant in the world at large. I think one problem is that the state of the environment doesn't get kept in simple text files -- a concept of enduring value. My old APL programs are all dead too; they were objects in workspaces and weren't usually stored in small, persistent, portable, named, modular textual representations, the way C or Python programs are. This is why I am trying to get kids to leave Turtle Art behind. It is there as a hook to get them started, but not intended to be more than a stepping stone. Perhaps the key is to keep these immersive environments sufficiently tiny that you don't mind them dying when you turn your attention to something else. Tininess also helps to make one understandable and modifiable by others in case they DO want to keep it going after you move on. John It is worth pointing out that there are some math teachers in .UY who are using the export SVG capabilities of Turtle Art to launch their students into more sophisticated graphing and data visualization. Not what I had expected, but quite a good outcome nonetheless. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
Hopkins worked on a PostScript-based window system (HyperLook) that would let you flip over an object on the screen to see behind it a control panel with the guts of its implementation visible. You could modify those, then flip it back and it would resume running. See: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/index.html and http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/hyperlook-demo.html . Looking back at HyperLook, it looks a lot like the etoys environment, full of object oriented code with direct manipulation gui editor interfaces. The underlying Smalltalk language allows users to view the source of every object, down to the virtual machine. We can use the Etoys turtle graphics functions to do what you are asking for here. It's dead now; a historical curiosity of interest only to prior-art searchers defeating too-obvious software patents. It's hard to keep such self-contained and self-referential environments alive and relevant in the world at large. I think one problem is that the state of the environment doesn't get kept in simple text files -- a concept of enduring value. My old APL programs are all dead too; Mine aren't. they were objects in workspaces and weren't usually stored in small, persistent, portable, named, modular textual representations, the way C or Python programs are. But I helped create the first ISO/ANSI standard APL system, and I tended to stay with standard features. There is a WorkSpace Interchange Standard that will let you get code from working programs into files, and then into other APL systems. However, J uses external code files in ASCII. Perhaps the key is to keep these immersive environments sufficiently tiny that you don't mind them dying when you turn your attention to something else. Tininess also helps to make one understandable and modifiable by others in case they DO want to keep it going after you move on. Smalltalk/Etoys seems to be a counterexample to your claim. John ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Devel Digest, Vol 64, Issue 6
On Thu, June 2, 2011 2:35 pm, Daniel Drake wrote: On 2 June 2011 19:12, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote: Folks: OS21 installs fine using the power-on/esc clean install method with update-nand on an XO1 In my case it did not. Install looked good up until reboot, which failed and dropped me back to the previously installed version. and fs-update on an XO 1.5. Looks like it might be an olpc-update issue which Yioryos is facing, not an entire os21 issue from here. I have experienced no regressions on anything, including the custom stuff which I have checked - USB 3G modems, external microscopes, external VGA monitors, Vernier LSUSB sensors, HP USB printing all functioning perfectly well to date. Great, thanks a lot for the testing and feedback. Please keep at it as we bring out further builds until release :) Daniel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Raspberry Pi $25 computer
On Mon, May 23, 2011 9:05 pm, Sameer Verma wrote: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 8:47 PM, C. Scott Ananian o...@cscott.net wrote: To sweeten the pot, I'm offering a delicious stone soup for anyone who those who pitch in on the port. You need only supply a few extra ingredients. --scott I'm not recommending it, just offering to to anybody whose itch it scratches, perhaps in learning embedded systems programming, or in science fair projects, or whatever. Used to be axe soup in my folklore :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_soup Nail soup in mine. Sameer On May 21, 2011 10:35 PM, moku...@earthtreasury.org wrote: FYI. Anybody who would like to port Sugar to a $25 computer (requiring only monitor, mouse, and keyboard) should contact Eben, and let us know too. -- Forwarded message -- From: Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com Date: Sat, May 21, 2011 at 22:10 Subject: Re: [Sur] linux system por $25 To: Eben Upton eben.up...@gmail.com On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 12:22, Eben Upton eben.up...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Edward Thanks for your mail, and apologies for the delay in replying. The devices should be available to the general public later in the year; I'll add you to our mailing list, and will keep you posted as we get closer to launch. Thank you. We've heard of Sugar, but need to find out more about it. Do you think it's suitable for a machine with limited processing power and only 256MB of RAM? That's what it was designed for. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specifications AMD Geode 433 Mhz processor 256M RAM Fedora Linux http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Getting_Started http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities Cheers Eben Upton Director, Raspberry Pi Foundation Follow us @Raspberry_Pi on Twitter On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Your Web site asks Do you have open-source educational software we can use? The answer is Yes. Sugar education software runs on a variety of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. It is currently in the hands of more than 2 million children. We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. Sugar includes Python and Smalltalk (Etoys). One Laptop Per Child XO computers also run Open Firmware, written in FORTH, and including the complete FORTH development library, the editor, and an assembler. OFW is available for systems based on ARM processors. The Sugar Labs Replacing Textbooks project, which I started recently, will include a variety of materials for teaching programming and Computer Science, and for applying those languages to every school subject. We have compiled a list of successful projects for teaching programming in the elementary grades, including projects using Python, Smalltalk, Logo, LISP, BASIC, and APL. The real question is one that Seymour Papert asked in 1970: Can we design an environment in which children learn math and programming languages as readily as they learn human languages, largely from each other? Some of us think so, and we are working on it. I will be happy to answer further questions, or to direct you to those who know more about some aspects of Sugar than I. -- Forwarded message -- From: Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com Date: Fri, May 6, 2011 at 11:28 Subject: Re: [Sur] linux system por $25 To: OLPC para usuarios, docentes, voluntarios y administradores olpc-...@lists.laptop.org Cc: Gleducar gledu...@gleducar.org.ar http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2011-May/003273.html On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Daniel Ajoy da.a...@gmail.com wrote: linux system por $25 http://www.raspberrypi.org/ -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Down
On Sun, May 22, 2011 11:09 am, Hilaire Fernandes wrote: Le 21/05/2011 03:17, moku...@earthtreasury.org a écrit : Seymour Papert also proposed creating an environment in which learning math would be as easy as learning ordinary language. Smalltalk has a number of kinds of number and shape objects, but I have not seen much else in the way of mathematical objects. I am trying to go through various subjects to extract the ideas that preschoolers can absorb, and create materials to encourage them to explore those ideas. We also need symmetries (group theory and algebra more generally), Venn diagrams (Boolean algebra and set theory), rubber-sheet geometry (topology), probability, knot theory (topology), infinities and infinitesimals, graphing (analytic geometry), and conic sections, among other topics easy to visualize and make tactile. (It is trivial to generate the conic sections using a flashlight in a darkened room.) DrGeo provides those extensions to Smalltalk for the Euclidean geometry field. This opens large use case in teaching programming related to history of math, largely based on Euclidean geometry. It works also for non-Euclidean and projective geometry using well-known models. History of math needs to be mined for its moments of adventure, discovery, and controversy. It is widely assumed that math is perfect and unchangeable in its nature. For example, that a theorem once proved stays proved forever. This turns out not to be the case. Lambert thinking he had disproved non-Euclidean geometry, and Peano thinking he had proved that all models of the natural numbers are isomorphic are historically the two most important instances that I know of. Gauss, Lobachevsky, Bolyai, and Riemann realized that Lambert was wrong, and Beltrami finished off the case by demonstrating a surface in Euclidean space with Lobachkevskian geometry. Abraham Robinson ran with non-standard arithmetic, creating non-standard analysis as an easier way to do calculus, and disposing of Bishop Berkeley's ghosts of departed quantities. http://www.reunion.iufm.fr/recherche/irem/spip.php?article493 http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programmation_objet_et_g%C3%A9om%C3%A9trie http://revue.sesamath.net/spip.php?article330 Sorry those references are only in French, a lot of teachers exploring programming for math seems to come from that place. Pas de difficulté pour moi. Merci. Hilaire -- Education 0.2 -- http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
there, you can learn the syntactic sugar of any programming language. After learning three different clean programming models, we have some hope that our children will appreciate what abominations most other programming languages are. I invented Object-Oriented Programming, and C++ is _not_ what I had in mind.--Alan Kay As in the model-view-controller paradigm, the kids need to learn that the view is not the model, but the model is a simply structured thing that lives behind the view. If you don't teach the abstract structures that the model is based on, the kids can't learn to make that separation. This is why they never learn to modify the real programs that hide behind the fluffy interfaces on their real XO computers. We have paths from Turtle Art to Python and Logo, and we also have all of FORTH and Smalltalk built into XOs. Also, I don't know of any more fundamental structure than a parse tree, something that almost no conventional programming students ever learn about. They only see the linear text view of their programs, and most form incorrect models of the execution process. LISP has the best execution model, with the eval-apply mutual recursion and the read-eval-print loop. I cannot speak for every Sugar developer, but the approach I have tried to take with Turtle Art is a bit different than you are describing. Don't be modest, Walter, it's very different. The block-based programming environment is not meant to be a substitute for real tools; it is meant to be a place to get started; to understand the real ideas behind programming without getting bogged down in syntax; to learn that you can write and modify code; and to provide multiple motivations and launch pads for getting into the real thing. I've worked pretty hard to make the structured thing behind the view more approachable, and have provided multiple ways in and out: exporting your fluffy view into Logo that can be run in Brian Harvey's text-based Logo environment; direct, in-line extensions written in Python; the ability to create new blocks by importing Python; a plugin mechanism for making major interventions; and a refactoring of the underlying structures to make the code more approachable. (The source code is peppered with comments and examples of how to make modifications.) None of these interventions are intended to keep the kids programming in Turtle Art. They are all intended to get the kids started down the path of real programming. But I content that we need to engage them; let them discover that they can write code; and make changes; and that it is not something just for others but for everyone. When I talked about Turtles All the Way Down at Libre Planet two-years ago, I wasn't suggesting that we use fluffy interfaces all the way down, but that we invite modifications all the way down by providing scaffolding and encouragement. Step One is to give them the freedom to make changes; Step Two is to give them the context in which they can actually start doing it. Yes, what Walter said. Sure, there will always be the handful of kids who will jump right into Emacs and C, but most won't. Maybe we can encourage a few more to do something of substance but giving them some scaffolding. I am open to suggestions as to how to get more kids to move on from Turtle Art to ___ (insert you favorite real programming environment here). -walter John ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Down
On Fri, May 20, 2011 2:28 pm, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote:
This is nice!
Smalltalk actually got started by thinking about a way to make a child's
Logo-like language with objects and pattern matching that could express
its own operating system and environment.
Seymour Papert also proposed creating an environment in which learning
math would be as easy as learning ordinary language. Smalltalk has a
number of kinds of number and shape objects, but I have not seen much else
in the way of mathematical objects. I am trying to go through various
subjects to extract the ideas that preschoolers can absorb, and create
materials to encourage them to explore those ideas.
Caleb Gattegno and Ken Iverson did a fair amount on algebra, using
Cuisenaire rods and APL respectively.
Don Cohen has done Calculus by and for Young People
I have made a start on symmetry groups, using variations on children's
block toys.
Elementary set theory using Venn diagrams was done long ago.
But there is so much more.
It is very tricky to retain/maintain readability (so the first Smalltalk
was
also an extensible language not just semantically but syntactically).
With a tile language, this is really worth thinking about, since using
tiles
suggests ways to extend both the form and the meaning of the tiles.
My current thinking is that macros are *graphical*, not *source*
transformations. You can create
your own tiles for the language which render into hygenic macros.
They are represented in source as simple message dispatch. For
example, choosing a particularly ugly bit of JavaScript syntax:
I would like to be able to create a set of blocks implementing the
symmetry group of a simple shape such as an equilateral triangle. This
case is generated by a 120 degree rotation and a reflection, giving six
elements in all.
Similarly I would like to be able to do modular addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division in finite fields, and the and and or
functions or union and intersection on lattices.
Does your system accommodate this?
var ForBlockMacro = imports.macros.ForBlockMacro;
var foo = function() {
var i;
ForBlockMacro(function() { i=0; },
function() { return i 5; },
function() { i+=1; },
function() { /* body */ });
}
This is the underlying syntax for the macro. But the ForBlockMacro
function (which is a first class object in JavaScript) can have an
asTile() method which returns a more attractive visual representation
in the tile editor; in fact, the representation could elide all the
'function' and 'return' nastiness of the raw syntax and display
(traditionally) as:
for ( i=0 ; i 5 ; i+=1 ) {
/* body */
}
My current plan is to finess the multiple views issue (discussed in
3.4 of http://labs.oracle.com/self/papers/programming-as-experience.html)
by representing objects as 3d polyhedra. The front view might be
the nice cleaned up tile macro, but you should be able to rotate the
tile to see the low level source, and then rotate it again to see the
object corresponding to the actual widget displaying the source, etc.
So, one object, many views.
I've built the current system on a very flexible operator precedence
grammar, so there's no reason I *couldn't* allow the user to flexibly
extend the base grammar. But that increases the conceptual effort
necessary to understand the system -- I have to understand the
expanded language before I can understand the code I'm looking at.
The macro system I describe above has the nice property that you don't
*have* to understand the macro or the grammar of the new if statement.
It's enough to look at the desugared version:
ForBlockMacro(function() { i=0; },
function() { return i 5; },
function() { i+=1; },
function() { /* body */ });
and the implementation of ForBlockMacro:
ForBlockMacro = function(initBlock, condBlock, incrBlock, bodyBlock) {
initBlock();
while (condBlock()) {
bodyBlock();
incrBlock();
}
};
ForBlockMacro.asTile() = ;
This seems (to me) a preferable way of understanding what the new tile
does. But I'm open to other ideas on this front. (And yes,
JavaScript's syntax isn't lovely. But I'm interested in what I can do
with what I've got.)
--scott
--
   ( http://cscott.net )
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
--
Edward Mokurai
(#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585;
#1580;) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos
Re: Filesystems for kids
On Sat, May 21, 2011 2:17 am, Carlos Nazareno wrote: I don't know where you get the idea that files, hierarchical file systems, and text editors are simple concepts. I would be willing to discuss introducing the Linux file system in middle school, but our issue is programming for third-graders, or even earlier. Preschoolers can grasp the ideas behind turtle art by acting the part of the turtle. Where would you have them begin? Filesystems are not very hard to grasp. Do not underestimate first to third-graders. Preschoolers, I said. Where would you have preliterate preschoolers start? I think I've mentioned this before, but here in the Philippines we have streetkids pooling money to take turns playing games in low-cost internet cafes, (rates of about $0.40 an hour or so) and I have personally seen 5-7 year old steetkids playing the 3D first-person shooter game Counter-Strike and the real-time strategy game Command and Conquer 3, things which are much much complex than simple windows folders. Just like the famous Hole-in-the-Wall computer in India. Yes indeed, motivation. Game designers are remarkably good at it. It is also true that one-year olds learn significant fractions of whole human languages, among other things, based on inborn motivation. What is the reinforcement for third-graders to learn a file system when XOs provide the Journal? Certainly that will work for programmers, after they are comfortable with programming on a small scale, and need to advance to multiple file apps, and understand where libraries live. Who in the preschool to third grade age group wants to know badly enough, and why? A single folder is simple. The entire Windows or Linux file system is insanely complex. For one thing, essential system files have different names and locations in every version of Windows, and in many Linux distros, and sometimes in successive versions of the same distro. Third-graders are what, 8-year olds? Filesystems should be no problem for them at all. It's very simple to explain: just show them to concept of books/notebooks or folders in a shelf or bag. Or even a filing cabinet. Except that none of these models is hierarchical. How do you explain that? Yes, it's trivial to explain containers and contents, as long as you don't care whether the children can find anything in the hierarchy. Here is a simple exercise for you. You are to imagine that you are helping an amazing third-grader understand how the filesystem relates to Sugar activity development, packaging, QA, and deployment, since it is all so simple to you. 1. Which is your favorite Linux distro? Does it use apt or yum? 2. Tell me all of the locations where Sugar files are installed in that distro. Activity and system code, configuration, libraries, fonts, documentation, icons, graphics, .po files, Journal entries, log files, and anything else included or generated. 3. Tell me all of the path specifications on your system that enable Sugar activities to find their files, or files from other packages that they are dependent on. 4. Now repeat for a distro using the other packaging system. 5. Send me the results. 6. Tell me what Sugar tools you would tell your third-grader to use to perform this exercise on an XO. Terminal and what? Be specific. What commands do you recommend? How do you expect this child to find out about them? I am in the process of performing this exercise, and intend to publish the results. Simple, yes, but not easy. Alternatively, if you think you understand instructional design and child development sufficiently, you can come to http://booki.treehouse.su the Sugar Labs Replacing Textbooks server, and write a guide to the Linux filesystem for third graders. You may remix and rewrite material from the Command Line book I helped write for adults and high-school students. http://booki.flossmanuals.net/command-line/edit/ -- carlos nazareno http://twitter.com/object404 http://www.object404.com -- core team member phlashers: philippine flash actionscripters http://www.phlashers.com -- poverty is violence ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Down
On Fri, May 20, 2011 9:32 pm, Gonzalo Odiard wrote: The question is: does this really have educational value? Turtles all the way down is a great slogan, and a fine way to teach a graduate-level class on compiler technology, See * The Anatomy of LISP, by John Allen, and LISP machines, for LISP all the way down to the hardware. * http://domino.watson.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/600cc5649e2871db852568150060213c/641aa395fee3dd2c85256bfa006859fc!OpenDocument A Formal Description of System\360, by Adin Falkoff in the original pre-APL Iverson Notation, and Digital Systems: Hardware Organization and Design, by Frederick J. Hill Gerald R. Peterson for APL all the way down, also to the hardware. Specifically AHPL, A Hardware Programming Language. * SOAR (Smalltalk on a RISC) at UC Berkeley for Smalltalk all the way down to the hardware. * FORTH microprocessors such as Forth Multiprocessor Chip MuP21 http://www.ultratechnology.com/p21.html I would be interested to know of any other examples of hardware implementation of a programming language. (Not the Algol-optimized and COBOL-optimized Burroughs machines; real hardware implementations.) but I feel that the higher-level UI for tile-based program editing is the really useful thing for tablet computing. I'm a compiler geek and love the grungy underbelly of this stuff, but I keep reminding myself I should really be spending more time building a beautiful fluffy surface. I once used a tile-based UI in a commercial database program. It was horrible once we got past the toy examples. You are doing the right question I remember here No silver bullet [1] Different languages, different levels of abstraction, need different interfaces, and text is powerfull interface. May be is not the best interface to start to program, but surely graphic block are not the best interface to do programs of more than 400 of blocks. Of course. I would say that perhaps 40 or 50 blocks is a reasonable limit. After that, you should be writing subroutines to go in Python blocks, and not very long after transition to pure Python. Gonzalo [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 10:30 AM, C. Scott Ananian csc...@laptop.orgwrote: I've done a little more work on Turtles All The Way Down, which I (very briefly) discussed at EduJam. I actually wrote a garbage collector in TurtleScript for TurtleScript on Sunday. Brief writeup here: http://cananian.livejournal.com/64140.html and exhaustive mind-numbing detail here: http://cscott.net/Projects/TurtleScript/ No actual turtles yet! I'm going to have to fix that soon. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net ) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Raspberry Pi $25 computer
FYI. Anybody who would like to port Sugar to a $25 computer (requiring only monitor, mouse, and keyboard) should contact Eben, and let us know too. -- Forwarded message -- From: Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com Date: Sat, May 21, 2011 at 22:10 Subject: Re: [Sur] linux system por $25 To: Eben Upton eben.up...@gmail.com On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 12:22, Eben Upton eben.up...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Edward Thanks for your mail, and apologies for the delay in replying. The devices should be available to the general public later in the year; I'll add you to our mailing list, and will keep you posted as we get closer to launch. Thank you. We've heard of Sugar, but need to find out more about it. Do you think it's suitable for a machine with limited processing power and only 256MB of RAM? That's what it was designed for. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specifications AMD Geode 433 Mhz processor 256M RAM Fedora Linux http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Getting_Started http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities Cheers Eben Upton Director, Raspberry Pi Foundation Follow us @Raspberry_Pi on Twitter On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Your Web site asks Do you have open-source educational software we can use? The answer is Yes. Sugar education software runs on a variety of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. It is currently in the hands of more than 2 million children. We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. Sugar includes Python and Smalltalk (Etoys). One Laptop Per Child XO computers also run Open Firmware, written in FORTH, and including the complete FORTH development library, the editor, and an assembler. OFW is available for systems based on ARM processors. The Sugar Labs Replacing Textbooks project, which I started recently, will include a variety of materials for teaching programming and Computer Science, and for applying those languages to every school subject. We have compiled a list of successful projects for teaching programming in the elementary grades, including projects using Python, Smalltalk, Logo, LISP, BASIC, and APL. The real question is one that Seymour Papert asked in 1970: Can we design an environment in which children learn math and programming languages as readily as they learn human languages, largely from each other? Some of us think so, and we are working on it. I will be happy to answer further questions, or to direct you to those who know more about some aspects of Sugar than I. -- Forwarded message -- From: Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com Date: Fri, May 6, 2011 at 11:28 Subject: Re: [Sur] linux system por $25 To: OLPC para usuarios, docentes, voluntarios y administradores olpc-...@lists.laptop.org Cc: Gleducar gledu...@gleducar.org.ar http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2011-May/003273.html On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Daniel Ajoy da.a...@gmail.com wrote: linux system por $25 http://www.raspberrypi.org/ -- Edward Mokurai (#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585; #1580;) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
