Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
On 02/25/2010 12:08 AM, Walter Bender wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Simon Schampijersi...@schampijer.de wrote: Hi, I am teaching on a regular basis in the Planetarium pilot in Berlin, Germany [1]. I have been using Etoys now for several weeks and here is some first feedback. First: The kids do like it a lot! I want to encourage everyone to include it in his curriculum. For example you can teach easily the concepts of the coordinate system with Etoys. You create an object and print out the X and Y values when moving it on the screen. Or you can use a joystick to alter the position of this object and use this method to deepen the coordinate system concept. You know, of course, that under the View toolbar in Turtle Art, the coordinates of the Turtle are displayed. :) Any feedback re TA-83 would be very welcome. -walter Wow - This is great work! This was something I was missing in class sometimes, as I have already told you ;D This helps a lot for learners to draw the line between their program and the output. Thanks, Simon ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
On 02/25/2010 02:59 AM, K. K. Subramaniam wrote: On Thursday 25 February 2010 04:13:52 am Simon Schampijer wrote: I am teaching on a regular basis in the Planetarium pilot in Berlin, Germany [1]. I have been using Etoys now for several weeks and here is some first feedback. First: The kids do like it a lot! I want to encourage everyone to include it in his curriculum. Etoys can be more than just a topic in a curriculum. It is the swiss army knife of the 21st century. Sure, it is a tool in the end. And then you need to decide how you use it and how you integrate it into your curriculum. That is why I gave the examples of what you can use Etoys for to reach certain goals. Teachers do not to see those possibilities to get interested, in my opinion. An interesting possibility is to get old students to create animated flashcards/sounds clips to teach a topic (say English) to younger students. Traditional flashcards just present a letter as a block. Instead, one can use a bug to create letter shapes with its trail so the children can also perceive how letters are formed. Thanks for that idea. Is there a tutorial for creating flashcards you know of? Thanks, Simon ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
You know, of course, that under the View toolbar in Turtle Art, the coordinates of the Turtle are displayed. :) Any feedback re TA-83 would be very welcome. -walter Wow - This is great work! This was something I was missing in class sometimes, as I have already told you ;D This helps a lot for learners to draw the line between their program and the output. Walter (and helpers) have done an amazing job transforming TurtleArt. As I write this its 3:50am Walter time and he is still up coding Turtle Art. New features include multiple turtles, zoom, polar and cartesian coordinates, SVG output, variable names and stack names can be variables too, collapsible stacks, comments, multimedia, debug mode, Python block, tooltips, trash it is still low entry but packs lots of high level opportunities with a strong educational focus You can download the new Turtle Art for testing from http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:TurtleArt-83.xo any feedback is welcome Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
On 02/26/2010 01:29 PM, Kurt Gramlich wrote: * Cherry Witherscwith...@ekindling.org [100226 07:42]: Gerald, It's definitely a balancing act trying to get them to focus on finishing up something and getting them to explore. Once they realize that they can affect the object by scripts they just want to do everything they can possibly do in one sitting (dragging and dropping tiles in one script window ..then I'm in fire fighting mode). Too much resulted in chaos in my class. Not doing THAT again. I now give them some time to go nuts on exploration then pull them back in to finish a project. Now I'm introducing just a max of two concepts (or tiles) in one 40min. session. And 40 minutes are short :/ I definitely have learned by now that you have to teach smaller pieces so the concepts are understood well. I will hand out Sugar on Stick [1] to my learners this week and I am very excited how that will effect their learning curve. They have time to explore at home and I am sure this will advance my learners quickly. Kathleen Harness has really good lesson plans for teaching one concept at a time: www.etoysillionois.org Thanks for sharing this great resource. I really like the step by step tutorials made by waveplace [2]. That helped me a lot to get into Etoys. Regards, Simon [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick [2] http://waveplace.com/resources/courseware/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] guidance for developing activity
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 08:57, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: On 03/02/2010 04:31 AM, James Simmons wrote: Parichay, Flash is problematic for developing Sugar Activities. Because it is a commercial product it cannot ship pre-installed with Sugar, although it can be installed later (but not as easily as you would like). As an alternative Sugar supplies Gnash, which supports a subset of Flash. It cannot display movies that use proprietary codecs like DivX, etc. but it does allow some existing Flash plugins to run in the Browse Activity. If you go down the gnash way, you might want to have a look at these blog posts from Tomeu: http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2009/05/progress-on-sugar-activities-with-swf.html http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2009/04/embed-flash-movies-with-gnash-in-your.html But I really recommend Karma for anything new: http://karma.sugarlabs.org/ Regards, Tomeu Regards, Simon ___ 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
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
Roberto, Here are some examples of teaching Mathematics with Etoys: 1. Fractions: 1. Fraction Tools http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7673 - Use virtual Cuisenaire Rods to help kids obtain a better understanding of fractions and units of measure. 2. Fractions of a Circlehttp://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7372- A Fraction Game 2. Area: 1. Area Geo Boards http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7744 - Exercises for learning about squares and areas. 3. Pythagorean Theorem: 1. Demonstration of Pythagorean Theorem Proof: Check Video first: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIGCdOtfd7E The project http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9486 shows the final result, could be modified to challenge kids to prove it. 4. Geometry 1. Shapes http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7751 - This project introduces kids to Geometric Shapes, terminology and comparing and contrasting different shapes. 2. Creating Polygonshttp://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9444- Based upon 40 Math Shapeshttp://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/08/40-maths-shapes-challenges.htmldesigned by Barry Newell. This challenge could also be done in Turtle Art and Scratch, but it demonstrates one of the advantages of Etoys over Scratch (haven't used Turtle Art, so can't comment). In that you can drag scripting tiles onto the Playfield in Etoys. This allows you to focus the students attention on the problem you want them to solve rather than having them look through all the tiles to figure out what to use. The Etoys Challenges are an excellent example of this. One of the challenges of learning Scratch and Etoys is discovering all the scripting tiles. This is easier in Scratch as they are always visible, in Etoys you have to open an Objects Viewer, not hard, but an extra step. NOTE: In this project all the scripting tiles you will need aren't always visible (it is a work in progress I believe, so it may have changed by now). What grades and subject matter will you be teaching? On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 1:58 PM, roberto robert...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: Hi, I am teaching on a regular basis in the Planetarium pilot in Berlin, Germany [1]. I have been using Etoys now for several weeks and here is some first feedback. First: The kids do like it a lot! I want to encourage everyone to include it in his curriculum. For example you can teach easily the concepts of the coordinate system with Etoys. You create an object and print out the X and Y values when moving it on the screen. Or you can use a joystick to alter the position of this object and use this method to deepen the coordinate system concept. thank you for sharing you experience; i have to choose between EToys, Turtle Art and Scratch for next year math courses; i like TA too much and i won't take it apart; but i need to understand well the differences between EToys and Scratch: their goals, their functionalities, pros/cons etc is there a comparative study available ? -- roberto ___ 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
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Steve Thomas sthom...@gosargon.com wrote: Roberto, Here are some examples of teaching Mathematics with Etoys: thank you What grades and subject matter will you be teaching? subjects: math and physics grades: from age 10 to 18 -- roberto ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Attend the CUE (Computer Using Educators) Conference in your PJs!
Eluminate does not run on 64-bit Ubuntu Linux, nor on many other distributions, because the Java module to support it is not available. We need something supported in Free Software, such as .ogg files. On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:22, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi All, The CUE Conference (Computer Using Educators) will be this coming weekend in Palm Springs CA, and through the magic of Classroom 2.0 you can attend, free from wherever you are. All you have to do is sign up for Classroom 2.0 and learn to use the Eluminate Conferencing tool. While Eluminate is not Open Source, the founder and head of Classroom 2.0, Steve Hargadon, is one of the country's biggest Open Source advocates in education. In addition to doing Classroom 2.0, he is the one in charge of the Open Source Pavillion at CUE. Eluminate supports his efforts by providing free conference rooms (and any individual can also sign up for a 3-seat virtual office with them). The conference goes for 3 days and Steve has listed some of the presentations that will be featured. Some are hour long regular sessions and others are 30 min shorter sessions. If you scroll down to Friday you will see that I am doing a 30 min session from 3:15 to 3:45 pm (PT) on Friday afternoon. This is a great opportunity for those of you who are not working in the classroom to see what today's teachers are really interested in. Many of these sessions offer great ideas that can be adopted/adapted to Sugar users. If you have any questions, please, just send me an email. I will attach links to the CUE Conference schedule where you can read more about what the sessions plan to cover. Caryl http://www.cue.org/conference/sessions/ (Regular Sessions) http://www.cueunplugged.com/ (Shorter, 30 min sessions) Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 16:28:04 + From: m...@classroom20.com To: cbige...@hotmail.com Subject: Live and Interactive Events This Week Classroom 2.0 A message to all members of Classroom 2.0 Below are this week's public, free, and interactive webinars through LearnCentral.org, my project at Elluminate. Event recordings are available after the events at the same links.. Monday, March 1st 5:00pm PST (US) / 1:00am (next day) GMT/UTC (Intl): School Library Web Presence in the TL Cafe. Joyce Valenza and Gwyneth Jones host a discussion of effective practice and essential elements with Carolyn Foote, Buffy Hamilton, and Barbara Jansen. http://www.learncentral.org/event/56811 Wednesday, March 3rd 1:00am PST (US) / 9:00am GMT/UTC (Intl): Anne Mirtschin hosts e...@lking Tuesdays as part of The Australia Series: Too young to use technology in the classroom? Come meet Amanda Marrinan, from Queensland, Australia who has connected her ‘littlies’ to others around the globe via her class blog. http://www.learncentral.org/event/56321 9:30am PST (US) / 5:30pm GMT/UTC (Intl): Shannon Autrey Forte presents Shannon's Bright Ideas Center Publish! Showcase. We will look at Best Practices when using Publish! and share Bright Ideas. http://www.learncentral.org/event/59556 6:30pm PST (US) / 2:30am (next day) GMT/UTC (Intl): Maria Droujkova presents Math 2.0 Weekly! http://www.learncentral.org/event/59556 Thursday, March 4th ALL DAY: Live streaming from the Computer-Using Educators (CUE) Conference in Palm Springs. Sessions from the CUE Unplugged area at http://www.CUEUnplugged.com include Harnessing the Power of Web 2.0+ in School Administration by Bradford Burns and Politics and Civic Engagement for Our Digital Generation by Cheryl Davis. http://www.learncentral.org/event/50928 2:00pm PST (US) / 11:00pm GMT/UTC (Intl): Jane Krauss and Suzie Boss host Better with Practice: PBL Implementation Tips from the Field Session 2. The second in a series. Keeping Your Project on the Rails. Visit http://www.classroom20.com/group/pblbetterwithpractice http://www.learncentral.org/event/50928 5:00pm PST (US) / 11:00pm GMT/UTC (Intl): (Repeat) Jane Krauss and Suzie Boss host Better with Practice: PBL Implementation Tips from the Field Session 2. A second serving of the above. http://www.learncentral.org/event/51454 Friday, March 5th ALL DAY: Live streaming from the Computer-Using Educators (CUE) Conference in Palm Springs. Sessions from the CUE Unplugged area at http://www.CUEUnplugged.com include: Building Social Constructivist Learning Environments in Online Settings with Tammy Stephens Including Technology in your Unit Planning Using Understanding by Design (UbD) by Alice Mercer “Hey, Just Because It Is Online Doesn’t Mean We Can’t Have Field Trips, Right?” by Todd Conaway Educational Social Networking for Professional Development by me Sugar In Your Classroom. How Sweet It Is! by Caryl Bigenho. Formal sessions (http://www.cue.org/conference/anywhere) will include: Rigorous Learning through Digital
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
On Tuesday 02 March 2010 02:28:42 pm Simon Schampijer wrote: An interesting possibility is to get old students to create animated flashcards/sounds clips to teach a topic (say English) to younger students. Traditional flashcards just present a letter as a block. Instead, one can use a bug to create letter shapes with its trail so the children can also perceive how letters are formed. Thanks for that idea. Is there a tutorial for creating flashcards you know of? No. But if you pose it as a challenge for the students I am sure they will figure out a way. Letters like C, D, I, J, L, M, N, O, V, W, Z are easy while A, B, E, F, H, K, T, U, Y may stump them for a moment. S is really difficult and may need some help. Know why S is difficult is part of the fun (cf. Digital Typography by Don Knuth, chapter 13). Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Fwd: [Nsdl-all] NSDL program solicitation available
National Science Digital Library: might be a possible source of funding. -- Forwarded message -- From: Eileen McIlvain eil...@ucar.edu Date: Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 6:03 PM Subject: [Nsdl-all] NSDL program solicitation available To: nsdl-all nsdl-...@nsdl.org Greetings - We're pleased to let you know that the NSDL 2010 program solicitation is now available: NSF 10-545 http://ow.ly/1bnSG best, Eileen -- Eileen McIlvain Pathways Liaison RC Communications NSDL Resource Center National Science Digital Library (NSDL) University Corporation for Atmospheric Research 3300 Mitchell Lane, FL4, Room 3226 Boulder, CO 80301 303-497-8354 http://nsdl.org NSDL: the National Science Foundation's online library of resources for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. ___ Nsdl-all mailing list nsdl-...@nsdl.org http://comm.nsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/nsdl-all -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Weekly Infrastructure Meeting Reminder
Weekly Infrastructure meeting: Volunteer Infrastructure Gang (http://olpcorps.org/ ), Sugarlabs Infrastructure Team (http://sugarlabs.org/ ), and TreeHousers (http://me.etin.gs/treehouse/ ) #startmeeting #info Date: 2010-03-02 #info Time: 21:00 UTC (16:00 EST, 22:00 CET) #info Agenda: http://openetherpad.org/VnVycULWZt #info Location: #treehouse on irc.oftc.net #link http://embed.mibbit.com/?server=irc.oftc.netchannel=%23treehouse #endmeeting Usefull Links: LastAgenda: http://openetherpad.org/pISqKnKxeT LastLog: http://me.etin.gs/treehouse/treehouse.log.20100223_1603.html LastMinutes: http://me.etin.gs/treehouse/treehouse.minutes.20100223_1603.html NextAgenda: http://openetherpad.org/zq5xvuTmwB cu dogi ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] PyGame Activity chapter ready for review
I'm taking some Vacation days and using the time to finish up Make Your Own Sugar Activities! I have just finished the chapter on making an Activity using PyGame, which took much less time than I thought it would. You can check it out here: http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/ActivitiesGuideSugar/WebHome I've also added an About The Authors chapter and have revised the Introduction to suggest that the book may someday contain guest chapters on advanced topics by other authors. I'm planning on making a chapter on supporting the new style toolbars, doing some proofreading and revisions, and then publishing that as the first complete edition of the book. At that point it should be good enough to be judged as a finished product. Even so, there are more topics that others could add: * Making an Activity that uses the Karma framework (or Gnash) * Making an Activity in languages other than Python * Sugarizing an existing program A couple of you have suggested other topics that you might be interested in writing. Those would of course be welcome too. As I've said in other emails I'd be interested in a cover image of an older child programming. Some of you work with children and might have suitable pictures that you could get the parent's permission to use. If necessary we could posterize the image with The GIMP to make the child less identifyable. Maybe some of you have other ideas for cover images. What I'm hoping for is an image that says making your own Sugar Activities can be fun and not too difficult for children, teachers, and other non-programmers. A picture of an older teacher programming might be good too. James Simmons ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
