Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
On Mon, June 6, 2011 8:11 pm, John Gilmore wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Excellent questions, and very timely. I believe that Walter Bender wrote: 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. 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 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 contend 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. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. Several programming languages have been successfully taught in third grade, including Logo, LISP, Smalltalk, BASIC and a few others. APL has been successfully taught as a math language rather than a programming language starting in first grade, with programming introduced in third grade. (APL is the only programming language that has times × and divide ÷ symbols that match first-grade arithmetic books, as does the XO keyboard.) All of the successful experiments that I know of on teaching programming in elementary school started with simple examples and free exploration, and then showed users how to make small modifications to start with, advancing gradually through various problems of interest and the relevant functions and features of the languages. There is an excellent tutorial sequence of problems on the front page of Etoys, and there are people working on creating a sequence of perhaps a hundred topics to introduce the rest of the language. We must do the same in Turtle Art. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Exactly so. See my Wiki page, The Undiscoverable, about this problem in Sugar generally, and the necessity of providing hints at appropriate points in lessons that require these features. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Undiscoverable I am about to give Turtle Art its own page, discussing the issues you raise, and suggesting a strategy to overcome them. Also http://booki.treehouse.su/discovering-discovery/ which should soon have a chapter on Turtle Art, and eventually others on other approaches to programming in Smalltalk, Python, and FORTH. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. The sequence * Play with blocks and GUI * Square example (7 blocks with loop) * Play with example * Squares example (13 blocks with nested loops) * Play with example * Flower example (3 nested routines with 20, 7, and 6 blocks, each containing a loop) * Play with example does what you want. Start with moving, drawing lines, and turning. Then put move and turn together, and repeat four times. Then repeat that several times at angles that make up a full circle. Then do that in different sizes and colors. Allow sufficient time for exploration in between. Answer questions with well-chosen hints, rather than showing students exactly how something works. I have been working on various ideas for math and physics lessons based on Turtle Art, and I am about to work out a proper sequence of programming ideas covering many basic programming and Computer Science ideas, involving every block and other function in Turtle Art. I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I like Turtle Art because it exposes a central concept in programming and Computer Science, the parse tree, and because it allows us to build models of other CS concepts. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's
[IAEP] [ANN] Waveplace starting another five laptop projects in Haiti
Hello everyone, Waveplace will be traveling back to Haiti in ten days to start enough five laptop projects, bringing our total there to 19 schools. I'll be blogging daily starting today, focusing this time on the people and emotions involved, so please tune in: http://waveplace.org/news/blog/ You can also follow my Twitter feed to get more regular updates: http://twitter.com/teefal Take care, Tim -- Timothy Falconer Waveplace Foundation http://waveplace.org + 1 610 797 3100 x33 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [ANN] Waveplace starting another five laptop projects in Haiti
Ah, sorry about that. Start *another* five laptop projects, not enough. There are never enough :) Take care, Tim -- Timothy Falconer Waveplace Foundation http://waveplace.org + 1 610 797 3100 x33 On Jun 7, 2011, at 8:57 AM, Timothy Falconer wrote: Hello everyone, Waveplace will be traveling back to Haiti in ten days to start enough five laptop projects, bringing our total there to 19 schools. I'll be blogging daily starting today, focusing this time on the people and emotions involved, so please tune in: http://waveplace.org/news/blog/ You can also follow my Twitter feed to get more regular updates: http://twitter.com/teefal Take care, Tim -- Timothy Falconer Waveplace Foundation http://waveplace.org + 1 610 797 3100 x33 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] [SLOBS] meeting reminder
We will be having a Sugar oversight board meeting on Thursday, 9 June at 18:00 EST (23 UTC) on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting. We have 4 items on the agenda: (1) Scratch License (Walter) (2) OSD vs FS definition of FOSS licenses (Walter) (3) Membership fees (Bernie) (4) 3rd party Sugar merchandising (Dogi) Please join us. regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. 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. 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 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. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat that over and over until done. We'd look for a spray gun, or toss a whole bucket of paint, or recruit a crowd of painters, or something. Fast things and painstaking things aren't disjoint in computing, as they are elsewhere; how do you teach that powerful insight?) Cute idea for a project: fill the screen. There are of course many ways to do it: from using the fill-screen block to setting the pen size to the screen width to discovering the repeat block to discovering that you can launch as many turtles as you'd like, each of which has a pen. 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). First, have Turtle Art start up not with a blank slate, but by bringing in one of the predefined designs -- preferably at random, so they'll see more of the corpus as they run it over and over. I have gone back and forth on this one. I think that you are right: I should start with a program on the screen, probably a simple example of a spiral that introduces the concepts of loops and variables (and perhaps sensors). Second, I suggest that if some blocks are
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? Yes. v108 should run on any XO build. 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). Those are all nice, but just using the microphone in works nicely. Plus you have the camera. 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? There are lots of bits and pieces. Regarding robots, there is a nice book written by Fred Martin that came out maybe 5 years ago. (Fred was one of the principal designers of the original Lego robotics kits at MIT and helped develop with 6.270 curriculum. He teaches at UMass-Lowell. enjoy. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. 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. 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 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. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat that over and over until done. We'd look for a spray gun, or toss a whole bucket of paint, or recruit a crowd of painters, or something. Fast things and painstaking things aren't disjoint in computing, as they are elsewhere; how do you teach that powerful insight?) Cute idea for a project: fill the screen. There are of course many ways to do it: from using the fill-screen block to setting the pen size to the screen width to discovering the repeat block to discovering that you can launch as many turtles as you'd like, each of which has a pen. I am open to suggestions as to how to get more kids to move on from Turtle Art to
Re: [IAEP] DesignBlocks
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Rafael Ortiz raf...@activitycentral.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: On a somewhat related note: Microsoft Research introduced TouchStudio for Windows Phone 7 (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/touchstudio/default.aspx) to allow development right on the phones the other day. The video ( http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Peli/TouchStudio-Script-Your-Phone-on-Your-Phone-Reloaded ) is well worth a look in my opinion. Another similar effort is the Catdroid project (http://code.google.com/p/catroid/) which is being developed at Graz University of Technology in Graz, Austria - and currently sponsored via GSoC - and aims to be an on-device graphical programming language for Android devices that is inspired by the Scratch. While it's early days for both projects I think that anyone working on efforts in this area should keep an eye on them. Lessons learned from these (touchscreen) on-device environments could be particularly useful looking towards the XO-3 and other tablets. Cheers, Christoph Am 06.06.2011 20:13, schrieb ana.cichero: There is a pretty group of users for Processing here in Montevideo! I think the mailing list and the group is still active, some of them could get envolved. mnav-arte-cod...@googlegroups.com mailto:mnav-arte-cod...@googlegroups.com ( I have their addresses in other case ) It may be a better investment of our resources to port Processing (which is Java-based) to Sugar. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep More info about DesignBlocks actual state http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evhan55/designblocks-visual-programming-for-artists/posts/84640 And also I found an interesting way to control arduino via JS, (Unfortunately it also needs flash). http://www.schillmania.com/projects/arduino-js/ Anyone knows similar projects ? Still the Java based arduino IDE is much more powerful. cheers. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ 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 Butia is a nice way to control Arduino (from Turtle Art). No flash required... just Python. regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
Walter, Thanks. And I'll check out Fred Martin's book. If you are up for another visit to us in the Fall to do some more intensive Turtle Art work, we'd love to have you. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? Yes. v108 should run on any XO build. 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). Those are all nice, but just using the microphone in works nicely. Plus you have the camera. 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? There are lots of bits and pieces. Regarding robots, there is a nice book written by Fred Martin that came out maybe 5 years ago. (Fred was one of the principal designers of the original Lego robotics kits at MIT and helped develop with 6.270 curriculum. He teaches at UMass-Lowell. enjoy. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. 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. 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 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. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat that over and over until done. We'd look for a spray gun, or toss a whole bucket of paint, or recruit a crowd of painters, or something. Fast things and painstaking things aren't disjoint in computing, as they are elsewhere; how do you teach that powerful insight?) Cute idea for a project: fill the screen. There are of course many ways to do it: from using
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Walter, Thanks. And I'll check out Fred Martin's book. If you are up for another visit to us in the Fall to do some more intensive Turtle Art work, we'd love to have you. Sounds like fun. Maybe early in the semester to get them up and running. -walter Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? Yes. v108 should run on any XO build. 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). Those are all nice, but just using the microphone in works nicely. Plus you have the camera. 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? There are lots of bits and pieces. Regarding robots, there is a nice book written by Fred Martin that came out maybe 5 years ago. (Fred was one of the principal designers of the original Lego robotics kits at MIT and helped develop with 6.270 curriculum. He teaches at UMass-Lowell. enjoy. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. 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. 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 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. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat that over and over until done. We'd look for a spray gun, or toss a whole bucket of paint, or recruit a crowd of painters, or something. Fast things and painstaking things aren't disjoint in
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
Walter, That would be great. Thanks. Can you look and see when in September might work for you? Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, Thanks. And I'll check out Fred Martin's book. If you are up for another visit to us in the Fall to do some more intensive Turtle Art work, we'd love to have you. Sounds like fun. Maybe early in the semester to get them up and running. -walter Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? Yes. v108 should run on any XO build. 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). Those are all nice, but just using the microphone in works nicely. Plus you have the camera. 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? There are lots of bits and pieces. Regarding robots, there is a nice book written by Fred Martin that came out maybe 5 years ago. (Fred was one of the principal designers of the original Lego robotics kits at MIT and helped develop with 6.270 curriculum. He teaches at UMass-Lowell. enjoy. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. 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. 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 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. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat
Re: [IAEP] [squeakland] [ANN] Waveplace starting another five laptop projects in Haiti
great to hear about waveplace activities and plans. i'm in the process of joining the ranks of the olpc movement, here in SoCal it's interesting that you are in Bethehem PA were a long time buddy was born... i'm in the assessment/design phase to plan for the establishment of a mobile SoCal olpc XOWiki repair, lending and presentation lab fleet service. I need help on setting up olpc servers within central la communities, where i reside. To ramp up for what I'm doing I'd very much like to participate in your mentor program...hope it's feasibile for me to do so and spend time with your EToys training materials, asap. I realize you just had a major event and if by chance you have podcasts, presentations on a site please send me the urls. http://kmw.caltek.net is a bio on me, fyi. I created http://caltek.net in 1997 as a project of the http://commons.org (the domain now in on a server in PA maybe close to where waveplace is located) October 2010 I finally created http://teknowledgy.org which is a box colocated here in LA at http://calpop.com where I'm developing curriculum and learning resources for various floss related projects in a business context of entrepreneurship thanks cheers! - Cool I saw on Swedish news yesterday that Rwanda was buying OLPC to every school child. Karl On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Timothy Falconer tee...@waveplace.org Kawrote: Hello everyone, Waveplace will be traveling back to Haiti in ten days to start enough five laptop projects, bringing our total there to 19 schools. I'll be blogging daily starting today, focusing this time on the people and emotions involved, so please tune in: http://waveplace.org/news/blog/ You can also follow my Twitter feed to get more regular updates: http://twitter.com/teefal Take care, Tim -- Timothy Falconer Waveplace Foundation http://waveplace.org + 1 610 797 3100 x33 ___ squeakland mailing list squeakl...@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland ___ squeakland mailing list squeakl...@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland -- http://64.27.24.247:8000/xowiki/en:weblog?summary=1 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
