Re: [IAEP] Academic papers about Sugar (UI)
On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Hi Sascha, the best work in this context that I've seen so far is Sven Bergman's master thesis: Sugar - Not necessarily unhealthy: http://dimeb.informatik.uni-bremen.de/documents/Sugar-Not_necessarily_unhealthy.pdf By the way, what is the focus of your thesis? I've recently restarted a dormant thesis project myself and would of course love to avoid too much overlap (esp. since Sven's thesis is basically *exactly* what I had planned to do;-). thanks for this christoph, interesting Cheers, Christoph Zitat von Sascha Silbe sascha-ml-ui-sugar-i...@silbe.org: Hi! Sorry for the slightly OT post, but I'm having a hard time finding relevant papers for my diploma thesis. I'm looking for papers a) describing the Sugar Learning Platform (high-level overview, ideas behind it) and b) that describe ideas used when designing Sugar (e.g. other experimental UIs), i.e. that formed the basis of the Sugar HIGs. c) anything else that had an influence on the UI design of Sugar. I have compiled an annotated reference list of alan kay papers many of them related to UI design issues and presenting original and valuable ideas about that http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/alanKay+talk I found John Maxwell's PhD and alan kay's paper an early history of smalltalk to be the most valuable What I've found: - Carlos' thesis is the best match so far, but it focusses on what Sugar looks like, not the ideas behind it - some early articles about OLPC but they're more about laptops in education than about Sugar I'd appreciate any pointer in the right direction. CU Sascha -- http://sascha.silbe.org/ http://www.infra-silbe.de/ -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: 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
Re: [IAEP] an interesting article on an article on learning styles...
On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: Almost certainly, you were told that your instruction should match your students' styles. For example, kinesthetic learners—students who learn best through hands-on activities—are said to do better in classes that feature plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse. Now four psychologists argue that you were told wrong. There is no strong scientific evidence to support the matching idea, they contend in a paper published this weekhttp://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/index.cfm?journal=pspicontent=pspi/9_3in *Psychological Science in the Public Interest. *And there is absolutely no reason for professors to adopt it in the classroom. http://chronicle.com/article/Matching-Teaching-Style-to/49497/ for those with a more visual learning style ;-) there is a Dan Willingham video about this: Learning styles don't exist http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AUhl=en-GBv=sIv9rz2NTUk Also Dan's book is a very good read about learning ideas: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/11/dan-willinghams-book.html cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Information Systems Director, Center for Business Solutions San Francisco State University http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://cbs.sfsu.edu/ http://is.sfsu.edu/ ___ 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
[IAEP] tony forster recent blogs
tony has a very interesting blog about critical literacy as well as quite a few other recent great turtle art projects http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2009/12/computer-programming-and-acquisition-of.html http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] scratch gone missing
Scratch cover story of the November 2009 issue of CACM, the monthly magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/scratch/scratch-cacm.pdf Clear explanation of design principles along with successful, interesting project ideas including some great collaboration examples ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] scratch gone missing
On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 4:35 AM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: On 07.11.2009, at 23:28, Bill Kerr wrote: On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: On 07.11.2009, at 04:48, Bill Kerr wrote: On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:10, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:107 How come scratch is no longer available for sugar? (the link is to the programming category of sugar activities) You mean Scratch was available in ASLO but isn't any more? No but it should be there since Scratch has a far better UI than Etoys Agreed on the should be there part. As for better UI: Scratch does what it does incredibly well. If all you want to do can be done in Scratch then it is an excellent tool. Etoys is way more powerful, but comparatively hard to get into. thanks for replying Bert I'm not sure what you mean by Etoys being way more powerful. I would agree that Kedama, the parallel tile particle system, is way more powerful than anything in Scratch. Did you have something more in mind? Yes, too many to list all in fact. The power of Scratch lies in its limited scope - several years of development and refinement went into it to find the smallest set of features that make it easily teachable while still broadly applicable. There are others who could describe the Squeak/Etoys philosophy better than me, but one of its core ideas is no limits. Where Scratch is a closed environment, Etoys provides just a thin layer of visual scripting on top of a much larger system. There are literally hundreds of objects that can be used as building blocks, from basic ones like rectangles, ellipses, polygons, or text, to complex ones like a book or a MIDI sequencer or video player or a working chess game (in Scratch there are only bitmap-sprites). In Etoys you can change coordinate systems, or embed objects into each other creating hierarchical animations, or connect objects with arrows to create diagrams that are fully scriptable, etc. In Scratch, every Sprite is separate, and they can communicate with others only by broadcasting - this is more limited but much easier to learn, and less prone to errors. And if all that is not enough (there are always things the designers can't anticipate) Etoys lets you escape to the full Squeak environment. While Scratch is implemented in Squeak too, you cannot access it. Again that limitation was a conscious trade-off (for example it enables players for Scratch projects to be implemented in other languages). Here are a few examples of my own projects in the Squeak showcase that I think would be hard to recreate in Scratch. Collision Physics http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7052 (objects with collision sensors adding their forces to influence motion, this one is pure Etoys) OLPC-XO-Display http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7050 (adds a new Squeak class to simulate the pixel pattern of the XO's display) Euros http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=7055 (connects to a web service to get currency conversion rate using a few lines of Squeak scripting) For teachers the ability to make an easy start with a program is very important. When teaching a group then if several students encounter something they can't solve then it creates huge problems, especially for difficult to manage classes. And even for more advanced students features that are easy to find and work smoothly are important so that they can focus clearly on the challenging learning (scripting) rather than hunting around for where the tools are. There are a whole lot of features in Scratch that makes this possible (as you acknowledge). I haven't spelt out those features in detail here but will run some more tests and attempt to do so soon. One of my students mentions some of them here: http://soeasyman123.blogspot.com/2009/11/great-race.html I found Etoys very troublesome for a few reasons. 1. was because whenever I tried to save it would just close the program and I would jsut simply lose all my work. this occurred to me 3 times. 2. I couldn't view the scripts while having the cars move because the scripts would get in the way of the test. 3. the scripts were always in the way of the pictures so i had to close them everytime i finished with them which was very time consuming. 4. the drawing tools on Etoys aren't the greatest tools you could get. Although these reasons were troublesome I found Etoys interesting because there were so many scripts and other things to play with 1 sounds like a bug. 2 and 3 can be resolved by arranging the scripts so that the scripted objects only cover a smaller portion of the screen (like in Scratch). 4 is true, patches welcome ;) One of the fundamental Etoys ideas is that authoring is always
Re: [IAEP] scratch gone missing
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: On 07.11.2009, at 04:48, Bill Kerr wrote: On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:10, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:107 How come scratch is no longer available for sugar? (the link is to the programming category of sugar activities) You mean Scratch was available in ASLO but isn't any more? No but it should be there since Scratch has a far better UI than Etoys Agreed on the should be there part. As for better UI: Scratch does what it does incredibly well. If all you want to do can be done in Scratch then it is an excellent tool. Etoys is way more powerful, but comparatively hard to get into. thanks for replying Bert I'm not sure what you mean by Etoys being way more powerful. I would agree that Kedama, the parallel tile particle system, is way more powerful than anything in Scratch. Did you have something more in mind? For teachers the ability to make an easy start with a program is very important. When teaching a group then if several students encounter something they can't solve then it creates huge problems, especially for difficult to manage classes. And even for more advanced students features that are easy to find and work smoothly are important so that they can focus clearly on the challenging learning (scripting) rather than hunting around for where the tools are. There are a whole lot of features in Scratch that makes this possible (as you acknowledge). I haven't spelt out those features in detail here but will run some more tests and attempt to do so soon. One of my students mentions some of them here: http://soeasyman123.blogspot.com/2009/11/great-race.html I found Etoys very troublesome for a few reasons. 1. was because whenever I tried to save it would just close the program and I would jsut simply lose all my work. this occurred to me 3 times. 2. I couldn't view the scripts while having the cars move because the scripts would get in the way of the test. 3. the scripts were always in the way of the pictures so i had to close them everytime i finished with them which was very time consuming. 4. the drawing tools on Etoys aren't the greatest tools you could get. Although these reasons were troublesome I found Etoys interesting because there were so many scripts and other things to play with My inclination has been to try to transition students from scratch to python - but it doesn't work all that well I think in part because Scratch is *entirely* visual drag and drop tiles and the transition to text based programming is too abrupt for many. It might work better with etoys if the intended transition was from etoys to smalltalk (squeak). That might be a better way to go but a harder sell in a school environment (since python is a better known language and also fits in with Sugar) I think that GameMaker (proprietary but a free version is available) handles this issue best - it has drag and drop for beginners and a code window for more advanced and you can mix and match scripts using both features together. I know that etoys has a code window but I found it very difficult to use successfully. OTOH Etoys does integrate into Sugar reasonably well, unlike Scratch. If platform conformity was the sole criterium for better UI then Etoys would win hands down, with its Journal and Collaboration support. ok - with SoaS my efforts to enable collaboration on our school network have not been successful so although I have seen these features (in a session organised by Donna Benjamin in Melbourne a year ago) my students haven't been able to enjoy them unfortunately But another, maybe even more important difference is that Etoys is an open-source community project. So if there is an Etoys itch you know how to scratch (pun intended): patches welcome :) Yes, I suspect this (the license) is the main issue which I raised with Mitch Resnick (and on this list) last year and wrote a blog summing it up: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/11/scratch-license-disappointment.html The last word in the comments on my blog comes from Tom Hofmann: Neither license is a free or open source license. The binary one limits modification, the source one limits use and redistribution. They're just unfree in different ways. So I guess it's really up to the Scratch team at MIT to improve the license and their failure to do that has resulted in Sugar Labs downgrading its distribution perhaps not consciously but as a slipping into darkness event - Bert - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http
Re: [IAEP] inquiry on constructionism advantages
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:21 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.comwrote: I have received an inquiry on implementing constructionism from a high official in the Bolivian government. Since my opinion may be biased :-), I request you help us with clear, simple and please objective answers (no vapor-stuff), if at all possible 1) How do constructionist pupils do on standardized tests, such as University entrance exams. (please inform about other demographic situations besides children of highly trained scholars - most Bolivian kids do not fit THAT bracket, alas) 2) How do they do with usual classroom tests, especially in the University. Core question is, are alumni of constructionism better, or at least competitive there? What evidence do we have to prove this? 3) Is there any evidence (objective, unbiased) as to the impact of constructionism in education? The big maybe here is further impact on development, yes ? (I may be mistaken here, please correct) 4) any other solid, statistically valid data supporting constructionism Please avoid treatises - I will be presenting this this week, and if anyone would volunteer, it may be possible to put you directly in touch with this official and/or his staff. It is, or should be widely known that I see the current conctructionist stance within OLPC and Sugar as a misguided, feel-good attempt that is bound to do more harm to most kids than good compared to what could be achieved with a solid curricular-content approach, but I honestly would be happier I were mistaken, if determined by solid evidence. I love constructionism, it just doesn't seem to me to be what kids need, and all in all, I wish it worked, but I cannot prove it does for most kids. I am certain, but cannot prove either, that it does work within classrooms with highly trained teachers, or for gifted kids, or when there is a lot of educated support from home, in any case not a basis to adopt it for a country like Bolivia. Yama Idit Harel's fractions study using logo contained a wide variety of testing / assessment criteria - some standardised type and others tracking individual development of children who progressed from not having a clue about what a fraction was to a sophisticated understanding I did a sort of replication of her study in an R12 or K12 school a few years ago and wrote it up and Idit's book is referenced at the end: http://www.users.on.net/~billkerr/a/isdp.htm I think a better way to think about this Yama is not to see it as an either / or but that constructionist methods can achieve things that what you describe as a solid curricular-content approach may not be able to achieve I also recently wrote a brief review of Liping Ma's book about maths learning as a contribution to attempting to put the curriculum wars into a more positive framework: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/07/liping-ma.html She also has the solution to the maths wars, the so called dichotomy between transmission and inquiry based teaching methods. That is usually surface appearance. The degree of meaningful understanding that occurs in the classroom depends mainly on the depth of the teachers conceptual understanding ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] inquiry on constructionism advantages
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:21 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.comwrote: I have received an inquiry on implementing constructionism from a high official in the Bolivian government. Since my opinion may be biased :-), I request you help us with clear, simple and please objective answers (no vapor-stuff), if at all possible 1) How do constructionist pupils do on standardized tests, such as University entrance exams. (please inform about other demographic situations besides children of highly trained scholars - most Bolivian kids do not fit THAT bracket, alas) 2) How do they do with usual classroom tests, especially in the University. Core question is, are alumni of constructionism better, or at least competitive there? What evidence do we have to prove this? 3) Is there any evidence (objective, unbiased) as to the impact of constructionism in education? The big maybe here is further impact on development, yes ? (I may be mistaken here, please correct) 4) any other solid, statistically valid data supporting constructionism Please avoid treatises - I will be presenting this this week, and if anyone would volunteer, it may be possible to put you directly in touch with this official and/or his staff. It is, or should be widely known that I see the current conctructionist stance within OLPC and Sugar as a misguided, feel-good attempt that is bound to do more harm to most kids than good compared to what could be achieved with a solid curricular-content approach, but I honestly would be happier I were mistaken, if determined by solid evidence. I love constructionism, it just doesn't seem to me to be what kids need, and all in all, I wish it worked, but I cannot prove it does for most kids. I am certain, but cannot prove either, that it does work within classrooms with highly trained teachers, or for gifted kids, or when there is a lot of educated support from home, in any case not a basis to adopt it for a country like Bolivia. Yama http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/09/realistic-constructionism.html Some more thoughts here Yama about how well constructed exploratory tasks using Turtle Art this time might achieve goals that can't be achieved by that solid curricular-content. This remark from one of my students, cited at the end, was quite revealing: There were two ways to work out what values were needed in order to create a shape which could change in size and still keep it's correct dimensions. First was to use trial and error and we had to simply guess each value until we got it correct. The other way was to use mathmetics and actually calculate the values. I mostly used trial and error because i was too lazy to do the maths but in the end i found that using maths i got a much more accurate shape. btw Bastien I think constructionists are not so much a crowd but more a bunch of idiosyncratic individuals :-) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sdenka Salas's book about the xo and sugar
from walter's digest: 2. Sdenka Salas, a teacher who is working with Andean children from Aymara and Quechua communities, wrote a book in April about using Sugar in the classroom. She recently completed the English-language version. She has kindly made it available for download (See [http://www.scribd.com/doc/20189623/The-XO-Laptop-in-the-Classroom]). I just had a quick look at this and it looks great - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Another article that could probably use some measured response.
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:39 AM, Kevin Cole dc.l...@gmail.com wrote: This may have already come up in the 680 unread messages I have in my inbox... If so, my apologies. A researcher in my office subscribes to Miller-McCune magazine, whose slogan is Turning Research into Solutions. After seeing last week's presentation by SJ et al, he handed me an article from the latest issue (September / October 2009, Volume 2, Number 5). | News and Opinions by Timothy Ogden (page 12) | | COMPUTER ERROR? | There appears to be cheaper, more effective ways to improve education in developing nations than the glitzy One Laptop per Child program. The article is available on-line at http://miller-mccune.com/business_economics/computer-error-1390 At the risk of being burned at the stake, though I'm one of the devout, I think the author makes some good arguments that should be either countered POLITELY and/or addressed. hi kevin, my thought was to ask: why do some NGOs criticise other NGOs in this way? While other NGOs just get on with the job. Is this to do with a real discussion of the issues or is there another agenda, such as a fight for being noticed to attract funding? I would see a real discussion about the different efficiencies of different methods of helping developing countries as important and am very interested in such discussions - see http://universalcommunication.wikispaces.com/ But what is the relevance of comparing deworming with the xo No one promoting the xo is critical of deworming. And such different approaches attract different types of people, surely there is room for both. The other comparisons too while a little more relevant don't make much sense to me. Esther Duflo's suggestion of teachers making a date stamped photo of themselves each day is going to improve teacher attendance at low cost. Great idea. But the goals of this approach compared to the xo approach are very different and so its difficult to compare. I didn't see this article as fair or balanced because it didn't attempt to setup a real basis for comparing things. Also the link provided by walter is very interesting - all the comments as well as Oscar Becarra's response ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Another article that could probably use some measured response.
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:40 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:39 AM, Kevin Cole dc.l...@gmail.com wrote: This may have already come up in the 680 unread messages I have in my inbox... If so, my apologies. A researcher in my office subscribes to Miller-McCune magazine, whose slogan is Turning Research into Solutions. After seeing last week's presentation by SJ et al, he handed me an article from the latest issue (September / October 2009, Volume 2, Number 5). | News and Opinions by Timothy Ogden (page 12) | | COMPUTER ERROR? | There appears to be cheaper, more effective ways to improve education in developing nations than the glitzy One Laptop per Child program. The article is available on-line at http://miller-mccune.com/business_economics/computer-error-1390 At the risk of being burned at the stake, though I'm one of the devout, I think the author makes some good arguments that should be either countered POLITELY and/or addressed. hi kevin, my thought was to ask: why do some NGOs criticise other NGOs in this way? While other NGOs just get on with the job. Is this to do with a real discussion of the issues or is there another agenda, such as a fight for being noticed to attract funding? I would see a real discussion about the different efficiencies of different methods of helping developing countries as important and am very interested in such discussions - see http://universalcommunication.wikispaces.com/ But what is the relevance of comparing deworming with the xo No one promoting the xo is critical of deworming. And such different approaches attract different types of people, surely there is room for both. The other comparisons too while a little more relevant don't make much sense to me. Esther Duflo's suggestion of teachers making a date stamped photo of themselves each day is going to improve teacher attendance at low cost. Great idea. But the goals of this approach compared to the xo approach are very different and so its difficult to compare. I didn't see this article as fair or balanced because it didn't attempt to setup a real basis for comparing things. Also the link provided by walter is very interesting - all the comments as well as Oscar Becarra's response more information on the esther duflo approach here: http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/eduflo/papers http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/eduflo/papersher approach is cost efficient small interventions that make a big difference developed into a science - that is the claim, which is interesting but my response is skeptical - I'm not convinced we are at the stage of the one true scientific approach wrt the developing world I think from her perspective the OLPC mega change approach is seen as wasteful here is a popular article about her: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/step-aside-sartre-this-is-the-new-face-of-french-intellectualism-1332028.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/step-aside-sartre-this-is-the-new-face-of-french-intellectualism-1332028.html She investigates, in elaborate detail, the practical, small things which can make a difference in trying to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor. For instance, not just education, education, education but how to make sure pupils and their teachers turn up at school. (Answer: tiny incentives, such as free meals or uniforms, can transform attendance in poor countries.) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] turtle art clean request
it would be good to have a tile that only cleaned the graphics and kept the other setting such as current pen thickness, colour, turtle position, heading etc logowriter had a rg reset graphics which acted like the TA clean and a clean which acted like I'm suggesting in my first line, other settings not being reset for example I wanted to write a procedure that showed the number of the colour as the colour changed by changing the heading, for instance I can do that but it would be much easier and initially more understandable for students if there was a clean that kept other settings it would even better still if there was a separate way to erase show while the procedure was running ( I haven't looked at the python yet ) How to do it with the current TA store in box1: 0 repeat 90 setpensize 10 right box1 set color heading show heading forward 100 back 100 wait 10 store in box1: box1 + 1 clean (everything resets) How to do it with a clean that cleans graphics but keeps other settings: setpensize 10 repeat 90 forward 100 back 100 right 1 set color heading show heading wait 10 clean (only the graphics are cleaned) The ability to see how heading works concretely in action and to program this fairly easily would make a difference as to the percentage of students who grasp the concept Actually for a while there I thought that setpensize was broken because I didn't realise that clean was a total reset ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] 40 maths shapes challenges
introduced turtle art and barry newell's 40 shapes to my students today about half way through the lesson someone asked, how do you do the circle? before I could say anything another student replied, that's easy - just use arc you've gotta laugh (an arc primitive wasn't there for the original logo, nor is it in scratch) On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com wrote: Circle is one of the hardest in Scratch. Unless I am missing a command. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: Image attached Forty shapes to make in Scratch http://scratch.mit.edu/ or some other version of logo, such as Turtle Arthttp://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art. It's hard to see the thumbnail but click on it for a larger view. This is one of the best sheets ever for teaching maths (designed by Barry Newell): - the logo turtle or scratch cat acts as a transitional object between the concrete maths shape and the abstraction of the script that makes the shape - the sheet includes both simple and complex shapes, increasing in order of complexity, there is a challenge there for everyone - many of the more complex shapes are made up of combinations of the simpler shapes Source: Barry Newell's Turtle Confusion (1988) ___ 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
[IAEP] turtle art: 2 instances, no?
I can't see any way to load 2 instances on the SoaS version If I have a project loaded, saved and named Then go into the journal and try to load an older saved version then it doesn't load but puts me back to the current open version I have to first close the current version and then open the older version to get it Also if I am working on a project and remember an idea from a sample project then I can't just load the sample view the idea and then quickly return to my current project to implement there I have to close current project, then open sample and view idea, then close sample, then reopen current project, etc. Please correct if I am wrong about this ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] turtle art: 2 instances, no?
On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, On 7 Sep 2009, at 12:09, Bill Kerr wrote: I can't see any way to load 2 instances on the SoaS version If I have a project loaded, saved and named Then go into the journal and try to load an older saved version then it doesn't load but puts me back to the current open version I have to first close the current version and then open the older version to get it This is not a bug with TurtleArt. It's (in my view) the major design backfire that is the Keep button... Keep is not like a copy, duplicate or 'save as' file operation in other OS environments. Sugars Keep is actually a (bad) attempt at Keep version snap shot, unfortunately no where in the Journal UI is this visually indicated/referenced. Think of Keep a little like non-linear undo states stored to Journal. The problem with all this is that Sugar currently treats all versions you Keep from an activity as the same activity. You can only have one of the versions active at once, this is what you're seeing when you try to resume (what you think is another old activity is actually a version) and Sugar switches to the current version of it you already have open. To create fresh new activities, you need to: 1) start new activity 2) create masterpiece 3) stop activity 4) goto step 1 If you ever find yourself clicking Keep give your self a small jab in the hand with a sharp protractor ;-) hi gary, I'm doing some of the barry newell 40 shapes challenge I posted on another thread Some of the shapes are related to other shapes eg. after I do shape 6 then I want to Keep that as BN6 then use it again to make BN7, etc So I change the name in the box from BN6 to BN7 and click Keep It does work similar to Save As ... If I go to the Journal and click the arrow on the right the image represents the different versions But the confusion arises when I try to open an old version and just get back to the currently open version So I can achieve something like Save As ... but can't achieve opening two versions at once, as you say In every release of Sugar to date, Keep == horrible design failure, even for the upcoming 0.86. The problem is the real deal (true versioning) is always just over the horizon, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and the blasted button some how makes it through (and causes way more grief then it ever solves as the common use case is I want a duplicate copy of this). Regards, --Gary Also if I am working on a project and remember an idea from a sample project then I can't just load the sample view the idea and then quickly return to my current project to implement there I have to close current project, then open sample and view idea, then close sample, then reopen current project, etc. Please correct if I am wrong about this ___ 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] turtle art: 2 instances, no?
On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: I can't see any way to load 2 instances on the SoaS version If I have a project loaded, saved and named Then go into the journal and try to load an older saved version then it doesn't load but puts me back to the current open version I have to first close the current version and then open the older version to get it Also if I am working on a project and remember an idea from a sample project then I can't just load the sample view the idea and then quickly return to my current project to implement there I have to close current project, then open sample and view idea, then close sample, then reopen current project, etc. Please correct if I am wrong about this This is certainly not the intended behavior, nor what I had been experiencing in my testing. Is this SoaS Strawberry? Which version of Turtle Art are you running? hi walter, yes its SoaS Strawberry, I can't see how to check the version but I haven't changed the default version - I just had a look at the source but couldn't see the version number there 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
[IAEP] another svg icons issue
svg paths for arcs don't accept decimal values the icon ends up being smudged all over the place in a green colour an example of something that should work but doesn't in sugar !-- Arms CREATES ERROR , paths don't take decimals in sugar, replace with beziers path d=M 18 35 A .5 .1 15 0 0 18 38 fill=red stroke=stroke_color;/ path d=M 37 35 A .5 .1 -15 0 1 37 38 fill=fill_color; stroke=stroke_color;/-- the .5 and .1 values cause the problem decimal values work ok for other svg elements On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 9:16 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:43, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: Sugar does not support SVG animations? I just tried to replace the XO icon with an SVG animation as an extension of the http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/8_4/ModifyingSugar exercise - the icon replaced but was not animated. I'm seeking confirmation that this is correct and would be interested in the reason too Sugar uses librsvg to render all SVGs, I'm not sure which are the capabilities of this library regarding animations. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] 40 maths shapes challenges
tony has a demo of one of the shapes in turtle art on his blog: http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2009/09/turtleart-shapes.html On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 9:52 PM, Costello, Rob R costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au wrote: yes, i had success using that sheet as well Bill ... here's a quick demo i did of scratch in action - emerged out of lesson - i talked through a simple square for a couple of minutes; asked the students how i would make it triangle - a year 8 girl suggested the approach; which we then generalised to any number of sides http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/kittyAngles/kittyAngles.html students were off trying to build the shapes, or coming up with new ones ...some seem to find their niche with this -Original Message- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org on behalf of Bill Kerr Sent: Mon 8/31/2009 9:19 PM To: iaep Subject: [IAEP] 40 maths shapes challenges Image attached Forty shapes to make in Scratch http://scratch.mit.edu/ or some other version of logo, such as Turtle Arthttp://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art. It's hard to see the thumbnail but click on it for a larger view. This is one of the best sheets ever for teaching maths (designed by Barry Newell): - the logo turtle or scratch cat acts as a transitional object between the concrete maths shape and the abstraction of the script that makes the shape - the sheet includes both simple and complex shapes, increasing in order of complexity, there is a challenge there for everyone - many of the more complex shapes are made up of combinations of the simpler shapes Source: Barry Newell's Turtle Confusion (1988) *Important - *This email and any attachments may be confidential. If received in error, please contact us and delete all copies. Before opening or using attachments check them for viruses and defects. Regardless of any loss, damage or consequence, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not, resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any attached files our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. Any representations or opinions expressed are those of the individual sender, and not necessarily those of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] 40 maths shapes challenges
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com wrote: Circle is one of the hardest in Scratch. Unless I am missing a command. move a little turn a little lots of times repeat 360 [move 1 turn 1] that is a classic discussion arising from Papert does this prepare students for calculus? an honest child's version of sophisticated maths? or are the conventions of calculus so different from body syntonic logo maths that the learning does not transfer? good one to discuss Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: Image attached Forty shapes to make in Scratch http://scratch.mit.edu/ or some other version of logo, such as Turtle Arthttp://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art. It's hard to see the thumbnail but click on it for a larger view. This is one of the best sheets ever for teaching maths (designed by Barry Newell): - the logo turtle or scratch cat acts as a transitional object between the concrete maths shape and the abstraction of the script that makes the shape - the sheet includes both simple and complex shapes, increasing in order of complexity, there is a challenge there for everyone - many of the more complex shapes are made up of combinations of the simpler shapes Source: Barry Newell's Turtle Confusion (1988) ___ 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
[IAEP] SVG coloured icons
arising out of my class work with SVG icons many of the students wanted some fixed colours in their replacement icons and I wanted them to demo ability to reset colours within sugar both are possible by setting some colours with either names or hexadecimal and setting other colours using fill_color; and stroke_color; see http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-complex-svg-icons.html for some of the results and more detail ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Fwd: w7sins FUD
Yes the new paragraph is more reasonable: Microsoft is now targeting governments who are purchasing XOs, in an attempt to get them to replace the free software with Windows. It remains to be seen to what degree Microsoft will succeed. But with all of this pressure, Microsoft has harmed a project that has distributed more than 1 million laptops running free software, and has taken aim at the low-cost platform as a way to make poor children around the world dependent on its products. The OLPC threatens to become another example of the way Microsoft convinces governments around the world that an education involving computers must be synonymous with an education using Windows. In order to prevent this, it is vital that we work to raise global awareness of the harm Microsoft's involvement does to our children's education. On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:08 AM, Bobby Powers bobbypow...@gmail.com wrote: in any case, the text appears to be fixed now in a much more reasonable fashion. bobby On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Sebastian Silvasebast...@fuentelibre.org wrote: 2009/8/31 Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com I don't think anyone on this list was suggesting that Windows on OLPC was/is a good/appropriate solution for learning. But there is a free software alternative, Sugar, that is designed to be appropriated by the local community/culture. We were asking, why doesn't the FSF promote alternatives (Sugar or some other free learning platform) in parallel with their anti-cultural-imperialism message? -walter Walter, I thank you for taking my comment and bringing it back into the constructive sphere. Indeed your question is a very good one. WRT business oriented platforms, I think the idea is that those promote themselves (due to market dynamics)... except in niches like education, health, environment, where, well, they don't. So your point is very valid that the FSF could and perhaps should promote alternatives for education (such as Sugar). Then again, perhaps that is part of our place as SugarLabs ( or perhaps at least our Local Labs efforts which are closer to deployments ). I don't think pointing at the problem is so bad, because the first step to meaningful change is recognizing there is a problem. Cheers Sebas -- Sebastian Silva Laboratorios FuenteLibre http://blog.sebastiansilva.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 -- Bill Kerr http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Physics-3
thanks Gary the default single click shape does not work for the box but does work for circle and triangle I think there needs to be clear install instructions for those doing this for the first time. I wasn't sure what to do. I found some instructions here http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities#Installing_one_activity http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities#Installing_one_activitywhich were sufficient for me to work it out but would not be adequate for many of my students I will give them a copy of physics-3.xo with some instructions like this, making it as easy as possible so we can spend more of our limited time exploring software rather than confusion arising over a routine installation task - hover over and erase existing physics - get physics-3.xo (1.4MB) off L drive onto your USB - insert your USB and double click on your USB icon - your USB contents should appear in the Journal, including the physics program - click on the arrow on the right hand side of page for the physics program - click on start button - physics will open and be installed on the SoaS stick To confirm note the new features: - hand for grab - irregular polygon replaces hexagon icon - you can now save your work and others cheers On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:03 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Just thought I'd forward this over to IAEP. (If you are running an older build of SoaS, you'll need to erase the existing Physics Activity before trying to upgrade. The older SoaS shipped with Activities installed in a non-standard place, with administrator permissions, preventing the normal Sugar activity upgrade process. You'll likely need to drop into Terminal, find and remove the Physics.activity directory from there. Current SoaS builds have this issue resolved). Regards, --Gary Begin forwarded message: From: Sugar Labs Activities activit...@sugarlabs.org Date: 27 August 2009 18:41:21 BST To: sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Physics-3 Reply-To: sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4193 Sugar Platform: from 0.82 to 0.86 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29221 Release notes: * Journal state saving now supported! * MIME type support added so Physics Journal entries can be sent to others (application/x-physics-activity) * Fixed Activity title text input so you can name your work correctly (olpcgames glitch) * New Grab toolbar icon (hand) * New Polygon toolbar icon (irregular polygon shape) * Cleaned up toolbar order * Single click behaviour so that Circle, Triangle, and Box tool add default sized shapes * Single click behaviour for all tools, so that a subsequent single click creates a clone of the last shape made with that tool. * Erase tool now erases (one by one) pins/joints/motors from a shape, before finally removing the shape itself. * Using +key for all keyboard shortcuts (was causing PyGame input focus issues when typing a title) * Using the Sugar standard arrow cursor for the PyGame canvas (well, a fake one) * Cleaned up the Activity icon * Upgraded to new version of Elements 0.13 * Upgraded to new version of Box2D * Picked up Pootle (July 3rd) translations Many thanks to Asaf Paris Mandoki, and Brian Jordan for all their hard work! Reviewer comments: Trusted activity Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Physics-3
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, On 29 Aug 2009, at 14:44, Bill Kerr wrote: the default single click shape does not work for the box but does work for circle and triangle Just to confirm, this is tested and working. But, I think what happened here is that you may have dragged a very small (too small) box first, and then subsequent single clicks were then trying to clone that non drawable shape. I thought I'd avoided that case by not remembering parameters for shapes too small to draw, will fix this in the next release – so thanks for reporting it! :-) the square block does work if you click on it first but try clicking on the circle, the triangle and the square in that order - the square does not create a shape by default (the others do) then exit physics and go back in click on the square, the triangle and circle in order - the circle does not create a shape by default (the others do) and variations of the above - sometimes the default (click shape, click screen, shape standard size shape created) works sometimes it doesn't eg. it might always work for the square but not at all for the triangle or circle depending on the clicking order in some cases it leaves just an arrow on the screen and the program crashes all of the above without me trying to create any smaller shapes ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Physics-3
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Bill, On 30 Aug 2009, at 01:30, Bill Kerr wrote: On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, On 29 Aug 2009, at 14:44, Bill Kerr wrote: the default single click shape does not work for the box but does work for circle and triangle Just to confirm, this is tested and working. But, I think what happened here is that you may have dragged a very small (too small) box first, and then subsequent single clicks were then trying to clone that non drawable shape. I thought I'd avoided that case by not remembering parameters for shapes too small to draw, will fix this in the next release – so thanks for reporting it! :-) the square block does work if you click on it first but try clicking on the circle, the triangle and the square in that order - the square does not create a shape by default (the others do) then exit physics and go back in click on the square, the triangle and circle in order - the circle does not create a shape by default (the others do) and variations of the above - sometimes the default (click shape, click screen, shape standard size shape created) works sometimes it doesn't eg. it might always work for the square but not at all for the triangle or circle depending on the clicking order in some cases it leaves just an arrow on the screen and the program crashes all of the above without me trying to create any smaller shapes Hmmm, that's really interesting. I can't reproduce any of these cases here :-( Is anyone else able to reproduce these cases? I've tested on an XO-1 running 0.82, XO-1 running 0.84, and a Mac running F11 and sugar-jhbuild 0.85.x Just to help my sanity, when you next reproduce this... With the tool that you find fails, can you click and drag to create a size of your own choosing, and then afterwards single click to create a clone? Just to be sure that your not managing to create a 'micro' shape as the default by accident (yes I need to fix that case). I tried again on another USB ( I have a few different brands) and this time it behaves more like you are describing ie. I am getting microshapes, some of them quite small but which I can (sometimes) see Cloning is not reliable - it sometimes reverts to microshapes adata USB matches your description LASER USB is what I was describing earlier Lack of consistency b/w USBs is disconcerting ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] FSF attitude to xo and sugar
n Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:20 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: === Sugar Digest === 4. The recent FSF campaign condemning the use of Windows 7 in education (See http://windows7sins.org/) imputes OLPC in complicity with Microsoft. It is disappointing that the FSF is not making any constructive arguments in favor of free software alternatives to Windows such as Sugar on GNU/Linux, which is currently shipped on every machine distributed by OLPC. http://windows7sins.org/#1 When I first saw it I interpreted that page as contrasting the xo as a positive alternative to Windows (and still think that is a valid interpretation) When I read what walter wrote above later I was shocked to realise that it could indeed be interpreted the way walter has, as well On revisiting I can't see any clarifying text there If walter's interpretation is the correct one, which may well be true, then it's a bad choice of graphic - they should have shown windows running on the xo screen, not happy smiling children from this 2008 article RMS is supportive of sugar but ambivalent about the xo: Sugar is free software, and contributing to it is a good thing to do. But don't forget the goal: helpful contributions are those that make Sugar better on free operating systems. Porting to Windows is permitted by the license, but it isn't a good thing to do http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/can-we-rescue-olpc-from-windows ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] FSF attitude to xo and sugar
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: On 28.08.2009, at 11:33, Bill Kerr wrote: n Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:20 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: === Sugar Digest === 4. The recent FSF campaign condemning the use of Windows 7 in education (See http://windows7sins.org/) imputes OLPC in complicity with Microsoft. It is disappointing that the FSF is not making any constructive arguments in favor of free software alternatives to Windows such as Sugar on GNU/Linux, which is currently shipped on every machine distributed by OLPC. http://windows7sins.org/#1 When I first saw it I interpreted that page as contrasting the xo as a positive alternative to Windows (and still think that is a valid interpretation) When I read what walter wrote above later I was shocked to realise that it could indeed be interpreted the way walter has, as well On revisiting I can't see any clarifying text there You need to click the Learn more link next to the XO picture. Citing from that concoction: As a result, it is expected that the main effect of the OLPC project -- if it succeeds -- will be to turn millions of children into Microsoft dependents. That is a negative effect, to the point where the world would be better off if the OLPC project had never existed. The project tragically became yet another example of Microsoft exerting its control to ends harmful to society's freedom. It's tragic how they undermine their allies' efforts in their blind zealousness. I see it now, thanks Bert. I agree, it's far too zealous and purist. I agree with Luke too. ( I did click on that link before but it sometimes seems to just reload the same page) I do give the FSF an annual donation so I'll write to them and complain. I thought the over zealousness came more from some FSF supporters than the leadership but perhaps I was wrong. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] FSF attitude to xo and sugar
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Bastien bastiengue...@googlemail.comwrote: After a discussion with the FSF, they agreed the picture was not really appropriate and that the text should clearly distinguish OLPC from Sugar. They will make an update - stay tuned. the picture is gone but the words are still there: As a result, it is expected that the main effect of the OLPC project -- if it succeeds -- will be to turn millions of children into Microsoft dependents. That is a negative effect, to the point where the world would be better off if the OLPC project had never existed still over zealous, purist and FUD ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] svg animations, no?
thanks for information, tony What I stress to my students initially is the strong underlying rationale for knowing more about SVGs. Some of the points I go over with them more than once are: - animations are fairly easy to achieve (SMIL or Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language is part of SVG) - it offers a path into some core web techniques and standards: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and SVG - It's mathematical - both simple co-ordinate systems and more complex maths such as bezier curves. I like the fact that art can be done with maths - good free open source software is available, eg. inkscapehttp://www.inkscape.org/ - the small size (low bandwidth) and scalability of SVG graphics means they have a big future, eg. in the mobile phone industry - images are scalable There are some very interesting essays and SVG examples at this dev.opera page http://dev.opera.com/articles/svg/ (view these pages using Opera browser) ie. I see a strong educational rationale for teaching more about SVGs (this first occurred to me when reading Tim Berners Lee's book Weaving the Web), but confess to my lack of success in persuading anyone else at all about this :-( btw my year 10 students are enjoying the challenge to make their own icons to replace the XO icon - I'll be posting some of their icons soon On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 1:57 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Sugar uses librsvg to render all SVGs, I'm not sure which are the capabilities of this library regarding animations. http://osdir.com/ml/gnome.lib.librsvg.devel/2008-07/msg3.html Animation is going to be a lot of work, and I'm not sure that I'd want it in librsvg. It's a very good, fast static SVG rendering library, and I'd like it to stay that way. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] svg animations, no?
Sugar does not support SVG animations? I just tried to replace the XO icon with an SVG animation as an extension of the http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/8_4/ModifyingSugar exercise - the icon replaced but was not animated. I'm seeking confirmation that this is correct and would be interested in the reason too ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] svg animations, no?
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.comwrote: I've tried animations as well (with JavaScript) and indeed they don't work. However, I'm not sure they really are a good idea for icons. They may get confusing or annoying. I agree that animated icons become annoying but I'm thinking of it from the POV of teaching SVG Kids make their own icons - they like that. Certainly they would be further engaged and learn more about SVGs if the opportunity to make animated icons was there It could be a good opportunity but you need the right tools - Opera browser is the best I know for displaying SVGs - it seems that librsvg (information from Tomeu) is not standards compliant at this time 2009/8/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:43, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: Sugar does not support SVG animations? I just tried to replace the XO icon with an SVG animation as an extension of the http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/8_4/ModifyingSugar exercise - the icon replaced but was not animated. I'm seeking confirmation that this is correct and would be interested in the reason too Sugar uses librsvg to render all SVGs, I'm not sure which are the capabilities of this library regarding animations. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
or humans that knows anything about how what's out there? is, and most humans have been fooling themselves for 100,000 years about most of this. Stories are arbitrary, and the universe seems less arbitrary. So the epistemology (the outlook) of science is one of the greatest human inventions. It helps us realize just how poorly our normal thinking activities work. The process of science is also one of the greatest human inventions; it helps groups of people police each other's tendencies towards myriad ways of bad thinking to generally result in clearer perspectives on what's out there?. In computer metaphor it is like error correcting codes and error correcting processes. Lots of work has to be done to clear away as much noise as possible from our senses and bad thinking. This is why every human on the planet should learn real science. It's not to get a job, or because science is interesting and powerful. It's because we are all really bad thinkers and we just can't afford to continue with both powerful technologies, population growth, and bad thinking at the same time. That is a good place to end this reply, but there is one further thing I think needs to be pointed out. And this is that using math (with our without computers) is a really good way to create possible worlds that might be like the real world in important and interesting ways. For example, if we have some reason to think that animals might be able to smell well enough to follow gradients of odor (we can certainly do it well enough to head for cooking food when we are hungry) then it makes great sense to try to see what kinds of behaviors could be evoked just from simple following of artificial gradients. This isn't science, but it strongly suggests experiments that could be done. In much more extreme terms, Newton liked to separate completely the math from the science. For example, in the first part of Principia he only does math, and comes up with many relationships that he proves obtain geometrically. Then in the last part of the book he starts to take the predictions of the math from the premises he started with and to relate them to various kinds of observations on the earth and in the heavens. This book is a breathtaking tour de force of the highest possible art and sensibilities of what science is all about, how it is different from math, and how the two very different systems can work incredibly fruitfully together. By the way, Bertrand Russell once remarked that Newton was not a strict Newtonian, and this is quite true. For example, he didn't think that the inverse square law could possibly be the whole story (because it contains instantaneous action at a distance). However, many who came after him confused his best story right now with the kinds of stories in the the Bible that they believed in, and this in certain areas of science (e.g. dealing with Maxwells's equations) held them severely back. Newton understood the epistemology of science and they didn't. Best wishes, Alan -- *From:* Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com *To:* Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com *Cc:* Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com; iaep SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Brian Jordan bcjor...@gmail.com; Asaf Paris Mandoki asa...@gmail.com *Sent:* Saturday, August 22, 2009 2:44:15 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas? hi alan, still thinking about the broader issue you raise about the importance of real science and its connection to computer based work and how to attempt to implement this in school settings (complex issue) however, I do notice that many of the standard etoy simulations are simulations of real world scientific type events, and not just maths related - salmon sniff - fish and plankton - particles dye in water - particles gas model I just checked the etoys gallery. It even says in the gallery, Frame-based animation can be used for physics analysis I'm also unclear about whether an etoys car or lunar landing simulation could be misunderstand in the same way that you are suggesting that a gravity or pendulum simulation could be misunderstood in physics, (which would be better renamed as toy physics) On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: I'm not sure how your argument here would not apply also to etoys? It does if you try to teach how the real world works by making computer simulations without doing experiments. But if you'll check out our materials carefully, we never do that. We always keep clear the distinction between real math (and the fact that you can do a lot of neat things with real math that are not seen in our physical universe (and can easily be at odds with what is seen) and thus are special kinds of usually consistent stories) and that of real science which is done by making careful observations of the real world the final arbiter of all stories (no matter how pretty and consistent
[IAEP] old jabber server does not work with sugar 0.84
A year ago one of my students built a jabber server following instructions that are now deprecated:http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Installing_ejabberd Today we tried to use it with Soas (0.84). The jabber server could see the sugar ids but collaboration didn't work. (Just to clarify collaboration does not work out of the box either.) My question is: Is the failure of the old jabber server due to changes in Sugar 0.84 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
thanks for response and additional suggestions, Gary and Asaf (and screenshots are very useful) I'll create a worksheet for my class and post the link when done - thinking that I'll organise it into a basic, harder and advanced sections Caroline there are already great ideas for lessons and screenshots on the physics page (added to my worksheet) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Physics other ideas from me: make a see saw keep moving for as long as possible without using grab for advanced students tony forster has suggested hacking physics to alter densities etc. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics Gary, would it be a good idea to link to that page from the Physics page - it took me a while to find it again We have a future Physics feature to expose the material properties, likely a simple list of material pre-sets (something like helium wood, rubber, steel, lead) is water possible? that would fit nicely with density experiments how hard would it be to have a feature where mass is measured and / or displayed on the object? cheers On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, Not sure if you wanted answers :-) On 15 Aug 2009, at 02:51, Bill Kerr wrote: I might try these next week and see how they go: does altering the size of an object affect its drop time? No does joining objects together (large and small) affect drop time? No Remember, you can run all cases at once! Just pause the simulation. Add a box right across the horizontal middle of screen. Pin it at left and right edge so it's fixed. Then across top half of screen add a large sphere, a small sphere, a couple of linked objects. Play the simulation so all shapes land on the horizontal pinned box. Pause simulation again, and delete the horizontal pinned box. Now you're all set up, shapes all aligned up for their race to the ground :-) Play! does altering the length of a pendulum affect its swing time? Yes. For more advanced, you might like to try a 'split pendulum', and get to see a slow and fast swing in one cycle (some thing like the attached image works fine). before doing the above say what you think will happen after doing the above say whether you think the physics program reflects real world behaviour (possibility of follow up real world experiments here) possibility of follow up real world experiments here nice :-) +1 FWIW: Newton's cradle type set-ups don't work quite as expected (you end up with an oscillation of half the balls each time), I think this might be down to the default material properties we are currently using for all shapes. We have a future Physics feature to expose the material properties, likely a simple list of material pre-sets (something like helium wood, rubber, steel, lead). design a catapult system to accurately hit (a) stationary distant target (b) moving target (c) close target build a complex or elegant building that doesn't fall down A nice one here for a challenge is to restrict the design to only use circles with links. Try for an Eiffel Tower like shape. It is World of Goo all over again ;-) http://2dboy.com/games.php other ideas along these lines? General miscellaneous tips: - Pretty fundamental is the need to pause the simulation when constructing more complicated structures (unless you make that the challenge, build an X without pausing the simulation). - While paused, use shapes to help as 'construction templates' to help place new things accurately (they can overlap), then delete the template shape before resuming the simulation. extra features I would like to see in physics: copy shapes Not on our feature list, will have a think how practical this would be to actually implement. move them while in setup mode Been requested before already. Might be hard to implement. Don't think we have control over this in Physics, likely something down stream in either Elements, or Box2D (or all 3!). a timer My call on this is related to another possible future feature. Object trails would be very useful (daub a blob of paint on a shape and watch it leave a trail on screen). This 'paint daub' could be set to pulse to a timer, then you could just count the trail marks. Sound would also be great, set a specific shape to make a custom sound on any collision, set a shape to play a sound based on it's velocity (or rotation). I'd likely suggest we avoid sound until Sugar (well the various distros) have reliable stable sound (right now it seems a real mess). icons: I think it would be better if the polygon icon looked like an irregular shape rather than a regular hexagon Have this feature request already, you should get it in the next release :-) btw if there was a regular hexagon then you could use it to do some work with tessellations in setup mode using the triangle, square, hexagon - if you had the move
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
hi alan, I'm not sure how your argument here would not apply also to etoys? Is your objection mainly to the name of the program - physics? On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Folks I've previously written a fair amount on this list about what real science is actually about and it would be tiresome to repeat it. And I'm sure you have reasons for what you've been suggesting in this thread about ways to use a simulation software package in Sugar. But are you sure that these reasons have anything to do with real science and how to go about teaching it to children? Best wishes, Alan ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: I'm not sure how your argument here would not apply also to etoys? It does if you try to teach how the real world works by making computer simulations without doing experiments. But if you'll check out our materials carefully, we never do that. We always keep clear the distinction between real math (and the fact that you can do a lot of neat things with real math that are not seen in our physical universe (and can easily be at odds with what is seen) and thus are special kinds of usually consistent stories) and that of real science which is done by making careful observations of the real world the final arbiter of all stories (no matter how pretty and consistent they might be) we might make up. This is why when teaching children we separate the math of speed and acceleration (using the cars on the screen and increase by) from investigations into the science of how things fall by about 4 months. This technique is as old as real science, was used by Newton (it's one of the many charms of the Principia), and both used and advocated by Einstein. And the other distinction with the use of Etoys is that the actual real math of the phenomena (whether just math on the screen of the computer or as a mapping relationship between observation and mathematical modeling) is actually derived and done directly by the children. (And in earlier grades this is done without computers, etc.) This is completely different than giving children software which may or may not work like the real world but at its best it is as mysterious as the real world was before science, and at its worst (where it is not like the real world) it is even more misleading. This is missing what science is actually about. And sadly, though we can do real math on the computer, we also find a myriad of approaches that bypass real math for various kinds of math appreciation or math flybys or math grazings. Both of these are nicely covered by a gentle but firm ancient reprimand by teacher Euclid to student Ptolemy Sire, there is no Royal Road to Geometry. I'm happy to answer questions about this vital issue. My feeling is that the teacher needs to have and communicate to students an awareness of the difference b/w a simulator and the real world. I recall that alan has pointed that out wrt other programs too such as sim city (there are more ways to reduce crime than by increasing the number of police). I did mention this earlier in the thread: after doing the above say whether you think the physics program reflects real world behaviour (possibility of follow up real world experiments here). This could be a general thematic approach. ok, not all teachers will be aware of the importance of this but that is a separate issue as to whether such features ought to be made available in software that we are promoting. Is there are real danger of students getting the wrong idea about science from using the physics program? I'm not really sure - some will, some won't - but I think my students see it as a game type program rather than a reality show. Their spontaneous response was to make games with it. The issue of teaching real science depends on awareness. I don't see a science simulator as a bad thing in itself. Easy fun rather than hard fun (Seymour) but should all fun be hard? I don't think so. Much of this thread has been about adding science simulator like features to physics. I would see a possibility here of this increasing student awareness of physics and possibly increasing their chance of taking physics as a subject. I would support a name change: pseudo physics Physics is a motivator and easy to use out of the box, the wow factor, and that is an important factor for teachers in complex, mixed ability classrooms. Students like physics, it makes them happy and happy students are easier to have discussions with about more complex topics. Just some ideas for further discussion Best wishes, Alan -- *From:* Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com *To:* Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com *Cc:* Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com; iaep SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Brian Jordan bcjor...@gmail.com; Asaf Paris Mandoki asa...@gmail.com *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2009 7:38:06 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas? hi alan, I'm not sure how your argument here would not apply also to etoys? Is your objection mainly to the name of the program - physics? On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Folks I've previously written a fair amount on this list about what real science is actually about and it would be tiresome to repeat it. And I'm sure you have reasons for what you've been suggesting in this thread about ways to use a simulation software package in Sugar. But are you sure that these reasons have anything to do with real science and how to go about
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
one possibility would be to not attempt to teach physics but to make a game good for introduction and also for teamwork see http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/wow-factor-physics.html http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/wow-factor-physics.html http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/physics-games-screenshots_14.html http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/physics-games-screenshots_14.htmlthinking of extending to making a video of the game as per your suggestion here Caroline On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Physics is so cool! One of the students today did a really great job with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nseWyxaN6g Does anyone have an idea for a 1 hour or so lesson I could do with Physics that would teach a Physics concept and still be incredibly engaging? -- 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 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
I might try these next week and see how they go: does altering the size of an object affect its drop time? does joining objects together (large and small) affect drop time? does altering the length of a pendulum affect its swing time? before doing the above say what you think will happen after doing the above say whether you think the physics program reflects real world behaviour (possibility of follow up real world experiments here) design a catapult system to accurately hit (a) stationary distant target (b) moving target (c) close target build a complex or elegant building that doesn't fall down other ideas along these lines? *extra features I would like to see in physic*s: copy shapes move them while in setup mode a timer *icons*: I think it would be better if the polygon icon looked like an irregular shape rather than a regular hexagon btw if there was a regular hexagon then you could use it to do some work with tessellations in setup mode using the triangle, square, hexagon - if you had the move feature in setup mode eg. make a tessellation in setup mode and then support it so it doesn't fall apart under gravity On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Yes, I think thats a good idea. Also maybe its engineering principals not Physics that should be the learning objectives. What I'm realizing is that really I'm giving demos to teachers about h0w to use Sugar to support learning. So what I want is a bunch of lessons using various different activities that are clearly aligned with any common curriculum objective. For Physics I think I want a really simple challenge that I can demo then have students solve it fairly quickly. then I want a couple levels of additional challenge where students can solve problems in different ways. On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 4:47 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: one possibility would be to not attempt to teach physics but to make a game good for introduction and also for teamwork see http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/wow-factor-physics.html http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/wow-factor-physics.html http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/physics-games-screenshots_14.html http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/physics-games-screenshots_14.htmlthinking of extending to making a video of the game as per your suggestion here Caroline On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Physics is so cool! One of the students today did a really great job with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nseWyxaN6g Does anyone have an idea for a 1 hour or so lesson I could do with Physics that would teach a Physics concept and still be incredibly engaging? -- 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 -- 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] [Sugar-devel] SoaS with SD cards irregularities
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.comwrote: Sascha Silbe wrote: On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 09:11:31PM +0930, Bill Kerr wrote: The sticks I have with SD cards have started to fail on the older computers at school (after working ok for 2 weeks of lessons). But they still work fine on my newer Dell mini inspiron. The older ones are not XOs, right? Warning: cannot find root file system Can you append rootwait (without the quotes) to the kernel parameters, please? I hope Sebastian can give specific instructions how to do this interactively for SoaS. I'll try to! :) When you boot SoaS, you'll see a blue screen for one second - press escape there quickly - you'll be presented a menu saying in its first entry boot. Press tabulator there. You can now modify the kernel arguments (add rootwait) and boot by pressing enter then. This will add it only once, though. Usually, one needs to edit /etc/grub.conf to makesuch a change persistent, but I seem to recall that this didn't work in live images lately... When I tried this (press escape at the one second blue screen) on the machines which failed to boot properly they did not exit to the menu screen but instead a message came up: aborted boot: I then tried tab anyway and got: linux0 check0 local ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] modifying sugar tutorial: different paths for SoaS
thanks Tomeu (for the linux pointers too) sadly I cannot complete the sugar modification tutorial I keep getting messages like liveuser is not in the sudoers file and Permission denied for example when I try to make a backup file with cp SoaS is acting more like a live CD when it comes to linux commands Very sad - my students won't be able to hack the system :-( On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 07:47, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/ModifyingSugar 4. The Home View code is in /usr/share/sugar/shell/view/Home. Type this command and press enter: cd /usr/share/sugar/shell/view/home the paths have changed for SoaS I spent some time looking for favoritesview.py couldn't find it I tried some recursive searches but my grasp of linux command line is limited or perhaps the files have changed name too? can someone tell me where to find favoritesview.py I'm happy to edit the tutorial once I know the changes Hi Bill, the shell sources have been moved from /usr/share/sugar/shell to /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/jarabe. But there have been other file layout changes inside the shell, these commands should help you find stuff: find /usr -iname favoritesview.py find /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/jarabe -iname \*.py grep -R class FavoritesView /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/jarabe Regards, Tomeu thanks ___ 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
[IAEP] SoaS with SD cards irregularities
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: ===Sugar Digest=== In the meanwhile, we need to: experiment with more USB manufacturers; be more careful about characterizing the different failure modes; do some workflow experiments to see if we can minimize failures; try different file formats; and come up with simple and robust backup/restore mechanism so that we can end run failures. Greg Dekoenigsberg has suggested we take advantage of Fedora Test Days] to put a more rigorous analysis together. But we need a testing plan which means we need to first come to consensus on what it is we are trying to test. Variables include: * Which Sugar-on-a-Stick image is being tested? * What customizations have been made? * What process was used to create the key? * What size and brand of key is being tested? * What hardware the key is being tested on? * What is the nature of the failure? (no boot, corrupted data, etc.?) * What was the history of use prior to failure? The sticks I have with SD cards have started to fail on the older computers at school (after working ok for 2 weeks of lessons). But they still work fine on my newer Dell mini inspiron. This is a very consistent pattern. I have 8 sticks with SD cards and 6 have failed on older computers but all of those 6 still work on the Dell mini inspiron. They start to boot, the xo icon appears and dots but not icons appear in the circle. This screen hangs for a while and then exits to a black screen with this message: Warning: cannot find root file system Create symlink /dev/root and then exit this shell to continue the boot sequence bash: no job control in this shell bash - 4.0# My other sticks are a mixture of Kingstons and Laser and none of these have failed. Let me know if you want more detail such as answers to all of the above questions. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] SoaS with SD cards irregularities
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 12:14 AM, Sascha Silbe sascha-ml-ui-sugar-de...@silbe.org wrote: On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 09:11:31PM +0930, Bill Kerr wrote: The sticks I have with SD cards have started to fail on the older computers at school (after working ok for 2 weeks of lessons). But they still work fine on my newer Dell mini inspiron. The older ones are not XOs, right? the older ones are PCs 4 years old ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release You can update individual activities from activities.sugarlabs.org. You can add new activities from the same site. One caveat: a handful of activities are installed with .rpm instead of .xo. These cannot be updated on the fly without jumping through several hoops. This will change on the next release of SoaS. (See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Roadmap#Fructose_modules_.28F11.29 ). the immediate issue is about updating physics - from reading gary's earlier comments physics2, which is the version currently available in activities, does not save - confirmed a few times now with our strawberry sticks best option might be to wait for official release of physics3 to activities, I probably will do that unless there is a reasonable quick update alternative 2) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users For Window User point 5 Set the Persistent Storage slider to the maximum so you can save your Sugar work onto the USB device; (You may allocate as much storage as there is capacity on your device. You may allocate less than the maximum, if you want to use some of the device storage when not booting Sugar.) I ended up setting the Persistent Storage to maximum. Now I'm wondering that if I had allocated less than the maximum then could a student copy a file from the journal onto the SoaS (rather than their own USB) and it would save in some of that non allocated storage. This is an issue because not all students bring their own USBs to class. Sometimes there is a need to swap in and out of the Sugar environment back to the Windows environment (found in most schools) so ability to easily save on a USB is an issue. Actually, this ended up being the first major thing I taught my students to do. As far as I know, this should work, but I haven't tested it. That said, in the long-term roadmap, we want the journal files more readily accessible from outside of Sugar. (They are in a squash filesystem right now, not easy to access.) I like the sound of making the journal files more readily accessible from outside sugar in the future - very desirable for teachers swapping back and forward from the dominant Windows school environments I just tried my suggestion above and could ***not*** save a test file onto the spare SoaS storage - pity 3) the information about failed sticks not rebooting is valuable - some sticks have failed for me but I haven't worked out any real pattern yet, quite complex to keep track when teaching a class, just tell the kids to try a different stick and / or different computer - but the sticks are numbered and now each student uses the same one each lesson so patterns will become clearer soon Failed sticks often get a second life, which also complicates things. We have been going for a couple of weeks now and failed sticks have not been a problem A couple of times the screens have frozen - but only a couple of times - so at this stage it's pretty reliable Rebooting has worked so far when screens freeze 4) some of my sticks (about half) are card readers 2GB cards, they work fine 5) the brand of stick of stick makes a difference, LASERS are very slow (and cheapest), KINGSTON seem good 6) collaboration did not work out of the box - is it meant to? - I have a jabber server from last year which I have yet to setup but will do so soon It should have worked. Is Internet access working out of the box? Collaboration without a jabber server did not work I spoke to joel about this and he put forward the idea that proxy servers are used differently in Australia to USA and that perhaps the USA experience of collaboration working is because the jabber server there is not being blocked - the jabber server port is blocked in oz schools (adding joel to cc list) cheers ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi Bill, I'm excited that you are doing pilot. How old are the kids? From the blog posts it looks like you have some XOs, are you using SoaS on other computers too? thanks for the mail, Caroline one xo standard usage is SoaS, for this course year 10 approx 15yo course outline involves critical evaluation and building some useful software details: http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html This looks amazing!!! thanks Caroline this might be of interest to wrt your point 4 Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans - as well as the big picture curriculum the nitty gritty curriculum grows out of listening diligently to student feedback lesson by lesson, one of the things that makes transfer of a curriculum package from one site to another so difficult student blogging allows for such feedback - my whole lesson plan for tomorrow is pretty much based on that and it will extend beyond tomorrow - see this blog for more detail http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/ideas-arising-from-student-blogs.html the trap for busy worked trapped teachers is to rush through marking etc. and not pause for that reflective response - part of my reason for working part time cheers ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Letter to GPA Parents
supply a phone number to call if it is not working? won't the families have to go into CMOS (or whatever) to configure booting off the USB stick? I have had students take sticks home (last year) and come back saying they can't get it to work. To enter CMOS requires holding down either Delete or F2 key depending on the PC and then figuring out settings. I would see this as the main block point. ie. you could demo to a student at school but it might be different at home. I would replace kids with students throughout yes, I would have put in less background information - as long as the opportunity is there somehow for those who want more to obtain it cheers On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: First draft - Comments? Suggestions? Do you think I put in too much background information? Dear Parent, Your child will take home from camp a USB stick and a CD that they used in school this summer. Their work this summer is the first part of a school wide program to use “Sugar on a Stick” at the GPA. The GPA will be the first school that uses a USB stick to bring Sugar home. Sugar is the name of the software and you can learn more at www.sugarlabs.org. Your kids are the first ones to use it on a USB stick but almost a million kids are using it on the “One Laptop per Child” computers in countries like Peru and Uruguay. If there is a computer at home the students can try to use Sugar. We will teach them how to do it in class. It may not work on your computer yet. The stick may also stop working at some point. That is fine, we are doing a pilot test and we know there are still problems. We will work all next year to make sure it works for all students. Please have your student bring the stick back to school on the first day of school regardless of whether or not it works. The kids all had a wonderful time working with Sugar this summer and produced some amazing things! Pictures of their work are up on the web: We may also be creating some videos that will include your children and their work, if you have signed a release form. If you would like to know more about Sugar and our plans for the Fall or if you’d like to volunteer to help in the fall please email carol...@sugarlabs.org Thank you and we look forward to meeting you all in September! Sincerely Caroline Meeks Sugar Labs Instructions for booting your computer with Sugar. Put in the CD Turn off the computer Plug in the USB Turn on the computer If you have a Mac, hold down the “c” key as it starts up and as you hear the chime. Please don’t be frustrated if it doesn’t work! We’ll figure out why and fix it this fall. -- 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 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] is this a bug in the SoaS version of Calculator?
is this a bug in the SoaS version of Calculator? There seems to be an error in the trigonomety because tan 45 = 1.62 whether set on degrees or radians. That is correct for radians but it should change to tan 45 = 1. for degrees. On the SoaS version the degrees / radians button is found under the Miscellaneous tab. Maybe I am missing something but it seems to me to be a bug in this version of Calculator http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/from-sugar-to-blogger.html ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: Is Internet access working out of the box? 7) Had to type about:config into Browse and muck around with proxy settings to get internet access - I had never done this before and needed assistance http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html But then it worked? -- yes, from home internet access works without any fiddling when booting SoaS on an xo SoaS internet access does not work on my dell mini inspiron - joel explained that was a different sort of problem, that it has a non-free wireless card driver at school it worked after mucking around with proxy settings even though connection seemed flaky but for school that is not unusual - am testing it with class tomorrow, will be interesting to see the success rate on a first trial lesson plan here: http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/from-sugar-to-blogger.html ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi Bill, I'm excited that you are doing pilot. How old are the kids? From the blog posts it looks like you have some XOs, are you using SoaS on other computers too? thanks for the mail, Caroline one xo standard usage is SoaS, for this course year 10 approx 15yo course outline involves critical evaluation and building some useful software details: http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html We don't have a system for feedback yet so until people complain about the volume lets talk here on the list. I think feedback falls into 4 categories. 1. Sugar bugs 2. Sugar on a Stick specific bugs and barriers to deployment 3. Activity specific feedback and bugs 4. Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans What seems to work best is to post about problems in general then after discussion post a bug in Trac. Sometimes I find that I just don't understand something or can't find the right button and its not actually a bug. I have decided that I really want more SoaS pilots so I'm going to focus for a few weeks on problems that are barriers to teachers using SoaS this fall (#2 above). I would like your input on this. My current working document is: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO Just read that, it's a good start, covers a lot of ground A few issues (dumb questions, saves time if I put them up here) 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release 2) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users For Window User point 5 Set the *Persistent Storage* slider to the maximum so you can save your Sugar work onto the USB device; (You may allocate as much storage as there is capacity on your device. You may allocate less than the maximum, if you want to use some of the device storage when not booting Sugar.) I ended up setting the Persistent Storage to maximum. Now I'm wondering that if I had allocated less than the maximum then could a student copy a file from the journal onto the SoaS (rather than their own USB) and it would save in some of that non allocated storage. This is an issue because not all students bring their own USBs to class. Sometimes there is a need to swap in and out of the Sugar environment back to the Windows environment (found in most schools) so ability to easily save on a USB is an issue. Actually, this ended up being the first major thing I taught my students to do. 3) the information about failed sticks not rebooting is valuable - some sticks have failed for me but I haven't worked out any real pattern yet, quite complex to keep track when teaching a class, just tell the kids to try a different stick and / or different computer - but the sticks are numbered and now each student uses the same one each lesson so patterns will become clearer soon 4) some of my sticks (about half) are card readers 2GB cards, they work fine 5) the brand of stick of stick makes a difference, LASERS are very slow (and cheapest), KINGSTON seem good 6) collaboration did not work out of the box - is it meant to? - I have a jabber server from last year which I have yet to setup but will do so soon 7) Had to type about:config into Browse and muck around with proxy settings to get internet access - I had never done this before and needed assistance http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html 8) I noticed when I loaded Pippy on my dell mini inspiron that the run button in the middle of the screen was not visible - ie. does not work with all screen configurations (it looked ok on school machines though) Greg Smith is gravitating towards documenting the lesson plans etc and creating, organizing and prioritizing tickets that will help in actual usage based on field experience (#3 above). So coordinate with him on getting your lesson plans on the wiki and your bugs filed, categorized etc. I'm not really developing lesson plans for the xo target age group (6-12 yo) at the moment, see course outline link above Nevertheless, some general curriculum development principles might transfer, eg. find tasks that reward initiative, independent exploration As you've already seen physics has an active following! I think your kids are older then the ones we are working with (7-9) but we will be working with slightly older kids (8-11) and science in the fall so I'll be interested in how we can fit it in with their curriculum. Tony Forster suggested physics modification and that would be a suitable goal for my age group http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics hope that some of this
[IAEP] SoaS feedback
My second semester year 10 control tech class is trialling SoaS. My blog is http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/ describes some of the lesson plans and issues arising. *Student blogs (first impressions) are linked on the sidebar* One big issue at this stage is that a Physics screen does not appear to save, this will severely limit what we can do with it. Physics is by far the most popular activity in free exploration provided for the first few lessons -- Bill Kerr ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Debrief of Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry launch for all teams
Thanks for detailed and comprehensive report Sean. I hadn't understand the importance of visuals and your report explained that very clearly. btw your report doesn't contain any links - I found the gallery page http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=gallerypage=gallery but still wasn't sure what you meant by this: a great many websites carried screenshots of Buddy View with collaboration; the large colorful icons in that screenshot kept their visual code when thumbnailed, better than the Neighborhood View I guess your are referring to either the Groups or Journal screenshot? I had a look at the videos here: http://www.dailymotion.com/sugarlabs and noticed that they don't have sound. Sound would improve them a lot. Related: I recently did a search for xo videos for a presentation - there are a lot out there (you tube) and I found it difficult to find good ones. Most are too general and often the quality is poor. In the end the ones I picked out were either professionally done (eg. David Pogues NYT) or had an interesting twist of gimick, eg. 9yo evaluating the xo or joel's video showing two kids pulling it apart and putting it back together Possibly some high quality, high profile videos - some illustrating specific interesting features or with an original creative twist (educational bloggers might pick up on that) - would help promotion of sugar. On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 7:42 PM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: We have had a successful media launch of the Strawberry release of SoaS; coverage is ongoing a week after the launch. I feel very strongly that a successful launch like this can only work if everyone is on board together, from developers to marketers, from packagers to designers, so I have preferred starting this integrated thread rather than continuing David's separate threads; I also feel that the longer-term SoaS-distro issue should be discussed separately. Although we did manage to avoid confusion from the last-minute timetable change through some hard work, we may not be so lucky next time; communication between teams is vital, especially as we grow. Routine work should of course stay compartmentalized, but I am convinced the key to a launch's success (aside from great software :-) is that we all pull together and make an extra effort at launch time, pulling back after launch. Coverage began with an article in MIT Technology Review a few hours before the press release went out; we were Slashdotted several hours later. This was followed by a BBC News report the day of the release, and we have been picked up around the world every day since by tech media, bloggers, and even some Spanish language print newspapers. I want to share some observations, and mention several techniques we used this time which multiplied coverage, as well as some missed opportunities. Comments are encouraged pleased. * Press release editing. We got the PR done 30 minutes before the Friday evening deadline and I thank Walter, Fred, David, and Caroline for their very helpful co-editing with me directly on the Google Docs document and IRC discussion. I had been concerned about an Activities positioning issue and we made a good choice through consensus. We were able to trim 150 words in the final minutes yet the final release had enough information to interest editors worldwide. * Prelaunch journalist briefings. Some journalists were briefed with the releases beforehand, under embargo. This common practice gives them time to decide if they want to work up a story or not and provides an opportunity for direct discussion with us for background and quotes. It also provides precious lead time for us to provide visuals (journalists won't waste time fishing, and without visuals will just google and snatch the first thing they find, including bad logos and dated screenshots). * The last-minute timetable change. We successfully spun the move of v1 from the Q3 in the fall to June as part of the plan and diverted some attention from the numbering with the Strawberrry code name which was universally liked. Only one news site noticed we had changed our story, and their coverage arrived late; journalists who have been following us kindly didn't bring it up. That said I can't stress enough that our very wide coverage was a direct result of our simplification of the numbering system to beta-1 and v1; most news sites judged this release as our first major milestone since the creation of Sugar Labs. I agree with David and Caroline that our next major media push should stress content over technical info to generate teacher interest. As part of avoiding last-minute crises in the future, to avoid surprises I sent the press release to all the lists before it went out on the wires. The marketing team work is of course available to all. * Launch datelined LinuxTag Berlin. Do a Google News search in English on LinuxTag... you will notice that our launch is the only
[IAEP] netbook as terminology
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: 7. I'll be giving a keynote at GUADEC [http://www.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/]; my plan is to both introduce Sugar to the broader desktop community (with the goal of recruiting more contributors), to sing the praises of the desktop—the cloud is not the solution to all problem—but also .articulate the need for more simplicity along the entire spectrum from developers to end users at least three interesting points there from walter 1. sing the praises of the desktop 2. the cloud is not the solution to all problem 3. the need for more simplicity along the entire spectrum from developers to end users I'd love to hear an expansion of these positions Also noticed recently that NN reacted against the netbook terminology: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/07/xo-is-not-netbook.html Negroponte: Kids in Ethiopia don't have the internet in a nearby cloud ... And just noticed that the sugar labs home page describes the xo as a netbook: http://www.sugarlabs.org/ -- Bill Kerr http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] netbook as terminology
On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 12:06 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: When we began the project, I lobbied to call it a Children's Machine (CM) in reference both to Seymour Papert's book and as a reference to the CM series of connection machines that Danny Hillis created at Thinking Machines, another effort where they through away the rules to make a solution to fit a class of problems rather than make the problem fit the solution. Of course, XO is a brilliant name, that come from our design team as I recall, and I don't doubt that it was the correct decision for OLPC at the time. I agree that xo is a brilliant name. Congratulalions to the un-named person who thought it up. Some of these names convey functionality and purpose far better than the others. I have broken them into three categories based on how it feels to me. PURPOSE: Childrens Machine xo FUNCTION: Connection Machine Dynabook smartbook TECHNO CENTRIC: netbook MID thin-and-light low cost small notebook PC low cost ultra-portable notebook computers (Microsoft mouthfulhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/microsoft-wants-new-term-for-netbooks-unhappy-with-other-5-ch/ ) ultra-portable mini notebooks I don't know that we should decide to push a name change on the market. The point I will make at the Desktop Summit is that the marketing of netbooks with 3G set an expectation that they are part of the cloud and that the push for bigger, fatter, faster netbooks has eroded the opportunity to think about new approaches to computing that smaller and lighter afford. But there remain opportunities to redefine the desktop, keeping it relevant, in many areas, ours being K-6. Even in the developed world, the Internet is not everywhere, e.g., most classrooms, and as much as it has been good for the service providers to pitch it as true, the cloud is not right solution to every problem. Would a good description of the sugar desktop be community user interface stressing F1 and F2 over the more traditional F3? That was my interpretation from reading the OLPC Human interface guidelines: Most developers are familiar with the desktop metaphorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphorthat dominates the modern-day computer experience. This metaphor has evolved over the past 30 years, giving rise to distinct classes of interface elements that we expect to find in every OS: desktop, icons, files, folders, windows, etc. While this metaphor makes sense at the office—and perhaps even at home—it does not translate well into a collaborative environment such as the one that the OLPC laptops will embody. Therefore, we have adopted a new set of metaphors that emphasize community. While there are some correlations between the Sugar UI and those of traditional desktops, there are also clear distinctions. It is these distinctions that are the subject of the remainder of this section. We highlight the reasoning behind our shift in perspective and detail functionality with respect to the overall laptop experience http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Laptop_Experience/Introduction This article more or less persuaded me that cloud computing was an inevitable (long term) trend http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/01/cloud-computing-science20-and-social.html The main value proposition is further abstraction that reduces management costs. For example, backup storage is abstracted into the cloud, so you don't have to worry about your hard disk failing. Computation is abstracted into the cloud, so you don't have to worry about not having enough computational nodes for your data analysis job. It is an inevitable trend in computing, because of the need to reduce complexity and data-management/computation-management costs. It's clear that, in the near future, the backup storage and computation will continue to evolve into collaborative workspaces that you never have to administer, nor would you have to worry about backing up your work Meanwhile back in the real world a huge problem in schools is filtering of the internet which ends up making many useful sites not accessible to most in school time (and in practice slows things down) - some students now by pass the filter using smart phones, smart phones as modems, 3G USB devices etc. - expensive for them but good to see the internet routing around this damage Education Departments don't seem capable of providing fast untrammelled internet access in my experience -walter ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and Mastering Educational SW
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:48 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.comwrote: From: K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.com On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote: what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. This is the part that interests me too ... So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics. ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades! I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly. Here are some household examples: - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place. The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way, but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs, several times. It breaks at fourth roll. Toddler experiments with breakable objects more to explore the idea of sometimes. They keep discussing this big idea of sometimes and experimenting. A few years down the road, the mother relates to the kid how this guy was saying, I smoked all my life and I am fine - and they laugh at it, together. Probability and statistics comes in later still. Meanwhile, the bunny's safe, and a whole host of dangers that happens sometimes are easy to communicate to the toddler. - Deep tool: graphs. Several kids play with graphs qualitatively (a-la http://thisisindexed.com/). What comes of it? When the 5yo math club members yell too loud, the leader makes a yelling graph kids follow up and down in volume, as it's being drawn, thereby obtaining control. When a 10yo experiences a strange math anxiety, she draws a graph of her mood vs. problem solving events, and analyzes it for possible patterns. When a tween and teen group discusses game design, they compare learning curves for apps and games they know and make design decisions correspondingly. i wish I had thought of this for my noisy special class :-) - Deep collective reasoning: kites. A 3-5 Reggio Emilia group decides to make kites together. Adults provide books and supplies, kids work on patterns and sketch and photograph their ideas. It takes listening and coordinating; their peacekeepers of the day resolve conflicts. Kites change from day to day, becoming increasingly complex. Great examples Maria but Subbu may still be correct - in that some deep thinking takes years to emerge clearly or it might appear then get buried due to peer pressure and then reappear again later, etc. I would say that you are both right. I have heard it mentioned a few times that it takes 10 years for genius to emerge, eg. Mozart started at 5yo but did not display genius until 15yo btw how would the mother know that the toddler did not believe her if the toddler did not voice their dissent? it takes a smart mother to guess that the toddler does not believe and go through the rolling the glass down the stairs routine if the toddler does not object - my general point being that much growth is silent, hard to or almost impossible to observe also see minsky 'society of mind' section 7:10 Genius Cheers, Maria Droujkova Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath subscribe now to discuss future math culture with parents, researchers and techies http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS Strawberry release debrief - iaep
*Some feedback: Persistent storage overlay* http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users 6. Set the *Persistent Storage* slider to at least 160 MB (use more if you have a drive with more space); This confused me until I did some tests and discovered that if you don't do this then activities are not saved on the stick When I did move the persistent storage slider to the end then after making the stick looked at properties the stick was full and I thought this might mean that you couldn't save (the opposite of what the words say) When the above says to at least 160 MB (use more if you have a drive with more space) this implies that there is some (unstated) reason for not moving the slider automatically to the end Suggested rewording: 6. Set the *Persistent Storage* slider to the maximum so as to ensure that you can save your Sugar work onto the USB *Press release links* You need about 5 clicks to get from the press release link to strawberry Don't make users click unnecessarily - press release should go straight to http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users *Some improvements* The current strawberry looks like a huge improvement on what was available a year ago (through Wolfgang) - thanks and congratulations to all involved. I have only done a few tests so far but the ability to save on the stick is a huge improvement. Also: - when saving in turtle art a name your project box appears automatically - the fast and slow icon feature in turtle art is great for learning - also the TA feature that enables you to save the code as text logo (nice surprise) - I like the xo icon that that appears on the RHS persistently allowing for a quick shutdown from wherever you are (enhanced navigation) - more interesting pippy examples with graphics on top is great (I've only played with it for 5 minutes, no doubt will find many more, so thanks) On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 1:05 AM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: I have started a thread for each individual ml; systems, devel, and marketing to collect ideas about what went right and what we can learn from the SoaS - Strawberry release. A debrief is not necessary about finding solutions, it is more like a semistructured brainstorm session 'get down on paper' ideas while they are fresh in people minds. If we do it correctly, the debrief can set the stage for the next iteration. Wash. Rinse, Repeat Over all things went well. The biggest issue is how we define Sugar on a Stick the relationship between Sugar Labs and SoaS. To give a way the ending so it is transparent where I am coming from. Long term, SoaS should be distribution independent 'class of products' which conveys the idea of running the Sugar Learning Platform from a portable memory device. Short term, Sugar Labs, will need to selectively foster a specific release such as Sugar until it is viable for other communities and organizations to support the market. 1. SoaS is fundamentally a distribution level project not a platform development project. 2. SoaS is a larger movement that just SL. As such SL should focus on enabling the lager community to take SoaS and do what they want with it. 3. SoaS is a great way to get Sugar into the hands of users. SL should promote SoaS however possible. 4. SL should use clear language when talking about SoaS as generic idea and distribution specif implementations. These goals, need to be tempered with the reality that the open source development model depends a projects being 'valuable enough' for others to make the effort to use and improve the product. The tension is between SL 'making the market' yet not 'crowding out' potential contributors and partners. david ___ 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] [Sugar-devel] versus, not
I'm not sure what is meant by a big tent Why do some people want a big tent for learning theory but not a big tent which accepts both FOSS and proprietary software? Phrasing it that way is intended to encourage people to think about what sort of thing is learning and hopefully will not be interpreted as just being provocative for its own sake. you can have a big tent where people don't discuss learning theory because it's too hard to reach agreement you can have a big tent where people passionately argue about learning theory but actually listen to what each is saying and argue rationally when I look at minsky's theory of mind I see that he supports multiple models of thinking but also argues against models of thinking that he thinks are incorrect or which emphasise only one way of doing things, eg. although he helped create connectionism he now thinks it has too much influence that suggests another version of a big tent which I favour - cherry picking the best parts out of different learning theories / activities based on criteria (not stated here) that are substantial I don't believe that thinking people are agnostic about how people learn it seems to me that alan kay has presented a possibly strategic view of progress on these questions (that learning about bricks will not automatically lead to building arches, that we need more than just focusing on building blocks) - but that for various reasons we are not in a position to implement the learning materials based on that view in practice in the activities for me to sit in the big tent holding a strategic view feels different to too hard basket, agnosticism or a tower of babble - teaching with an underlying strategic view is very different to just going along with the tide that would mean work to understand and implement that strategic view but also accept that we are not there yet (it will take some time) and so it is perfectably understandable and desirable that people will use and develop whatever is at hand or which they think important to develop - no one can stop that anyway accept by successful arguing someone out of a POV Does the big tent phrase add clarity to this conversation? On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 3:03 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Fair enough. I agree that *most* people on the list agree that there is not just one right way. And to use a metaphor that has been oft-spoken in the US news of late, Sugar Labs has to have a big tent. Sugar itself has affordances that can be used in support of many educational approaches and virtually any content area. Completely for the big tent, and wide ranging use models. It also means I have to swallow hard when people use things I build in ways that I consider... not particularly good. You might hear me mention that that's a practise that I don't emphasize ;-) cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
was by far the most effective in teaching period. What I'm suggesting is taking effective practices and putting them in a computer model. Using short videos or whatever (flash like animation) to teach concepts. I'd love to see students answer questions from the computer and use open source audio to text to ensure the student is following along and can at least properly use mathematical (or whatever subject) vocabulary. Verbal feedback also ensures the student is engaged and not just along for the ride. All this can be fun, and be presented in a systematic and sequencial way so as not to lose the student. By just throwing some skills at the student, that is not called teaching. You have to design a program or set of programs that can actually teach many skills and concepts. In other words, maybe have it to where the teacher actually adds in the curriculum with their sequence into a flat file or database but the program will take care of presentation due to its modularity. I'm thinking Typing Turtle, here. With Typing Turtle I can put in a sequence of teaching keys. I have 30 lessons but have only taught 5 keys. This is broken down for my son. Another kid could learn those 5 keys in maybe 10 lessons. Right now I would have to re-write the lessons for the other kid but you see where I am going with this - an amazing and stupendous program would adjust automatically for each kid - probably via analyzing thousands of kids. The books I listed are the bible of teaching. No kidding. They can be used by just about anyone to sequence teaching to ensure you don't skip steps and lose kids. It should help nerds (what I loving call you guys) when they program modules. How do you teach a skill or concept when you are not sure the student has prerequisite skills or knowledge? -Kathy *Important - *This email and any attachments may be confidential. If received in error, please contact us and delete all copies. Before opening or using attachments check them for viruses and defects. Regardless of any loss, damage or consequence, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not, resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any attached files our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. Any representations or opinions expressed are those of the individual sender, and not necessarily those of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Bill Kerr http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
The other thing I should have said about rob's post but didn't was that I pretty much agree with all of it as a description of the reality we face, ie. my experiences of being an innovative teacher are similar enough to what rob describes as to make it pointless to quibble about the differences my support for the continuation of widespread unreasonable behaviour (in the xo tradition) is based on acceptance of that reality On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: in part this is a discussion about what works in the educational marketplace and what is cutting edge and pushes education forward, the latter will usually be a minority and difficult or nearly impossible to implement position “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists (quoted by Ian Piumarta in a paperhttp://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdfadvocating widespread unreasonable behaviour) given that the initial plan of selling millions of xos direct to governments did not eventuate - and that the xo spawned commercial netbooks - then the marketplace pressures are impossible to avoid, idealism meets capitalist reality - a hard problem to solve On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:12 AM, Costello, Rob R costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au wrote: i think Kathy is really on to something here ..taps some things i've been turning over and thinking of sending to the list my day job is now working for company that designs educational maths software i don't have time to do anything much here - for sugar - but i will offer these observations in the hope they might help - will use maths as example ..probably applies to greater or lessor extent to other curriculum areas most teachers that i know want to know that any 'innovation' 'addresses the curriculum' i now think its risky to try to push a cool concept that doesn't do that ...new media has to 'look like' the old media, at least to some extent, for a time, and then smuggle in some of its new capabilities ...to misquote something Alan Kay said somewhere ...and he might have quoted it from somewhere i still think that Papert is a genius and i love his writing, but i have come to think his approach to constructionism is too polarised ... he seems to think nothing good can come out of 'school maths' (ie that its procedural learning based approach amounts to 'feeding kids the menu') and the whole thing should be redone (eg with a Logo flavour) thats an appealing thought to people like me ...probably to many here ...since it seems there is a comparable or greater level of learning and analytical process in tinkering with more self directed programming, designing your own models etc, but this won't overturn the inertia in traditional curriculum content for example i can see no maths curriculum in the world (i've been looking at lots of them in detail recently) that is doing much more than including a few references to recursion or iteration...(there was more 'programming' in my year 12 course in 1985) the crowd i work for are successful because they have done what Kathy describes - built up a strong sequence of activities that address traditional maths learning .. now reworking that for different curricula Bryan Berry in his comments from Nepal also talks about this - the need for content that clearly addresses the curriculum ... also a stronger basic framework for planning generic lessons or chunks of curriculum (so they leaned on moodle and integrated flash ...but he talks of a html5 / js 'education on rails' sort of template that has 'fill in' sections for lesson plans, assessment etc) personally, i tend to baulk at the cookie cutter aspect of this (and it needs to be customisable or will strike mismatch with local approaches and models) I would have suggested just going down the scratch / etoys / logo / gamemaker sort of line if i'd been advising at the time (and maybe pippy but I couldn't get it to run and the code samples look a bit complex for beginners) ...- that is, i would have been more in the 'provide interesting tools and see what happens' camp - and i now think it would not have got traction...its an acquired taste that is too unfamiliar to reach critical mass, even if the devices are physically present it never did transform my class room either, unless i kept experimenting with new ways to use and model the tools ...Alan Kay talks of road testing and refining good lessons with a few teachers over extended periods - thats great . but you have to face the kids for the rest of the week and year somehow as well ... so something more standard will have to go in there in the meantime while we all develop the examplar lessons of how etoys can be used to teach science etc i see a lot of productive
Re: [IAEP] 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: From: Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com 10) Open Source software critical to high quality education ? education has to be very customised, to the kids, the teacher, the environment and the country ? not something you can design in New York city and will fit another country http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/04/olpc-nepal-project-overview.html The counterbalance to that is that The Enlightenment is what made us, what created modernity, what transformed diverse cultures into our modern culture Well, as they say all politics are local and the corollary all education issues are local issues is true as well. Education systems are political institutions and they require that new educational content and methods fit them, rather than the other way around. Imposing a whole new pedagogy is only feasible when you have a lot of political power, $, and significant body of evidence to back you up. As we have none of those here in Nepal, we have to accommodate the existing system as much as we can. The Enlightenment that made western culture happened among wealthy men w/ free time on their hands, or those sponsored by wealthy individuals. It didn't happen w/in educational institutions of the day IIRC. But that is another debate ;) for starters, the whole xo project is in contradiction to the above argument - or I thought it was Zitat von Ties Stuij cjst...@gmail.com: I think you're misinterpreting Bryan as having said something culturally relativistic. Think more practical. The most practical example for Bryan's point is that if we wouldn't make stuff that is in line with the Nepali curriculum, week by week, subject by subject, it would be very hard to sell here. wow, I couldn't say it better myself. Christoph wrote: So in this case it doesn't necessarily make sense for someone in Berlin (let alone New York) to design a Maths learning activity to be used in an Austrian school. I disagree w/ this. Someone in Berlin or NYC can create learning activities of value to those in Nepal or elsewhere but likely they have to be changed in small but important ways. That is one of the reasons open-source is so critical to improving education. that seems to me to be an important qualification of Bryan's words in the initial interview - no harm in that 10) Open Source software critical to high quality education – education has to be very customised, to the kids, the teacher, the environment and the country – not something you can design in New York city and will fit another country http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/04/olpc-nepal-project-overview.html Liping Ma argues (admittedly from small sample sizes) that many teachers teach elementary maths differently and *better* in China than in the USA http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/03/long-multiplication.html if you are suggesting that in all cases the digital transformations should stick to existing Nepali methods - (a dubious construct since different teachers in all education systems use different methods, Nepal too would have its more thoughtful and less thoughtful teachers as do all systems) - where there is evidence that some methods work better than others then I couldn't agree with that on the other hand if you are saying that you don't have time to do the educational research as well as doing everything else then that is understandable. I wouldn't criticise that but I don't think it should be abstracted to become a theoretical point either, that local is in some sense superior to central. I think a formulation that there is a dynamic interaction b/w central and local is better - and leads to better global working relationships as well. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] maths instruction
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Kathy Pusztavari ka...@kathyandcalvin.com wrote: How can this principle of customizable math be applied to framework development? By showing exemplars that change as you proceed through your teaching sequence. See Designing Effective Mathematical Instruction: A Direct Instruction Approach by Stein, Kinder, Silbert Carnine Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications by Engelmann and Carnine Could you elaborate on this a little more please Kathy? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal
I've transcribed a large portion of this interview on my blog: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/04/olpc-nepal-project-overview.html might be handy if you don't have 60 minutes to spare On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 3:49 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: excellent interview, well worth listening to this gave me a clearer impression of the challenges facing an xo deployment than anything else I have seen, read or heard - although much of it is nepal specific I suspect that much of it would also apply to other developing countries too excellent questions from Randall covering a wide range of topics and Bryan was more than happy to provide comprehensive responses - with an infectious enthusiasm On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Costello, Rob R costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au wrote: don't know if this has been flagged but just ran across this : 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal http://twit.tv/floss66 Rob *Important - *This email and any attachments may be confidential. If received in error, please contact us and delete all copies. Before opening or using attachments check them for viruses and defects. Regardless of any loss, damage or consequence, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not, resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any attached files our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. Any representations or opinions expressed are those of the individual sender, and not necessarily those of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. ___ 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] 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal
hard to argue against someone who is doing such great work in Nepal but I thought Bryan overplayed the local factors too much: 10) Open Source software critical to high quality education – education has to be very customised, to the kids, the teacher, the environment and the country – not something you can design in New York city and will fit another country http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/04/olpc-nepal-project-overview.html The counterbalance to that is that The Enlightenment is what made us, what created modernity, what transformed diverse cultures into our modern culture I hope it doesn't become unfashionable to say that modernity is a good thing see http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal
excellent interview, well worth listening to this gave me a clearer impression of the challenges facing an xo deployment than anything else I have seen, read or heard - although much of it is nepal specific I suspect that much of it would also apply to other developing countries too excellent questions from Randall covering a wide range of topics and Bryan was more than happy to provide comprehensive responses - with an infectious enthusiasm On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Costello, Rob R costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au wrote: don't know if this has been flagged but just ran across this : 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal http://twit.tv/floss66 Rob *Important - *This email and any attachments may be confidential. If received in error, please contact us and delete all copies. Before opening or using attachments check them for viruses and defects. Regardless of any loss, damage or consequence, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not, resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any attached files our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. Any representations or opinions expressed are those of the individual sender, and not necessarily those of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. ___ 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
[IAEP] 4th Grade Maths wiki and blog by Greg Dek
http://sugarlabs.org/go/User:Gdk/4th_Grade_Maths http://gregdek.livejournal.com/45211.html I think what is missing in the approach outlined by Greg here (and in curriculum frameworks in general) is no real consideration of the deep structure of maths or of how children learn maths, the psychology of children's reasoning There is already constructionist software on the xo (turtle art, etoys, scratch) so what would be wrong with having some other programs with narrow but clear learning objectives? Is it complementary or oppositional? I think I complement these sorts of objectives with other, richer approaches in my teaching. But I think Papert presents it as more oppositional in his writings, eg. The Childrens Machine (Papert) and also in Cynthia Solomons book, Computer Environments for Children. Greg's approach seems much the same as Patrick Suppes to me, as explained in these writings It might be worthwhile is to complement Greg's approach to the sort of ideas outlined in the following books: Children Doing Mathematics by Terezinha Nunes and Peter Bryant (1996), 268pp http://books.google.com.au/books?id=CSINjqKYc1gCdq=nunes+bryant+%22children+doing+mathematics%22printsec=frontcoversource=blots=YXzWaP18k-sig=Hn14LWozl4ebbtlAb_ygmZZ5Gskhl=ensa=Xoi=book_resultresnum=1ct=result#PPP1,M1 They are psychologists who are interested in children's reasoning ... Keith Devlin recommends this book for its treatment of multiplication (Multiplication is not repeated addition). This book is entirely devoted to an understanding of number Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma (2000), 166pp http://books.google.com.au/books?id=EjkKBotJcyICdq=Liping+Maprintsec=frontcoversource=anhl=ensa=Xoi=book_resultresnum=4ct=result This book asserts and documents the claim that maths is better taught in China than in the USA because Chinese teachers have a more profound understanding of maths knowledge. One thing that appeals to me here is that it contains concrete examples of a good way and a not so good way of teaching various maths concepts. IMO it would be a mistake to ignore the information contained in these books because it violates one of Greg's principles - they are not free ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Thoughts on Pedagogy and supporting activity creators
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 2:54 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti marc...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Yes we need to think about whether these people are using Python, eToys, JavaScript or Flash to convert these worksheets into a Sugarized activity, but we also need to think about how the process of Sugarizing can help them create a more effective learning experience for these students then the original mimeographed exercises. +1! I think looking beyond technicalities this is a very important point. (Yeah, I'll share my thoughts about technicalities too, as soon as I managed to get email backlog under control!). Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States (Studies in Mathematical Thinking and Learning.)Liping Ma http://books.google.com.au/books?id=EjkKBotJcyICprintsec=frontcoverdq=inauthor:Liping+inauthor:Ma#PPP1,M1 looks fantastic, I read the contents page, forward and introduction from the google books URL foundational knowledge: one and three quarters divided by a half ** Make up a good story to represent that problem ** This question needs to be asked first before deciding whether to use flash, javascript, python, etoys or scratch to represent that story ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] How to Make Activity Designers Happy , Parts I and II
On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: On Fri, 2009-01-02 at 15:18 -0500, Walter Bender wrote: (3) We need lots more Activities. While there is consensus on this point, there is not consensus on the best way to get a lot more Activities. That is, pulling a lot more developers into building learning activities that run on Sugar. I think what we need are quality activities from both a technical and educational perspective, which is a different position from more activities The way I read Bryan's position is that it is based on some particularities of the Nepal situation some of which have been spelt out in the article but some other educational conditions which were not spelt out What has been spelt out: - Nepal is a poor country cf Uruguay and other Latin American countries (Purchasing Power Parity PPP$ adjusted income per person Uruguay 8,653; Nepal 1052) - Most Nepal teachers have not seen computers before unlike their Latin American counterparts - Nepal developers have existing skills in certain technologies (HTML, CSS, Javsscript, Flash) and not in others (Python, PyGTK) - Nepal developers are time strapped and have strong obligations to their families - They do have time and willingness to contribute to more activities but that requires acceptance, understanding and incorporation of their existing skill set into the sugar project What was not spelt out (Bryan will correct me if I am incorrect): - Existing Nepal curriculum is very structured - Strong pressure on teachers and students to pass existing curriculum because of penalties involved for failing I can see the logic of Bryan's position when the whole spectrum of Nepal circumstances are spelt out but I'm wondering how much these factors, some of which are local to Nepal, should influence the whole project. How much should Bryan's Nepal necessity - FOSS paradox be transferred to the whole project of activity development? Local factors - such as the ability and willingness of the existing education system to bend and adapt - will influence how the project develops in different countries. I'll write another comment which addresses the issues raised about foundational skills and constructivism (by Bryan, Walter, Wade) The main point I'm trying to make in this comment is that there may well be a difference between the current Nepal necessity of developing more activities due to all the factors above (local issues) and what I see as the general need for quality activities. I don't see processes or much discussion for quality control from an educational perspective in place. Making activity developers happy is not the same thing as making all educators happy. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] foundational skills in literacy and numeracy
I'm cutting and pasting because the discussion became broken up. Bryan: I love constructionism but too often we focus exclusively high-level math and science and not foundational skills or art, literature, grammar, health, etc. By foundational skills I mean basic literacy and numeracy. Kids can't create an Etoys game until they can count properly. They can't read the dialogues until they understand phonics properly. Some vocabulary has to be memorized and kids have to be able to add #'s quickly in their head. When was the last time you reached for a calculator to compute 5 + 5? If you did, you would work much more slowly. I find that Sugar contributors from developed countries are focused more on high-level thinking because that is a deficiency in their local school systems. Their kids can do basic math and _usually_ know basic grammar. Poorer countries are focused on basic numeracy and literacy. You can't program until you can add and read. Countries like Peru and Brazil have schools where kids are ready to focus on high level problems. They also probably have schools struggling to impart basic literacy and numeracy Walter: I don't understand the construing of constructionism with exclusively high-level math and science and I don't quite what you mean by foundational skills. I don't think anyone would argue that we don't want numeracy and literacy to be low shelf tools in every child's repertoire, but what does this have to do with the other topics in this thread? Bryan: It has to do w/ this thread because it is easy to create simple animations using Flash but hard to add collaboration and View Source. I am trying to make the point that a lot of activities don't need those features in order to be very effective Bill: It might be best to drop the word constructionism because it is generally used in a religious sense or alternatively as a swear word I'm not aware of anything that Papert wrote about teaching foundational skills like number (meaning integers) or basic literacy using phonics. btw I recently saw a brilliant and funny video about the evolution of human understanding of number which others might like to watch as food for thought: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/01/drama-and-humour-of-numbers.html Idit Harel as a student and collaborator with Papert did a brilliant thesis about fraction knowledge which is a foundational skill and widely regarded as poorly taught in primary schools in the industrialized world. See http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/tidying_up_the_const.html Logo or turtle art does require knowledge of number to start with. I like the sound of Ed Cherlin's suggestion to develop a version with new tiles that may not initially require that. Some people now argue (in Australia) that it would be best if calculators were banned in primary school because many kids arrive in secondary school with a poor sense of number, eg. can't add up or estimate a grocery bill in their heads. Others argue that kids develop a good real life sense of number just through growing up in the modern world but that they find the formalism of arithmetic, eg, the use of operations such as plus, minus, multiply, divide, quite confusing and that it does not transfer readily to their real life experiences. eg. Children and Number by Martin Hughes http://books.google.com.au/books?id=jEMPmGS-ROwCpg=PA12source=gbs_toc_rcad=0_0sig=ACfU3U14WR9cpeAekaK75LMYYwUDJIPksw#PPR6,M1 That particularly references discusses games as a possibly solution. I'm not claiming expertise in this issue but there is a lot of good educational research out there. Teaching basic literacy (reading and writing) has been a controversial area (phonics versus whole language, perhaps it still is). Once again, I'm not an expert language teacher (my main area is maths, science and IT secondary education) but I have been following the issue of teaching literacy to aboriginal children in Australia, a severely disadvantaged group. The methods used (Accelerated Literacy and Making up Lost Time in Literacy – MULTILIT) do not use computer mediation as far as I am aware. They are teacher intensive. However, I have watched videos of the methods used and I think that aspects of them could be programmed. See the videos on the LHS of this page: http://www.multilit.com.au/ This would seem to me to be well worth further investigation with literacy experts. The point I'm making here is that I can't see how quality activities in these foundational areas will be developed through the methods being suggested by Bryan. They will only be developed through educational research into the best way to teach these areas and then working out how this can be enhanced by computer mediation. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] etoys initial usability compared with scratch
Bryan: It takes a long time to train teachers to use Etoys who have never used a computer before. Etoys _requires_ mastery of the touchpad and that was more than we could teach in 2 weeks of training. Dragging and dropping is a non-trivial skill. I think we can train teachers familiar w/ computers how to use Etoys. Unfortunately, 95% of the teachers we deal and will deal w/ are not very familiar w/ computers. This is one of the major differences b/w Nepal's deployments and those of more developed countries like Uruguay Walter: I presume the same thing applies to Javascript and Flash that uses drag and drop? Bryan: It is does if you require a lot of dragging-and-dropping together w/ right-clicking. For example, our teachers got the hang of Draw during training but they struggled w/ Etoys. They could do point-click-activities like GCompris, E-Paath, Maze, etc. w/out a problem Bill: If you did a usability study comparing the etoys interface with the scratch interface you'll find that scratch provides for a much easier startup This includes the touchpad issue (eg. in etoys you have to draw and keep a sprite before you can begin to program) but also there are many other factors which makes scratch easier to use for a beginner eg. * colour coding of different function * all the function areas are visible to start with * clear physical separation of blocks palette from scripting area from stage * easier, more intuitive to see how blocks fit together I recently had a collaborative session with some xos and was introduced to the excellent etoys collaborative features (etoys chat and ability to pass scripted objects b/w users). These are great. I'm just arguing here about the getting started features which have impacted on the Nepal teacher training. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] David Leeming XO training model (Nauru)
I think these resources are very valuable for anyone advising others about how to get started with XO deployment and teacher training. I presume similar programmes have been run in other countries but haven't seen them written up to this level of detail. David has been been working as an educator and rolling out computer communications in the Pacific since 2000 so possibly has more experience than most of us in this regard. http://www.wikieducator.org/OLPC_Oceania/Training/Lesson_Plans/Notes_and_ideas_for_teacher_training http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Nauru download nauru deployment pdf ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Notes from Nepal's OLPC Deployments
http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/325 Notes from Nepal's OLPC Deployments I thought this was really interesting and informative ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Ncomputing and freedom of the child
tech considerations aside part of the appeal (in india and elsewhere) would be control, the computers stay in the labs, don't go home where students can then surf for porn etc. we are in the middle of a mandatory adult internet censorship battle in australia - enormous resistance and the government seems to be losing, thankfully however, I know many adult educators who don't support mandatory adult censorship but who nevertheless do advocate strongly that computers at home should not be in kids bedrooms, they should be in the lounge so that adults can constantly monitor their childrens surfing Not a practice that I supported for my own child and which I think goes counter to the UN Convention on the rights of the child: *Article 13* 1. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm neverthless, although we are winning the adult censorship battle in australia - thanks to great leadership by Electronic Frontiers Australia and ISPs like internode who have refused to participate in the phony trial - don't underestimate the argument of many adults who do not think that children should have genuine ownership of a personal computer - and all the benefits that brings - due to the alleged risks of surfing the internet without close and constant supervision even some australian child care organisations are now coming out and opposing Conroy's digital counter revolution (play on Rudd governments election promise of a digital revolution with faster broadband and a laptop for every child years 9-12, still waiting and they won't be laptops) http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/childrens-welfare-groups-slam-net-filters/2008/11/28/1227491813497.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1 if n-computing works then its advocates would argue: 1) cheaper 2) more control over what kids see Not sure about the cost issue but on point (2) it looks like we are stuck with having to argue that freedom for children is a good thing, well, lets hope we can win that one :-) no point in taking the low road when the high road is the only available option On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 9:10 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Ncomputing is certainly not greener than using XOs, except perhaps for the part where you use computers in a comp. lab less than you use a portable laptop. But [no accounting] it's popular. It lets you use existing monitor and sysadmin infrastructure. And a skole/sugar or ubuntu/sugar setup that runs on Ncomputing labs would rock. Someone should find out what they currently recommend for the user software stack in an NC lab. It can hardly compare with the sugar activity selection or unified experience. SJ On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 5:13 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: We had a similar thin client system in the computer lab of an education conference recently. At least 2 of the sessions could not run as planned because the workstations did not have the functionality of a normal PC. In my case I needed 32M of video memory. The same criticism though could be made of any low cost system, there's lots of software you can't run on an OLPC. Their claim since Ncomputing uses only 1 watt of energy (compared to 110 watts for a PC), electricity usage is cut by more than 90% ignores the power in the monitor, maybe 100W. Similarly, the monitor cost may be similar to the cost of an OLPC. The OLPC and its competitors like the eee may be better value. I had a pissing match with their founder in the WSJ about a year ago... I didn't get any straight answers from him about costs or learning. But Sugar on their Ubuntu thin client sounds doable. -walter On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Has anybody evaluated Ncomputing's claims on cost, power, and the like for school deployments? For example, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Interview/Stephen_Dukker_CEO_Ncomputing/articleshow/3820649.cms http://www.ncomputing.com/republic-of-macedonia.aspx They run Ubuntu (or Windows) over thin clients, so they could run Sugar once the packaging problems are fixed (The journal currently saves precisely nothing). Has anybody talked with them? -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___
[IAEP] 40 years anniversary of the dynabook
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/12/alan-kay-after-40-years-dynabook-is-not.html I have transcribed a section of Alan Kay's recent presentation marking 40 years anniversary of the dynabook because I see it as an important contribution to ongoing discussions about the significance and prospects for the XO ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Fwd: [OLPC-SF] Not new, but needs to be addressed
good responses to leigh blackall's complaints by Jim Tittsler and David Leeming on this Tuvaluans on Wikieducator thread (scroll down) http://groups.google.co.nz/group/wikieducator/browse_thread/thread/410a6bb8eaf5aa66 (pointed out by Leigh himself on his blog) On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 4:39 AM, Eben Eliason [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Good summary. On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 7:17 AM, Jameson Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here is my list of complaints from that evaluation, which was obviously using a 600-series OS version. not traditional desktop metaphor Fact. no tabbed browsing I have a proposal for this which I've been meaning to mockup. I'm adding it to my todo list now. flaky wireless A lot better, these days. some bad machines: difficulty turning on and peeling mousepad. flaky mouse has a mouse instead of mouse-alternatives (?) Hardware. (Still important, being worked on.) popup menus too slow This is something we should look into. Actually, we've slowed down their appearance since then, because we found that people were often waiting for the menu, instead of clicking directly on the icon/button directly. We've also added the right-click to reveal the palette immediately. I think the current state is reasonable, but more feedback on this is welcomed. activity startup too slow Improving a little. see address in browser bar should be easier (fixed) Yup. hard to save to USB. Should be accessible from within an activity. Yup. scroll bars too small, especially for subsidiary panes (interesting issue for grab key, BTW) Right. The grab key continually eludes. I know Erik worked on it for a bit, but I don't know the current status or if it's possible to roll it into a build soon. If we aren't going to have the grab key, we truly are going to have to increase the size of the scroll bars. I may have missed a few, but I think that most of these are either already the focus of effort (and progress) or have been decided against by many here. The one I bolded is I think a useful one: why not have a keep to USB and keep to SD option in the keep dropdown menu in the activity toolbar? You're absolutely right, and that has definitely been the plan. External devices have never gotten any polish; hopefully as we redesign the manner in which they work and interact with the Journal we can also add these types of features. - Eben Jameson On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:53 AM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: FYI. -- Forwarded message -- From: Valerie Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:13 AM Subject: [OLPC-SF] Not new, but needs to be addressed To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This just in from a well-meaning colleague who was using XOs. There are lots of issues identified here. There is a serious failure-to-communicate. These are real concerns for many people and this is what they hear. It is easy to dismiss this as Leigh's problem, but it isn't his alone. Everyone of us associated with OLPC needs to do a better job at bridging this gap. Are there good sources of information that address these issues and guidelines that would ease the transition from PC to XO in situations like this? http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/my-experience-with-olpc-in-tuvalu/ ..Valerie ___ OLPC-SF mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sf -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai ___ 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 ___ 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] Scratch license
I blogged about this issue, citing comments here from tom, myself and pamela and mitch resnick has replied on my blog (3rd comment) http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/11/scratch-license-disappointment.html On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 12:46 PM, Pamela Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Um. If you are trying to avoid forks, why would you want to allow commercial? That inevitably results in forks, with some code going dark. Have you thought about LGPL? It allows commercial entities to use the code without worry while protecting the codebase. I would strongly suggest you speak to Software Freedom Law Center. This is exactly what they do. If you want an MIT-style license, they can help you with this too. It's ultimately up to you, but doing a license without a lawyer never works. PJ Bill Kerr wrote: Scratch forum: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=77320#p77320 From Andres Monroy-Hernandez, Scratch Team at the MIT Media Lab: There has been some discussion in the Scratch Team about this. Overall our concern is to avoid forks. In general forks are good because bring diversity but since Scratch is a tool for beginners we're worried about having multiple versions out there. This happened a little bit with Scratch's predecessor LOGO, there were a lot of versions, some of them incompatible. I am an Ubuntu user and I appreciate the choices I have for every element of the OS, but I do spend hours trying to figure out between apt-get and aptitute, Compiz vs no compiz, KDE vs Gnome vs Xfce, etc, etc. In some ways, Ubuntu has been able to succeed by providing something that works out of the box without forcing users to choose. I think we are going to change the license of the binary distribution to allow for commercial use but we're uncertain about the source. What do you think about forking in Scratch? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] chatzilla IRC
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:40 AM, Caroline Meeks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 4:10 AM, Bernie Innocenti [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Elsa Culler wrote: Hi, Last night at sugarcamp, we(people from the Olin college OLPC chapter) were asked to come up with a list of roadblocks we have run into in trying to volunteer effectively. Mel Chua asked me to forward it to these lists, so here is the list in text format: Thanks for this criticism, I'm sure it is very appreciated. Some comments inlined below: we have to come up with jobs ourselves, and we're not too good at it we don't know what we can do that is useful when we are told what to do, we have to check with other people to make sure it's ok I think communication would improve a lot if it was kept on the public channels such as these lists, or the #sugar channel on irc.freenode.net. Note that most nondevelopers have not even heard of irc. Somewhere easy to find on the wiki we need some text that explains one easy way to connect so people can get started. Here is some suggested text, maybe we can discuss it here then put it into the wiki. Sugar Labs meetings are held on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). It is one of the first chat systems for the internet and is still preferred by many open source developers. There are many programs to use IRC. One easy way is to download the ChatZilla addon for FireFox. Once the add on is installed open it from the Tools Menu of FF. (Could someone test what it does the first time, before you've told it your nick name?) It will open a new window with some text. Click freenode in the available networks. It will take a second to connect and text will scroll on your screen. Type /j #Sugar You will now see a list of people in the Sugar room. Say Hello and join the conversation! thanks Caroline, these instructions were sufficient for me to join IRC McAfee Virus Scan blocks ports 666-6669 by default but chatzilla warned me about this issue My default nickname was 'user' which I changed through Preferences tab When I initially entered the #Sugar room I could see lots of users there (green icons) but there was no conversation - I guess it was just a quite time On the second try morgs said hello immediately, so there you go issues for newbies like me (things which joel / shenki explained to me separately): * it appears that 60 people are in the room but many are not there * for new users it's nice to find feet gradually by setting up a PM /msg shenki blah blah it's like any new learning really -- what you can do is easy what you haven't done before is hard (I dont know who discovered water but it wasn't a fish) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Scratch license
Scratch forum: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=77320#p77320 From Andres Monroy-Hernandez, Scratch Team at the MIT Media Lab: There has been some discussion in the Scratch Team about this. Overall our concern is to avoid forks. In general forks are good because bring diversity but since Scratch is a tool for beginners we're worried about having multiple versions out there. This happened a little bit with Scratch's predecessor LOGO, there were a lot of versions, some of them incompatible. I am an Ubuntu user and I appreciate the choices I have for every element of the OS, but I do spend hours trying to figure out between apt-get and aptitute, Compiz vs no compiz, KDE vs Gnome vs Xfce, etc, etc. In some ways, Ubuntu has been able to succeed by providing something that works out of the box without forcing users to choose. I think we are going to change the license of the binary distribution to allow for commercial use but we're uncertain about the source. What do you think about forking in Scratch? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Announcing Fedora Sugar Spin!
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:15 PM, Greg Dekoenigsberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, Bill Kerr wrote: Problems: * not enough activities This will become better over time. Since we need to package activities for Fedora and they need to be reviewed, there can be a bit of a lag. The activities should be coming online continually. * collaboration did not work out of the box when tested on my network at school :-( Meaning what, exactly? Can you be more specific? Well, it's meant to be possible for collaboration to work out of the box. This did not happen with Wolfgang's Live CD converted to USB keys. Someone reported earlier on this list that collaboration did work from USB keys on a Ubuntu network from morgan collett: Link local presence should just work, but I've never used the LiveCD images. At any rate Morgan asked us for some files and after they were sent reported back: from morgan collett: Thanks for the logs. presenceservice.log shows that salut (LinkLocalPlugin) starts up successfully but doesn't detect anyone on the local network. gabble (ServerPlugin) repeatedly attempts to connect to a jabber server but fails - nevertheless salut is running. After this one of my students built a jabber server and we could do collaboration through that I was hoping that with the new Fedora USB key we could do collaboration out of the box, meaning without using the jabber server All I tested with the new Fedora USB key was trying to connect through Chat but that didn't work Let me know if you want more information or diagnostic files again - I can look up the details or ask joel for help if needed - just tell me exactly the information you need a bit more detail of the history here: http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/connectivity * shutdown does not work from drop down xo icon Yeah, I noticed that in my previous attempts, too. --g ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Announcing Fedora Sugar Spin!
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 8:03 AM, Sebastian Dziallas [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Hi everybody, I'm proud to be announce the availability of our Fedora Sugar Spin, which incorporates the Sugar Desktop Environment on a Fedora Live CD. So, what is this in specific? With this spin, you'll be able to run Sugar, which is developed by Sugarlabs and the desktop environment used on the OLPC, directly from a Live CD! You'll find several activities on the image including most notably... * sugar-browse - a web browsing activity based on xulrunner * sugar-write - a word processor based on abiword ...among with several other applications introducing e.g. chat support. We, the OLPC SIG, will be importing further activities into Fedora, which might be installed using 'yum install sugar-*' at a later time. Where can you get it? Easily, here: http://sdz.fedorapeople.org/olpc/sugar-spin.iso Here's the SHA1 checksum, just if you're interested: f032ab45aa116c2728dcd2d676e29a5ee114fd1d sugar-spin.iso And what if you wanted to put it quickly onto your USB Key? Even easier! You'll just need to grab Luke Macken's liveusb-creator, which already includes support for the Sugar Spin. Here's the link: https://fedorahosted.org/releases/l/i/liveusb-creator/liveusb-creator-3.0.zip Thank you everybody, who made this possible! --Sebastian ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep This was easy and quick to make using the liveusb creator Problems: - not enough activities - collaboration did not work out of the box when tested on my network at school :-( - shutdown does not work from drop down xo icon ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Scratch license
On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 1:43 AM, Jonas Smedegaard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sat, Nov 08, 2008 at 10:53:05PM +1030, Bill Kerr wrote: I recently discovered, that MIT had changed the Scratch license from free to non commercial That is indeed sad news! :-( On reading the threads about the Squeak / Etoys / Debian issues then it would appear to me that this will effect the distribution of Scratch on Sugar to Debian at least, perhaps others Scratch is not currently packaged for Debian, but Pierre Thierry (of Skolelinux/Debian-edu france) is working on it. Cc'ing the bugreport for that packaging work. Tom Hoffman wrote in his blog on October 14th: Since it is un-free software it cannot be put in Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, or any other free software distribution. Can it be shipped on the XO? This license *significantly* restricts the distribution of Scratch to children around the world, and to what benefit? http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2008/10/scratch-goes-un-free.html I don't understand MIT thinking on this issue and am concerned about this potential block in the distribution of Scratch (my current preferred visual programming teaching program). It was for these sorts of reasons that I stopped using Game Maker (never open source, initially freeware but when it became successful it went onto a commercial pathway) What is MIT thinking on this issue? also see http://scratch.wik.is/Scratch_License http://scratch.wik.is/Support_Previous/Scratch_License/License Do you have an alternative link to the old license? Above page now redirects to the new license, and it seems that wiki does not provide access to older revisions of pages. This is the license (dated 5/7/2007) which is in the folder of my copy of scratch downloaded previously: Scratch Copyright (c) 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Scratch was developed by Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. See scratch.mit.edu. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and accompanying documentation and media files (the Software), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. - Jonas - -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkVrHwACgkQn7DbMsAkQLj8KACfVF8VFGKoOt2WmAv7Vvue4hzP rxYAoJyuChWLGMItcLP+mU5j4oPF/0gs =aYj7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ 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
[IAEP] Scratch license
I recently discovered, that MIT had changed the Scratch license from free to non commercial On reading the threads about the Squeak / Etoys / Debian issues then it would appear to me that this will effect the distribution of Scratch on Sugar to Debian at least, perhaps others Tom Hoffman wrote in his blog on October 14th: Since it is un-free software it cannot be put in Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, or any other free software distribution. Can it be shipped on the XO? This license *significantly* restricts the distribution of Scratch to children around the world, and to what benefit? http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2008/10/scratch-goes-un-free.html I don't understand MIT thinking on this issue and am concerned about this potential block in the distribution of Scratch (my current preferred visual programming teaching program). It was for these sorts of reasons that I stopped using Game Maker (never open source, initially freeware but when it became successful it went onto a commercial pathway) What is MIT thinking on this issue? also see http://scratch.wik.is/Scratch_License http://scratch.wik.is/Support_Previous/Scratch_License/License ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Scratch license
I have edited my initial post on this thread and posted to the Scratch forum: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=76772#p76772 (also forwarded a copy to mitch resnick and invited him to comment here) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] is this useful feedback?
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Bill Kerr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI is this useful feedback? I think it's useful in itself, but there needs to happen quite a bit of work before it can be consumed by developers. I guess someone that knows the context in which those comments are made could translate them to more universally understandable statements, and then someone else could aggregate those with other feedback and produce some summary from all of that. flux, year 10 student australia, has been slack in recording his criticisms (tends to mouth off with a negative but informed tone) but I sat with him and wrote them down myself, insisting on a bit more detail - he's one of two students in the class who knows some linux (more than me) - he felt the xo was lacking compared with other linux distributions XO DISLIKES Slow to load initially Loading (splash) screen for each activity is sad, dull, not worth it Games done cheaply compared with GNOME and KDE games mouse pointer is too big wants ability to replace XO icon with different icons wants ability to create a new background want fluxbox, a better GUI btw I have asked the class to try to put themselves, at least some of the time, into the shoes of a 6-10 yo child from the developing world when providing feedback - but have also said that I want to hear negatives as well as positives I'm not sure that's the best POV for useful feedback. I cannot think myself of any features of Sugar that are specially targeted to people in developing countries and I for one would like to see Sugar evolve in an useful platform for all people independently of their age. If kids are complaining so much about the Sugar Shell means that they are seeing it too much. Most of the important stuff should happen inside activities, not in the Shell. My reaction to that feedback is that Sugar should dissolve itself better into the set of installed activities (by improving performance, for example) and that activities should address better the kids' interests (so they don't need to change the shell icons to get some fun). (note the final para from death-god, he's not able to think outside the MS paradigm at this point - I plan to do some more talking about these issues next term) one memory that this triggered in me was mark shuttleworths ubuntu manifesto: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/06/mark-shuttleworths-ubuntu-manifesto.html #13 pretty as a feature My suspect is that conventional desktops have a big dissonance with non-office usage, so people spend more time that they would like to in the OS. Because of that, the desktop GUI is important for them and they want it to be pretty. If we reduced the components that the user needs to interact with, those eliminated components don't need to be pretty any more. If we reduce the time that the user needs to spend on the rest of the desktop, the importance of their beauty is also reduced. Not saying that Mark is wrong nor that Sugar should be ugly, just that when we hear that some part of the Sugar shell needs to look nicer or be more like traditional desktops, we may want to reflect why is the shell taking so much of the user attention and if this isn't an opportunity to streamline the experience and take ourselves out of the way. thanks for comment, Tomeu. I've put it up on the wiki and will attempt to discuss these issues with the students when we go back to school tomorrow. (we will have to get our minds back out of holiday mode first, however) http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI one thing I have noticed with students who use linux (only a handful at my school) is that they like the ubuntu rotating cube, they see that as new and cool My own thoughts are more in line with what you are saying, that the OS, if we must have one, ought to be just a way to access the activities, that pretty is not important. But I do suspect strongly that to attract many users (who are used to Windows) it is important and that part of the success of ubuntu is that MarkShuttleworth has picked up on that. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] is this useful feedback?
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Bill Kerr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Bill Kerr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI is this useful feedback? I think it's useful in itself, but there needs to happen quite a bit of work before it can be consumed by developers. I guess someone that knows the context in which those comments are made could translate them to more universally understandable statements, and then someone else could aggregate those with other feedback and produce some summary from all of that. flux, year 10 student australia, has been slack in recording his criticisms (tends to mouth off with a negative but informed tone) but I sat with him and wrote them down myself, insisting on a bit more detail - he's one of two students in the class who knows some linux (more than me) - he felt the xo was lacking compared with other linux distributions XO DISLIKES Slow to load initially Loading (splash) screen for each activity is sad, dull, not worth it Games done cheaply compared with GNOME and KDE games mouse pointer is too big wants ability to replace XO icon with different icons wants ability to create a new background want fluxbox, a better GUI btw I have asked the class to try to put themselves, at least some of the time, into the shoes of a 6-10 yo child from the developing world when providing feedback - but have also said that I want to hear negatives as well as positives I'm not sure that's the best POV for useful feedback. I cannot think myself of any features of Sugar that are specially targeted to people in developing countries and I for one would like to see Sugar evolve in an useful platform for all people independently of their age. If kids are complaining so much about the Sugar Shell means that they are seeing it too much. Most of the important stuff should happen inside activities, not in the Shell. My reaction to that feedback is that Sugar should dissolve itself better into the set of installed activities (by improving performance, for example) and that activities should address better the kids' interests (so they don't need to change the shell icons to get some fun). (note the final para from death-god, he's not able to think outside the MS paradigm at this point - I plan to do some more talking about these issues next term) one memory that this triggered in me was mark shuttleworths ubuntu manifesto: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/06/mark-shuttleworths-ubuntu-manifesto.html #13 pretty as a feature My suspect is that conventional desktops have a big dissonance with non-office usage, so people spend more time that they would like to in the OS. Because of that, the desktop GUI is important for them and they want it to be pretty. If we reduced the components that the user needs to interact with, those eliminated components don't need to be pretty any more. If we reduce the time that the user needs to spend on the rest of the desktop, the importance of their beauty is also reduced. Not saying that Mark is wrong nor that Sugar should be ugly, just that when we hear that some part of the Sugar shell needs to look nicer or be more like traditional desktops, we may want to reflect why is the shell taking so much of the user attention and if this isn't an opportunity to streamline the experience and take ourselves out of the way. thanks for comment, Tomeu. I've put it up on the wiki and will attempt to discuss these issues with the students when we go back to school tomorrow. (we will have to get our minds back out of holiday mode first, however) http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI one thing I have noticed with students who use linux (only a handful at my school) is that they like the ubuntu rotating cube, they see that as new and cool My own thoughts are more in line with what you are saying, that the OS, if we must have one, ought to be just a way to access the activities, that pretty is not important. But I do suspect strongly that to attract many users (who are used to Windows) it is important and that part of the success of ubuntu is that MarkShuttleworth has picked up on that. Agreed, we don't want to sell an OS, but may be forced into that... No idea about what we can do there, other than hiring Apple's marketing department :p I like walter's suggestions on this page: http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/ModifyingSugar tweaking the interface as an option - for both empowerment and skill building I'll give it a go but fear that most students won't have the patience or carefulness to hack the python code successfully, a few will give it a shot
Re: [IAEP] is this useful feedback?
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Bill Kerr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Bill Kerr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Bill Kerr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI is this useful feedback? I think it's useful in itself, but there needs to happen quite a bit of work before it can be consumed by developers. I guess someone that knows the context in which those comments are made could translate them to more universally understandable statements, and then someone else could aggregate those with other feedback and produce some summary from all of that. flux, year 10 student australia, has been slack in recording his criticisms (tends to mouth off with a negative but informed tone) but I sat with him and wrote them down myself, insisting on a bit more detail - he's one of two students in the class who knows some linux (more than me) - he felt the xo was lacking compared with other linux distributions XO DISLIKES Slow to load initially Loading (splash) screen for each activity is sad, dull, not worth it Games done cheaply compared with GNOME and KDE games mouse pointer is too big wants ability to replace XO icon with different icons wants ability to create a new background want fluxbox, a better GUI btw I have asked the class to try to put themselves, at least some of the time, into the shoes of a 6-10 yo child from the developing world when providing feedback - but have also said that I want to hear negatives as well as positives I'm not sure that's the best POV for useful feedback. I cannot think myself of any features of Sugar that are specially targeted to people in developing countries and I for one would like to see Sugar evolve in an useful platform for all people independently of their age. If kids are complaining so much about the Sugar Shell means that they are seeing it too much. Most of the important stuff should happen inside activities, not in the Shell. My reaction to that feedback is that Sugar should dissolve itself better into the set of installed activities (by improving performance, for example) and that activities should address better the kids' interests (so they don't need to change the shell icons to get some fun). (note the final para from death-god, he's not able to think outside the MS paradigm at this point - I plan to do some more talking about these issues next term) one memory that this triggered in me was mark shuttleworths ubuntu manifesto: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/06/mark-shuttleworths-ubuntu-manifesto.html #13 pretty as a feature My suspect is that conventional desktops have a big dissonance with non-office usage, so people spend more time that they would like to in the OS. Because of that, the desktop GUI is important for them and they want it to be pretty. If we reduced the components that the user needs to interact with, those eliminated components don't need to be pretty any more. If we reduce the time that the user needs to spend on the rest of the desktop, the importance of their beauty is also reduced. Not saying that Mark is wrong nor that Sugar should be ugly, just that when we hear that some part of the Sugar shell needs to look nicer or be more like traditional desktops, we may want to reflect why is the shell taking so much of the user attention and if this isn't an opportunity to streamline the experience and take ourselves out of the way. thanks for comment, Tomeu. I've put it up on the wiki and will attempt to discuss these issues with the students when we go back to school tomorrow. (we will have to get our minds back out of holiday mode first, however) http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI one thing I have noticed with students who use linux (only a handful at my school) is that they like the ubuntu rotating cube, they see that as new and cool My own thoughts are more in line with what you are saying, that the OS, if we must have one, ought to be just a way to access the activities, that pretty is not important. But I do suspect strongly that to attract many users (who are used to Windows) it is important and that part of the success of ubuntu is that MarkShuttleworth has picked up on that. Agreed, we don't want to sell an OS, but may be forced into that... No idea about what we can do there, other than hiring Apple's marketing department :p I like walter's suggestions on this page: http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/ModifyingSugar tweaking the interface as an option - for both empowerment and skill building I'll give it a go but fear that most students won't have the patience
Re: [IAEP] Narrative.
On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bill, Here's a short dialogue between myself, Ben Schwartz, Martin Dengler, and Bobby Powers on my interpretation of narrative as it might apply to a user interface designed for engaging children in the world of learning: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mstone/Commentaries/Sugar_2 === Highlights * By narrative, I mean a rational sequence (or graph) of events. * It's rather hard to use XOs to prepare direct lessons. By direct lesson, I mean a guided learning experience, usable in variable network conditions, which minimizes the amount of decision-making and navigation that the end-user needs to perform in order to experience 'the whole thing' regardless of what software implements each individual experience contained in the lesson. === Toy Problem Concretely, suppose I invent a new Python trick like the ones at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mstone/Tricks How might a prepare a slick explanation for an inexperienced user? * I might write up a web page for my trick, then write a Pippy bundle showing off the trick in a toy program, then give a pointer to a git repo containing an instance of the trick in 'production'. Question: How do I write web pages on an XO? Question: Do I have to be able to read in order to find and run the Pippy bundle? * I might write up a larger Pippy example for my trick in the literate style. I might also create a puzzle revolving around integrating the trick into some sample code. I might include links to 'advanced reading' or more examples in comments in the source code. Question: Pippy doesn't know anything about hyperlinks. Will my readers? Question: I must either comment out my puzzle so that the example can run or I must provide it in a separate bundle. How many users would figure out how to try both the example and the puzzle? * While not obviously applicable to this specific example, two other common solutions to this sort of problem include the scripted transitions between freeform experiences idea common to wizards and role-playing games and the 'build a custom but user-editable program' idea underlying most EToys lessons. === Larger Concerns Since Sugar is strongly concerned with UI unification, it's worth spending more time thinking about how well each of the solutions to your favorite toy problem integrates with encompassing narratives of reflection, criticism, and human collaboration. (None of the solutions I've proposed above satisfy me in any of these regards.) In any case, I hope this followup helps explain the motivation and 'line-of-thought' behind my initial email. Please discuss. hi michael, I don't know the answer but think it's a good question, which has now been somewhat clarified narrative is a big suitcase word (roger schank comes to mind, his book tell me a story) - I would think of your idea as something like sequenced instruction because you are linking a rational sequence (or graph) of events to the preparation of direct lessons or a guided learning experience What Bryan says in his article is a pragmatic approach to what many teachers request (more sequence and structure, a structured curriculum). The comments to his article by John Maxwell and Yoshiki point out that the comparison with alan kay's dynabook idea is not very accurate. It's a big topic - an important topic but I'd say the language being used here is not accurate and might have created some initial confusion. I'm not qualified to talk about the software changes you are suggesting - don't know enough python ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Fedora Live CD for Sugar
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 3:41 AM, Bill Kerr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Fedora live CD for sugar my impression is that it hasn't developed to the point where I should upgrade for school use, eg. missing activities am I reading this correctly? Yeah, I think it will take another couple of weeks to be usable. Do need the activities because if lots were missing then kids would think of it as a downgrade Getting all of the activities working on standard Fedora might take more time. If you have a list of activities the kids care about in particular, we can give them higher priority. btw I forgot to mention a third hassle, the mama activities do not fit on our default screen resolution (which is locked down by techs and not trivial - time consuming - to alter) what sometimes happens in practice is that little things like this end up in those activities not being evaluated - in school environment where everyone is very busy all the time by comparison etoys has a convenient way to resize the screen within the program these are the activities that have been more popular and / or which I want to push the kids in the direction of looking at more closely I'm not sure which activities enable collaboration and which don't - a list of those would be handy for me X2o: A puzzle solving and critical thinking game similar to the Incredible Machine; make crazy contraptions to get the O back on top of the X vu.lux.olpc.Pacmanpacman: A Pacman clone gcompris: educational games guido van robot: Educational programming language, IDE and lessons; Stable with 18 lessons included simcity: Construct and maintain your own city Terminal – linux command line (explore some linux commands) Story Builder - Graphical story constructor with a variety of characters and backgrounds and simple word-processing capabilities (MaMaMedia) Speak – An animated face that speaks whatever you type Scratch - multimedia visual programming language Slider puzzle- Slider Puzzle to improve on puzzle solving skills (MaMaMedia) Pippy – Python Programming language/environment (run samples by clicking on grey horizontal line) Maze - Maze game Jump - A Marble-Jumping Solitaire Game. Works in Sugar; Created by a Team at Carnegie Mellon University Jigsaw Puzzle - Classic picture-constructing game (MaMaMedia) DrGeo II - Euclidean Geometry Etoys - Learning / visual programming / authoring environment; includes Kedama which can simulate hundreds or thousands of objects FlipSticks - org.worldwideworkshop.olpc.FlipSticks Using keyframes, program a stick figure to twist, turn, tumble and dance (MaMaMedia) Cartoon Builder - Animate a cartoon character by creating a sequence of poses inside a filmstrip (MaMaMedia) Chat - Text chat BlockParty – Tetris-inspired game Browse - Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox (I noticed some interesting new activities on the activities page but haven't evaluated them yet) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] wolfram's mathematica
via rob costello wolfram's mathematica page says: *Mathematica* has been ported to the OLPC $100 laptop http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/analysis/content/MathEducationSoftware.html I can't see it on the activities page - does anyone have information about this? -- Bill Kerr http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] is this useful feedback?
http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI is this useful feedback? flux, year 10 student australia, has been slack in recording his criticisms (tends to mouth off with a negative but informed tone) but I sat with him and wrote them down myself, insisting on a bit more detail - he's one of two students in the class who knows some linux (more than me) - he felt the xo was lacking compared with other linux distributions XO DISLIKES - Slow to load initially - Loading (splash) screen for each activity is sad, dull, not worth it - Games done cheaply compared with GNOME and KDE games - mouse pointer is too big - wants ability to replace XO icon with different icons - wants ability to create a new background - want fluxbox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxbox, a better GUI btw I have asked the class to try to put themselves, at least some of the time, into the shoes of a 6-10 yo child from the developing world when providing feedback - but have also said that I want to hear negatives as well as positives (note the final para from death-god, he's not able to think outside the MS paradigm at this point - I plan to do some more talking about these issues next term) one memory that this triggered in me was mark shuttleworths ubuntu manifesto: http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/06/mark-shuttleworths-ubuntu-manifesto.html #13 pretty as a feature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] sugar feedback
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 7:45 PM, Simon Schampijer [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Bill Kerr wrote: walter wrote in the digest: Any and all feedback is enormously valuable: please speak up A year 10 class at my school in australia is currently evaluating sugar activities using USB keys - various impressions, forum, QA, tasks, lessons etc. are being recorded on this wiki: http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/ (keep in mind that the collaborative aspects have not worked out of the box and we are still testing the jabber server, not running it routinely in lessons yet - will resume efforts here after the current busy assessment period is over) the school name has been removed from the home page, there are no student photos and kids are using aliases due to education department attitudes - earlier this year an innovative class blog in another school was closed down and investigated by the department Oh i did not have those problems on my list of possible issues. Hmm this is sad - but i guess some people are worried to give out information - did they say the reasoning? Kids are said to be at risk from stranger danger. Possibly the worst aspect of this was that overseas mentoring was frowned upon. It is now standard procedure that anyone in contact with kids be subject to police background checks. See Marvin Minsky's articles on the OLPC wiki regarding the high potential of mentoring, explained in more detail in his book, *The Emotion Machine*, Ch. 2 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Marvin_Minsky_essays http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E2/eb2.html ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Concise explanation of Constructionism from the Learning Team
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 4:15 AM, Seth Woodworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Inspired by Sameer's recent conversations with a pair of Montessori Kindergarden teachers. I went to talk to Cynthia Solomon of the OLPC Learning team. We got to talking about the theory of Activities and a few other topics. Eventually she showed me this snippit from the Media Lab's Future of Learning Group: Constructionism We are developing Constructionism as a theory of learning and education. Constructionism is based on two different senses of construction. It is grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, rather than having information poured into their heads. Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally meaningful artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, or robots). http://learning.media.mit.edu/projects.html I thought that this explination was concise and really interesting. I would love to explain this to people who want to desige activities, just to give them a little snapshot of the concept. Does anyone have a problem with this deffinition? Does anyone have an improvement? -Seth hi Seth, It could be a mistake to try to summarise a complex idea as a thumbnail. Cynthia does not do that in her book (*Computer Environments for Children*) where she compares 4 different approaches to learning. Her description there of constructivism is far more nuanced with example of logo learning and historical and philosophical background. Some of the concepts included in that chapter are - - a definition of mathematics - people possess different theories about the world - children build their own intellectual structures - why would they change their theories? - intuition - natural learning development - the role of computers - the role of relationship - different ways of looking at maths (constructive and intuitive compared with rule driven and formal) - discussion of turtle geometry - other mathematicians who hold similar views - Poincare, Brouwer, Godel) - value of an anthropomorphic approach - etc. (there is much more) It's tempting to try to develop a thumbnail definition, it appeals to our sense of tidiness and closure, but with this complex idea it doesn't seem to work. While I was writing this Albert's response appeared which adds another dimension to the discussion - oversimplification does make an easier target for critics. Since your definition does not distinguish Papert's constructionism from open ended discovery learning then it is easy to criticise in this way. The 4 models in Cynthia's book are: Suppes: Drill and Practice and Rote Learning Davis: Socratic Interactions and Discovery Learning Dwyer: Eclecticism and Heuristic Learning Papert: Constructivism and Piagetian Learning This illustrates the point that distinctions ought to be made between the latter three, rather than lumping them all into some exploratory basket. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] Concise explanation of Constructionism from the Learning Team
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Bastien [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Hi Seth and all, Seth Woodworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Constructionism We are developing Constructionism as a theory of learning and education. Constructionism is based on two different senses of construction. It is grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, rather than having information poured into their heads. Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally meaningful artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, or robots). http://learning.media.mit.edu/projects.html I thought that this explination was concise and really interesting. I would love to explain this to people who want to desige activities, just to give them a little snapshot of the concept. Does anyone have a problem with this deffinition? Does anyone have an improvement? I don't have any problem with this definition, it captures the spirit of (what I understand from) constructionism. My only concern -- and this is a general concern with the usual rhetoric behind constructionism, not with this definition in particular -- is the way we too often refer to this image: information poured into heads. While I think it might be useful to use such simplistic images, I also think it might give a false feeling of novelty: as if constructionism was the long awaited solution to save people from this stupid practice in education, the one of pouring information into heads... At least Plato argues that knowledge is not about pouring information into heads. Even Aristotle, who is more of an empiricist, wouldn't deny that _acquiring_ knowledge is about building new forms on the top of the ones we have, questioning the world with our own questions. Whether the knowledge is about grasping forms (or patterns) that _really_ exist outside of the human mind, or building forms that only exist as mere abstractions, learning is seen as an interactive process and as an interactive process of construction. You could hardly find any philosopher who would defend something like pouring information into heads, and I challenge anyone to point at teachers who do only that. Well said, Bastien people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, rather than having information poured into their heads I would add that the other end of the statement is also a simplistic caricature, pure discovery learning on the one hand, versus, pure instructionism at the other end. Neither is going to work and no teacher does either once they encounter real world children (snip) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Into the classroom.
On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 8:09 AM, David Farning [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Product.Check. Delivery Mechanism. Check. Customers hmmm. Last week I sent out a community outreach update in which I stated that engaging the education community was blocked until we could put livecds into educators hands. Happily, I can now say that I was wrong. The challenge is how to get Sugar onto the computers that are in fornt of children. My background is technology, so I was looking at problem as a matter of pushing the technology downstream. Instead, we can look at the problem as matter of having teachers pull the technology into the classroom. At this point we have a reasonable piece of software. The Sugar desktop is functional and there are a couple of demonstration activities. Our developers are doing a good job getting organized. It won't be long until we get a into a innovate-stabilize cadence which will allow us to develop an excellent piece of software at good pace. We have a delivery mechanism, the Linux distributions. Redhat, Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu all do one thing very well. They deliver software. The olpc-team at Fedora is gaining ground at an amazing rate. The sugar-team in the .deb side of the fence is also doing well. The education spins have not been doing so well. Skolelinux is establishing a pretty good foothold in Northern Europe. But other spins are less far along. Rather then use the education spins to push, we can use the education communities to pull. Some of the education communities that seem promising are: 1. Constructionist. 2. Collaboration oriented. There are many communities springing up around collaboration oriented technologies such as Moodle. 3. Open Source. There is a small, but growing number of organization based around spreading FLOSS in the school systems. 4. On-line. There are numerous organizations involved in online development of lesson plans and books. I would say our next step is to start engaging these organizations in figuring out how they can best use Sugar in their own classrooms. I am not naive enough to believe that we will get widespread adoption overnight using this method. But, the listen, learn, improve, release model of open source development is a natural fit. dfarning good post david Personally I see the need for some more theory-practice work around the theme of constructionism, the need to clarify what it means exactly and its relationship to other learning theories and practices - we have some notable educational and mind theorists such as alan kay and marvin minsky who don't use the C___ word in part because it has become so diffuse, fuzzy and meaningless. There is a new group of educational practitioners (some of them also theorists) who have grown up around the web2.0 (aka as school2.0) practices but in some respects this has the appearance of a ground zero movement that is either not aware or does not mention the earlier ideas of the use of computers in education eg. the use of logo in schools. This focuses on the use of web2.0 apps such as blogs, wikis for enhancing learning. This latter group often does not consider the use of programming languages which separates them from the Papert approach. also the Siemens - Downes group has put forward a new educational theory of networked learning under the banner of connectivism (sic, not connectionism) One possibility or line of approach for sugar would be to integrate these two approaches - could be crudely described as computer mediated constructionism + collaboration (using slogans here while advocating caution in their use) Some online educational communities do not focus on on line lesson plans and books but more take the approach that immersion in media, eg. mediated writing through shared blogs (and use of other web apps) will liberate humanity from Schools and Teachers, which are sometimes seen as the problem School are also having to face the issue of what to do about the cheaper more ubiquitous presence of computers - and they really don't know what to do because in general the uptake from teachers has been slow I'm probably oversimplifying a lot but in general I think it's fair to say that the use of computers in education is very much problematic and in a state of flux - so new ideas built around the affordances of Sugar software could achieve some traction fairly quickly, possibly :-) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
