Re: [IAEP] Read Etexts Videos available
Hi Jim, Jim Simmons nices...@gmail.com writes: Another thing I've noticed is that most Sugar videos on Daily Motion are Official Content, which apparently means someone is paying money so the videos can be shown without commercials popping up at the bottom. That's thanks to Dailymotion collaborating with Sugar Labs. Sebastien Adgnot (cc'ed in this email) is the person to ask for anything regarding this collaboration. It would be nice if my videos or some version thereof could be adopted as Official Content. I guess Sebastien might be able to give a treat to your video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa4bhu_readetexts-the-movie_tech HTH, -- Bastien ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Read Etexts Videos available
Hi Caroline, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com writes: I'm exploring YouTube as we go here. They have yet another cool feature. Captions/subtitles http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=100079 Apparently rather then adding text like you did in your video, you could create a file and have the text show up on the screen. The advantage seems to be that it will get automatically translated for viewers in other languages. If you think of any feature that Dailymotion should have, please ping Sebastien. Sugar Labs and Dailymotion are both committed to improve the computing experience for free software users*, so maybe some synergy can be found here. Thanks! * Dailymotion recently added support for Ogg and the HTML5 video tag, which was praised by the Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/dailymotion-theora -- Bastien ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Read Etexts Videos available
Dave, I believe you have access to my edited video on google video. If you are so inclined, download it, add some audio (just music, I think) and post the revised version back to google videos for us to check out. If it looks like an improvement we can put it on Daily Motion, hopefully as Official Content. Thanks, James Simmons On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Dave Cdavewebproducti...@yahoo.com wrote: Hey all: I could add music and voice overs to the video if you'd like. let me know what you need done. I could also add annotations and/or subtitles, and could host any youtube videos. Dave C. From: Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com To: Jim Simmons nices...@gmail.com Cc: David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org; Dave C davewebproducti...@yahoo.com; Bastien bastiengue...@googlemail.com; It's An Education Project List iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 6:30:57 PM Subject: Re: Read Etexts Videos available On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Jim Simmons nices...@gmail.com wrote: Caroline, I could probably add music with Cinelerra. I printed off the 200+ pages of the manual and put it in a binder but haven't read it yet. I'm in the middle of coding improvements to my Activities now and that is my first priority. Apparently thousands of people are downloading my Activities, but my Read Etexts video has only been played 8 times (4 of which were probably just me). Dave C could probably add music to my videos if he's so inclined. I'm partial to Les Preludes by Franz Listz (AKA the Flash Gorden theme. Buster Crabbe version, not the later atrocity with music by Queen). I seem to recall you liked the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, so maybe that one for the other video about Get Internet Archive Books and Read. Another thing I've noticed is that most Sugar videos on Daily Motion are Official Content, which apparently means someone is paying money so the videos can be shown without commercials popping up at the bottom. It would be nice if my videos or some version thereof could be adopted as Official Content. Not sure what you mean by annotations. My videos certainly have title cards. What else is needed, besides some thrilling music? I'm exploring YouTube as we go here. They have yet another cool feature. Captions/subtitles http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=100079 Apparently rather then adding text like you did in your video, you could create a file and have the text show up on the screen. The advantage seems to be that it will get automatically translated for viewers in other languages. An annoying feature is that on the test video I added music to there is now an ad to buy that music. :( So I wonder how we get the cool features without the ads and flash requirement? James Simmons On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Caroline Meekscarol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi James, This is good! But it would be better with music and annotations. I know we want to be using daily motion because it doesn't use Flash. But YouTube looks like it has tools that makes what we want to do much easier. Adds music with guaranteed usage rights and annotations. I wonder if we can add those things on YouTube, then download it as MP4 and upload to dailymotion? http://screencast.com/t/9uiIVx9ikAf On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Jim Simmons nices...@gmail.com wrote: Dave and David, Yesterday I did a screen capture of Read Etexts in action, then fired up Kino to edit it and add title cards. The results are not awful, but perhaps could be improved with better editing software. I have posted the original capture in Ogg Video format, plus my finished product which is an AVI using Xvid and Mp3 for video and audio encoding. The URL is: http://people.sugarlabs.org/jdsimmons/ My original capture was of Sugar running at 800x600. I had originally tried capturing at 1000x600, but when Kino imports the Ogg Video it resizes everything to 640x480 (I think) and does not preserve the aspect ratio. As a result the Activity ring becomes an ellipse instead of a circle. I had to modify Read Etexts to work better in 800x600 than it did originally. Unfortunately, when Kino resizes the capture it makes the text on the captured screens hard to read. We could probably live with this if we had to, but I'm hoping that Dave's Final Cut Pro might do a better job resizing the video. I think my editing job is reasonably good. I had originally had a The End title card on this that got lost somehow. If Kino would support it I would have liked to have added a musical background. Ever since I saw Flash Gordon serials as a child I've been partial to Listz's Les Preludes. The music is in the public domain, but I doubt I could find a performance of it that is. I could get around this by recording myself playing it on a kazoo. I
[IAEP] What to report where - Was Re: Sugar on a Stick switches to a new Bug Tracker
hmm ok let me see if I understand. Teachers, parents etc. who may have a hard time understanding whether they are reporting a bug on Sugar, Sugar on a Stick or an activity should use GetSatisfaction. SoaS Development team will use launch pad. People doing QA should put bugs into dev unless its a sugar on a stick only issue. Is that a correct restatement of what you want? I wonder if all questions should just go to GetSatisfaction. Is there an advantage to the LaunchPad questions section? I wonder if we are doing the right thing, is GetSatsfaction solving enough problems for us to be worth it? Its nice but it is yet another site...Does Launchpad have a Spanish UI available? On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.comwrote: Hi Caroline, here's what I discussed with Luke over IRC. * Questions related to SoaS: Launchpad Answers Section * Issues encountered on SoaS (stressing issues here): Launchpad Bug Tracker (we can link a bug also to reports at other bug trackers!) * Feature Requests which target Sugar directly should go to dev.sugarlabs.org. Following this strategy, GetSatisfaction would be more intended for general end-user support, meaning people who run Sugar on no-matter-which-platform-or-distro. Launchpad should be SoaS-specific. I'll take some time today to put bugs into Launchpad and to migrate our feature list for v2 over there, too. --Sebastian Caroline Meeks wrote: Where do you want teachers interacting with you? Do you want me, and people I give clues to, to put questions into Launchpad or GetSatisfaction? Do you want me and others to try to guess if a bug is SoaS or Sugar or should we enter into Launchpad if we are using SoaS and let you decide to move it? What about activity related issues? What about activity related issues on SoaS, like an activity not scaling. Thanks! Caroline On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com mailto:sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi everybody, with the imminent release of the SoaS v2 Beta in just ten days, I would like to announce the switch to Launchpad as our bug tracker. We have been evaluating an instance Luke Faraone set us up with lately and are confident that it will fit our needs. The upcoming beta release is the first one intended to be used with this instance. More precisely, we will use it to track bugs, as well as new features. Note that this change only affects Sugar on a Stick, while the core Sugar bug tracker stays at dev.sugarlabs.org http://dev.sugarlabs.org . You can access and explore it here: https://launchpad.net/soas Thanks, --Your SoaS Team ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- 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] Boys and Girls Club of America and Scratch
http://scratched.media.mit.edu/discussions/news-and-announcements/interested-scratch-curriculum-development Cool that the Boys and Girls club is doing this. It would be great if we could provide Scratch in Sugar on a Stick as to these kids as a way to bring their work with them home and to school. Does anyone have the contacts to discuss this with them? Caroline -- 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] election workflow
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 14:20, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: The basic premise is that _anyone_ who signs a signed copy of the Code of Conduct http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Legal/Code_of_Conduct becomes a voting member and receives a @sugarlabs.org alias. Hm. Sounds like it'd be trivial to ballot-stuff undetectably. I'd still prefer manual approval, myself, a la Ubuntu's Community Council. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] election workflow
Can we assume that you are assuming responsibility for setting up and maintaining the community council and membership records mechanism? david On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Luke Faraonel...@faraone.cc wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 14:20, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: The basic premise is that _anyone_ who signs a signed copy of the Code of Conduct http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Legal/Code_of_Conduct becomes a voting member and receives a @sugarlabs.org alias. Hm. Sounds like it'd be trivial to ballot-stuff undetectably. I'd still prefer manual approval, myself, a la Ubuntu's Community Council. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
See the page, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Wiki_Team/Guide/Wiki_Structure, for how Projects, Teams, and Local Labs may distinguish themselves on the Sugar Labs wiki. --Fred On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 1:45 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: There has been some confusion over the past several months about how SoaS fits into Sugar Labs. I have been getting the feeling that we are setting ourself up for confusion by not clearly abstracting SoaS from the Learning Platform. On the other hand, initiatives such as sugar on a stick are incredibly valuable to the over all mission of Sugar Labs. As such, I would like to propose that Sugar Labs create a separate category of initiatives, such as SoaS, called projects. The idea is based on apachs' and eclipses' effective use of projects. The premise behind 'projects' is that initiatives such as SoaS are vital to the overall success of the ecosystem. Yet, they are in several ways autonomous to the Learning Platform. 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] election workflow
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 14:42, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Can we assume that you are assuming responsibility for setting up and maintaining the community council and membership records mechanism? Community_council == slobs current, and one week/month/whatever before election we freeze the membership list (hosted on-wiki as it is currently), then the SLOBs glance through the list making sure that everybody's qualified to be on the list. Low-tech, and better yet, already implemented. (sans the freezing) -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] election workflow
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 1:47 PM, Luke Faraonel...@faraone.cc wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 14:42, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Can we assume that you are assuming responsibility for setting up and maintaining the community council and membership records mechanism? Community_council == slobs current, and one week/month/whatever before election we freeze the membership list (hosted on-wiki as it is currently), then the SLOBs glance through the list making sure that everybody's qualified to be on the list. Who is qualified to be on the list? Low-tech, and better yet, already implemented. (sans the freezing) -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] election workflow
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 14:58, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Community_council == slobs current, and one week/month/whatever before election we freeze the membership list (hosted on-wiki as it is currently), then the SLOBs glance through the list making sure that everybody's qualified to be on the list. Who is qualified to be on the list? Current policy: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Governance#Sugar_Labs_Membership I don't know who is staffing members at sugarlabs dot org, but we already have a process and criteria for membership. Not sure how that's run currently, however. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] election workflow
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 2:04 PM, Luke Faraonel...@faraone.cc wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 14:58, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Community_council == slobs current, and one week/month/whatever before election we freeze the membership list (hosted on-wiki as it is currently), then the SLOBs glance through the list making sure that everybody's qualified to be on the list. Who is qualified to be on the list? Current policy: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Governance#Sugar_Labs_Membership I don't know who is staffing members at sugarlabs dot org, but we already have a process and criteria for membership. Not sure how that's run currently, however. Ok thanks, Will you serve on the membership committee and verify that the list is created and forwarded to slob by a freeze date? What would be a reasonable date by which to have this list ready? We can forward members@ to you. david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] election workflow
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 15:14, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Will you serve on the membership committee and verify that the list is created and forwarded to slob by a freeze date? What would be a reasonable date by which to have this list ready? How about this: Before *September 1st, 2009*, new member requests can be sent to members at sugarlabs dot org if they are not listed on [[Sugar_Labs/Initial_Members_List]]http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Initial_Members_Listalready. It should contain the following: - Wiki/dev/irc username - Explanation of their contribution (links preferred) Walter, do you have a list of the email addresses of all people on the current IML? I am currently on vacation, and as such will probably not tend to existing requests until the above date. I should have a current-election-cycle list out by Sept. 12, 2009. (if either of the dates above should be adjusted, that's fine with me, later is better) Anybody else want to join the committee? -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] election workflow
I do have a list of (almost) everyone's email. Re criteria, I consider asking a question to be a significant contribution. -walter On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Luke Faraonel...@faraone.cc wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 15:14, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Will you serve on the membership committee and verify that the list is created and forwarded to slob by a freeze date? What would be a reasonable date by which to have this list ready? How about this: Before September 1st, 2009, new member requests can be sent to members at sugarlabs dot org if they are not listed on [[Sugar_Labs/Initial_Members_List]] already. It should contain the following: Wiki/dev/irc username Explanation of their contribution (links preferred) Walter, do you have a list of the email addresses of all people on the current IML? I am currently on vacation, and as such will probably not tend to existing requests until the above date. I should have a current-election-cycle list out by Sept. 12, 2009. (if either of the dates above should be adjusted, that's fine with me, later is better) Anybody else want to join the committee? -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
Hi Bill, On 22 Aug 2009, at 22:44, Bill Kerr wrote: 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 Here's another quick idea that could be part of a lesson plan: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Physics_transverse_waves.png Regards, --Gary P.S. Physics-3 is real close now, honest! :-) I diverted some time this week instead to Sugar design issues as we are just shuddering into the feature freeze for this release. ___ 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?
Hi Bill Let me try again, but not as long winded. (after looking below, I can see that I failed). Everything in a language describes something in a story space. That is all language can do. There is nothing instrinsically about the form of any story that makes it relate to what's out there? in any necessary way. Math tries to be consistent and to chain reasoning together but this is not enough to reveal anything about the universe. It's still a story. Science is the process of trying to put what we can investigate and think about what's out there in as close a relation as possible with what we can represent in symbols. In practise this is a kind of coevolution. What people do in Etoys on computers is *entirely stories*, and some of these count as math (special kinds of consistent chained together reasoning stories). Some of the stories count as scientific mappings. None of them are science. So when they learn about the ideas of speed and acceleration with the cars they draw, they are learning a nice math way to do this (the computer's ability to do fast loops with simple arithmetic or vectors allows the equivalent of integration in calculus to be done very simply and easily -- this is a very good thing). This was Seymour's genius to realize that the computer could allow certain things in mathematics to be done differently and much more simply but without losing what's powerful and central -- and that this would allow these kinds of mathematics to be learned much more easily and earlier in life by children (and adults). But these ideas of speed and acceleration have no necessary connection to what's out there? (and in fact we know that the seemingly reasonable idea of adding speeds (they don't) doesn't obtain in the universe we live in). Saying it again *science is not the same as the languages of science*. Let's take the Lunar Landing example. This is done after the children have done some real science and have figured out the Galilean approximation to model gravity by taking a movie of a dropping object, measuring the increase in speed for each equal unit in time, and (to the limits of their ability to measure) decided that the this increase in speed looks pretty constant. Four months earlier they did some play with this with the cars on their screen and are able to see that this should be the same model, but vertically not horizontally. They write a script with the two increase bys and then find a way to see if their simulated ball moves the same way as the dropped ball on the video. And it does. This was real science in every particular. It's wonderful to watch them do it. Now they have a pretty good mathematical model of what they could observe in what's out there?. (Or as Newton liked to say pretty nearly.) The model isn't the same as what's out there. It doesn't depict what's out there?. They can use this to do many kinds of further math, such as the lunar lander, shooting projectiles, etc. The Lunar Lander is not science or a presentation of science (there is no further observation of what's out there?, etc. no further attempts to relate what it does to the real world -- it's making a story assumption -- that what obtains on earth also obtains on the moon). There is science to make that plausible, but we don't present it. There have been visits to the moon, but we don't cite them. Lunar Lander is a *game* children make using the results of some real science that they did. We *don't* teach any children science by showing them Etoys that simulate something (this isn't teaching science, it's just teaching a story and claiming something about it). You are very right that if a person doesn't have firmly in mind just what science is really about, they can confuse a representation of ideas gotten by scientific means with science itself. The simplest way to understand this is that anyone can add to or change the scripts in the Lunar Lander game and it's still a story, but less like what they children found by observation. This is because there is nothing in math or the computer 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
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
hi alan, I have read your views about what science is and it's importance. I'm not claiming to understand it as deeply as you do but it has influenced me and my teaching significantly (and I wish had become aware of your views earlier in my teaching career) However, I can't see why you appear to be critical of the physics program when it is used: - as a game - to do simulations in the same sort of way that etoys does simulations That was my original response in the thread - that my students seemed to see it as a game (but this does require further discussion with my students) - that the name ought to change to something like toy physics - that bad science would inevitably occur when it or any other software is used by a teacher without a deep understanding of science On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 9:19 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Bill Let me try again, but not as long winded. (after looking below, I can see that I failed). Everything in a language describes something in a story space. That is all language can do. There is nothing instrinsically about the form of any story that makes it relate to what's out there? in any necessary way. Math tries to be consistent and to chain reasoning together but this is not enough to reveal anything about the universe. It's still a story. Science is the process of trying to put what we can investigate and think about what's out there in as close a relation as possible with what we can represent in symbols. In practise this is a kind of coevolution. What people do in Etoys on computers is *entirely stories*, and some of these count as math (special kinds of consistent chained together reasoning stories). Some of the stories count as scientific mappings. None of them are science. So when they learn about the ideas of speed and acceleration with the cars they draw, they are learning a nice math way to do this (the computer's ability to do fast loops with simple arithmetic or vectors allows the equivalent of integration in calculus to be done very simply and easily -- this is a very good thing). This was Seymour's genius to realize that the computer could allow certain things in mathematics to be done differently and much more simply but without losing what's powerful and central -- and that this would allow these kinds of mathematics to be learned much more easily and earlier in life by children (and adults). But these ideas of speed and acceleration have no necessary connection to what's out there? (and in fact we know that the seemingly reasonable idea of adding speeds (they don't) doesn't obtain in the universe we live in). Saying it again *science is not the same as the languages of science*. Let's take the Lunar Landing example. This is done after the children have done some real science and have figured out the Galilean approximation to model gravity by taking a movie of a dropping object, measuring the increase in speed for each equal unit in time, and (to the limits of their ability to measure) decided that the this increase in speed looks pretty constant. Four months earlier they did some play with this with the cars on their screen and are able to see that this should be the same model, but vertically not horizontally. They write a script with the two increase bys and then find a way to see if their simulated ball moves the same way as the dropped ball on the video. And it does. This was real science in every particular. It's wonderful to watch them do it. Now they have a pretty good mathematical model of what they could observe in what's out there?. (Or as Newton liked to say pretty nearly.) The model isn't the same as what's out there. It doesn't depict what's out there?. They can use this to do many kinds of further math, such as the lunar lander, shooting projectiles, etc. The Lunar Lander is not science or a presentation of science (there is no further observation of what's out there?, etc. no further attempts to relate what it does to the real world -- it's making a story assumption -- that what obtains on earth also obtains on the moon). There is science to make that plausible, but we don't present it. There have been visits to the moon, but we don't cite them. Lunar Lander is a *game* children make using the results of some real science that they did. We *don't* teach any children science by showing them Etoys that simulate something (this isn't teaching science, it's just teaching a story and claiming something about it). You are very right that if a person doesn't have firmly in mind just what science is really about, they can confuse a representation of ideas gotten by scientific means with science itself. The simplest way to understand this is that anyone can add to or change the scripts in the Lunar Lander game and it's still a story, but less like what they children found by observation. This is because there is nothing in math or the computer or
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
Hi Bill, I'm not at all critical of children playing games. There are even games where you can learn interesting and important things by playing them. I think these can be thought about separately. So I would merely ask whether the second possibility obtains here. This isn't about Etoys or Scratch or Logo against X, but I would ask if the simulations are the same sort. One way to answer this question is to compare not the results of the simulations, but the nature, kind, and amount of the mathematical description used. For example, is having a canned invisible differential equation solver with canned physic routines and allowing parameters to be tweaked the same as being able to choose and understand all the math used? (E.g. could one try out an inverse cube gravity relationship in the physics simulator?) (Not a rhetorical question ...) Cheers, 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 5:40:38 PM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas? hi alan, I have read your views about what science is and it's importance. I'm not claiming to understand it as deeply as you do but it has influenced me and my teaching significantly (and I wish had become aware of your views earlier in my teaching career) However, I can't see why you appear to be critical of the physics program when it is used: - as a game - to do simulations in the same sort of way that etoys does simulations That was my original response in the thread - that my students seemed to see it as a game (but this does require further discussion with my students) - that the name ought to change to something like toy physics - that bad science would inevitably occur when it or any other software is used by a teacher without a deep understanding of science On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 9:19 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Bill Let me try again, but not as long winded. (after looking below, I can see that I failed). Everything in a language describes something in a story space. That is all language can do. There is nothing instrinsically about the form of any story that makes it relate to what's out there? in any necessary way. Math tries to be consistent and to chain reasoning together but this is not enough to reveal anything about the universe. It's still a story. Science is the process of trying to put what we can investigate and think about what's out there in as close a relation as possible with what we can represent in symbols. In practise this is a kind of coevolution. What people do in Etoys on computers is *entirely stories*, and some of these count as math (special kinds of consistent chained together reasoning stories). Some of the stories count as scientific mappings. None of them are science. So when they learn about the ideas of speed and acceleration with the cars they draw, they are learning a nice math way to do this (the computer's ability to do fast loops with simple arithmetic or vectors allows the equivalent of integration in calculus to be done very simply and easily -- this is a very good thing). This was Seymour's genius to realize that the computer could allow certain things in mathematics to be done differently and much more simply but without losing what's powerful and central -- and that this would allow these kinds of mathematics to be learned much more easily and earlier in life by children (and adults). But these ideas of speed and acceleration have no necessary connection to what's out there? (and in fact we know that the seemingly reasonable idea of adding speeds (they don't) doesn't obtain in the universe we live in). Saying it again *science is not the same as the languages of science*. Let's take the Lunar Landing example. This is done after the children have done some real science and have figured out the Galilean approximation to model gravity by taking a movie of a dropping object, measuring the increase in speed for each equal unit in time, and (to the limits of their ability to measure) decided that the this increase in speed looks pretty constant. Four months earlier they did some play with this with the cars on their screen and are able to see that this should be the same model, but vertically not horizontally. They write a script with the two increase bys and then find a way to see if their simulated ball moves the same way as the dropped ball on the video. And it does. This was real science in every particular. It's wonderful to watch them do it. Now they have a pretty good mathematical model of what they could observe in what's out there?. (Or as Newton liked to say pretty nearly.) The model isn't the same as what's out there. It doesn't depict what's out there?. They
[IAEP] Teaching science up through grades 7-8 .....Re: Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
Pretty much everyone is behind the 8 ball here. -- Our human brains are bad at this kind of thinking (this is why we have been on the planet as a species for many 10's of 1000s of years before finding out how to do it). -- The teachers in the early grades are often not invested with how to do science and how to teach science. -- The children (and often the adults) lack the mathematical apparatus that allows scientific theories to be represented as models that can cover and predict over wide ranges. -- And it would be great to have a bigger bag of emotional payoffs for the many children who just aren't directly excited about finding out more about how the world works. -- The tough student teacher ratios make it difficult to deal with the very important individual styles of the students (and also how those styles match up to the styles of the teachers). -- And so forth. On the other hand, we don't want to slide back to a kind of Guitar Hero which combines the use of technology with the loss of the subject, and is flashy enough so that unsophisticates could declare victory. I think of all of this stuff (especially wrt children, but also in the pro adult game) as a larger what's out there? game that has 4 aspects (in historical order) Technology, Engineering, Math, Science (TEMS). Most adults who concentrate in one of these aspects wind up having to get fluent in the other 3 (even in the most ad hoc aspect of technology aka tinkering). For children one can hardly go wrong by thinking of these 4 aspects most of the time as one art form. And I also think that trying to segregate out these aspects into separate subjects in not only not a good idea but in many cases some of the strongest routes to learning one of these often journey through the others. For example, the logic of every kind of physical machine (including electrical ones) is not just strongly tied by necessity to science, but also to the internal logic of mathematics. Jerry Bruner and others have written persuasively about these connections. This is one of the reasons I invariably urge teachers and parents to get strongly acquainted with the work of Arvind Gupta and his many books about Toys From Trash. These toys are wonderful buildable little gems of engineering which often use a deep principle of what's out there? in order to work. These artifacts made by the children are great starting places for deeper tougher looks at what is going on. I've justly lauded Papert many times on this list. He just had the most amazing insights into what children could understand and learn that was also profound and important. The computer provides a medium for kinds of mathematics that can be closer both to the situations being modeled and to the minds of the children who are trying to learn how to be both crisper and more general at the same time. Another point here is that science is wide and deep, so coverage is not going to be successful. Probably better to aim for real depth on a few critical aspects of science. Find ways for the different styles of learners to get to that depth where the real thing is happening. A big project that involves TEMS can be one way to get to depth. The NY public school I attended for 7th and 8th grades was nothing special to put it mildly. But Cortland Street in the city had many surplus electronics stores where raw stuff could be bought for a few mowings of lawns. I and a few friends got very enamored of high voltage as 12 year olds and we were able to find how to books, stuff to wind coils and make huge capacitors, etc., to make a series of Tesla Coils. 5 years later my brother got into van de Graaf generators, etc. We were hampered by not having a lot of help from adults, so getting beyond T was difficult. But a good Tesla Coil actually can't really be tinkered together, so we had to learn a lot more about engineering than we thought in the beginning. The science was more difficult, particularly because the first coils we made were quite dangerously unstable -- they needed something like a vacuum tube oscillator rather than the tank circuits that Tesla used (eventually we wound up using a push-pull oscillator using RCA transmitting triodes that could handle a lot of power). I was the most mathematical of the 12 year olds, but I didn't know calculus at that time and we were somewhat limited to using formulas from the CRC tables. However, we were smart enough to do some experiments and to get a better sense of just how these very high frequency high voltage oscillators with huge secondary ratio kind of worked. A few years later doing electronics at Brooklyn Technical High School I realized that only some of what we found out for ourselves and by reading was good for us. All in all, having an adult we could reliably go to with questions would have allowed us to get further, do more designs and experiments. But my bottom line opinion is that a physical
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 04:49:53PM -0700, Alan Kay wrote: Four months earlier they did some play with this with the cars on their screen and are able to see that this should be the same model, but vertically not horizontally. They write a script with the two increase bys and then find a way to see if their simulated ball moves the same way as the dropped ball on the video. And it does. This was real science in every particular. It's wonderful to watch them do it. Now they have a pretty good mathematical model of what they could observe in what's out there?. (Or as Newton liked to say pretty nearly.) The model isn't the same as what's out there. It doesn't depict what's out there?. To me, this evidence suggests that the children are culturally prepared to do science at this level of description. Discovering a basic model of gravity is within their proximal zone of development. However, I don't think this suggests anything intrinsic about the level of description kids are working with. That is: Everything in a language describes something in a story space. That is all language can do. There is nothing instrinsically about the form of any story that makes it relate to what's out there? in any necessary way. Math tries to be consistent and to chain reasoning together but this is not enough to reveal anything about the universe. It's still a story. To repeat, it is the child's cultural training that makes this level of description special at this age, not anything intrinsically special about the level of description. For example, thinking about acceleration in terms of repeated addition is still quite high level. To really understand how this works, you need to understand binary arthimetic and how this is implemented at the hardware level. Or to go even more low level, you need to understand the physical properties of transisters to understand the opereation of logic gates. A priori, there is no reason to pick one level of description or another except that we want to pick a level of description that happens to be in the kid's zone of proximal development. The examples I just cited are lower level, but I don't see any reason not to pick higher level examples, like the Physics activity. I agree the Physics activity hides the math involved in solving differential equations, but Etoys similar hides the low level assembly language that is actually how CPU accomplish computation. So to me, it all comes down to: Science is the process of trying to put what we can investigate and think about what's out there in as close a relation as possible with what we can represent in symbols. In practise this is a kind of coevolution. And I don't see why you don't do that with the Physics activity. For example, recently somebody posted a Physics screenshot that showed how to simulate an earthquake. Now do earthquakes really work like that? No, of course not, but it is a reasonable model that can lead to predictions and actual experiments. ___ 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?
The important thing about what the computer does in this case -- repeated incremental additions -- is that the children can and do carry it out themselves. They do not need to understand in any way how the computer actually does this. This is a critical part of how understanding is done here. In fact, I've written and lectured elsewhere about the excellent approach to using incremental addition (by hand) by the first grade teacher Julia Nishijima. And, not to be provocative, but in any case, even if the children didn't do it before they use the computer, I don't think too many people would conclude that hiding simple arithmetic is in the same category as hiding differential equations. One is not mysterious, and the other one is. And I was not talking about a level of description but about what human representation systems can and can't do with respect to what's out there?. Best wishes, Alan From: Joshua N Pritikin jpriti...@pobox.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com; iaep SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:20:01 PM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas? On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 04:49:53PM -0700, Alan Kay wrote: Four months earlier they did some play with this with the cars on their screen and are able to see that this should be the same model, but vertically not horizontally. They write a script with the two increase bys and then find a way to see if their simulated ball moves the same way as the dropped ball on the video. And it does. This was real science in every particular. It's wonderful to watch them do it. Now they have a pretty good mathematical model of what they could observe in what's out there?. (Or as Newton liked to say pretty nearly.) The model isn't the same as what's out there. It doesn't depict what's out there?. To me, this evidence suggests that the children are culturally prepared to do science at this level of description. Discovering a basic model of gravity is within their proximal zone of development. However, I don't think this suggests anything intrinsic about the level of description kids are working with. That is: Everything in a language describes something in a story space. That is all language can do. There is nothing instrinsically about the form of any story that makes it relate to what's out there? in any necessary way. Math tries to be consistent and to chain reasoning together but this is not enough to reveal anything about the universe. It's still a story. To repeat, it is the child's cultural training that makes this level of description special at this age, not anything intrinsically special about the level of description. For example, thinking about acceleration in terms of repeated addition is still quite high level. To really understand how this works, you need to understand binary arthimetic and how this is implemented at the hardware level. Or to go even more low level, you need to understand the physical properties of transisters to understand the opereation of logic gates. A priori, there is no reason to pick one level of description or another except that we want to pick a level of description that happens to be in the kid's zone of proximal development. The examples I just cited are lower level, but I don't see any reason not to pick higher level examples, like the Physics activity. I agree the Physics activity hides the math involved in solving differential equations, but Etoys similar hides the low level assembly language that is actually how CPU accomplish computation. So to me, it all comes down to: Science is the process of trying to put what we can investigate and think about what's out there in as close a relation as possible with what we can represent in symbols. In practise this is a kind of coevolution. And I don't see why you don't do that with the Physics activity. For example, recently somebody posted a Physics screenshot that showed how to simulate an earthquake. Now do earthquakes really work like that? No, of course not, but it is a reasonable model that can lead to predictions and actual experiments. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] getsatisfaction.com
Re: [IAEP] getsatisfaction.com dfarn...@sugarlabs.org David Farning writes: I just wanted to thank everyone who is helping out at http://getsatisfaction.com/sugarlabs . Some URL there! All I can think of is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjgeXTF0WNQ BTW, this works nicely, even on non-x86 debian: youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjgeXTF0WNQ mplayer -quiet TjgeXTF0WNQ.flv (scale it up if you wish and have the CPU power) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
