Impressions on B1 Machine

[Simon Schampijer]

Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
>   Hello,
>
>   Since we (people at Viewpoints Research) got couples of B1 Machines,
> we've been experimenting with them.  All in all, it is really nice to
> have the machine!
>
>   First some comments and questions:
>
>   * Unfortunately, the touch pad is not working well.  To experiment
>     various (software related) stuff on the machine, using an external
>     mouse makes a lot of sense.
>
>   * The infrastructure mode of wireless works with my 802.11b wireless
>     router.  However, we are having hard time to do it with our office
>     network.  It is to do with the router is 802.11g, the wep key is
>     different or some other reasons.
>
>   * Is there any way to set up ad hoc (mesh) network between units?  I
>     think I saw a wiki entry that says it is not working perfectly,
>     but would like to try it.
>
>   Now, a bit of my thought:
>
>   Speaking of experiments, I would like to encourage the developers to
> use Etoys in various ways.  It is pretty much the only thing that you
> can *make* something on the actual machine, currently.  For
> application designers and developers, or content designers, it should
> give some sense on what it is like to do stuff on it.  Its UI is
> different from the standard OLPC idioms, but the available
> functionality of Etoys and Squeak still let you do a lot of
> prototyping.
>
>   For example, there is a paint tool in Etoys.  If you would like to
> feel the painting experience on the machine, you can try it in Etoys.
> It comes will the real-time collaboration, so you can experiment a
> real-time collaborative painting, for example, with two B1 machines.
> (Once Sugar gets its own painting tool, we would like to use it, or at
> least modify the look of the Squeak's painting tool so that it
> imitates the native painting tool.)
>
>   If you think that constructionist approach is a good idea, it would
> be good to think that kids should *make* stuff by themselves to learn
> stuff.  For example, I think that the things like Memory game are
> something to be written by children.  Also, there was some discussion
> on a clock application: waking up the machine is out of scope of
> Etoys, but the other part, making a functioning clock, is something an
> elementary school children can do in Etoys.  Instead of giving a
> nicely done, professional looking clock from us, it would be great to
> see kids-made versions.
>   


Hi,

the memory game started as a proof of concept and a demo tool in the 
first place since it involves sound, graphics and the networking. I took 
the latter out for btest1 since there were some network issues but I 
count on having it back in btest2. It was also meant to have a demo for 
showing sharing/joining of activities.

I agree that in the end we want to have the kids developing those apps 
themselves but there should be different layers of interacting in my 
opinion. Some kids are happy to just play the game, some may want to use 
a "create your game" tool where modules are provided like networking, 
sound etc and some want to start from scratch and do some python coding.

I think an environment to create a game would be nice. I have not had a 
deep look but pygame might be too complex and not adopted to our 
environment (please correct me if I am wrong). Maybe it would be good to 
come up with a new environment adopted to our needs of 
sharing/announcement and connecting to the sound facilities etc.

   Simon