Spreadsheets/ Slideshows

[Eben Eliason]

Ever since this project began, I've had this idea in my head regarding
what a "slideshow" might mean on the OLPC machine.  I'd really like to
see an activity called "Collage" which is something like a modern
descendent of Hypercard.  It should take the idea of embedding media
further, of course allowing images, sounds, video and text, but
perhaps also supporting live logo turtles, live editable text boxes
and other interactive forms.  Ideally, there would be an interface
which made it pluggable so that any activity could embed its formats
and provide hooks for interacting with it.

Bringing it all together, it should support a basic logo-like
scripting language.  This could allow simple actions like "next page",
but could also be allowed to pull text from the live text boxes via
some identifiers, animate the embedded objects, track some basic mouse
and keyboard events, and interact with hooks provided by the plugins.

A child could create a single page, or a simple slideshow, but by
taking full advantage of the nature of the scripting which pulls
things together, they can create non-linear books, interactive
animations, science reports with embedded interactive experiments,
games, and more.

As fun as this would be for kids, I also see this as being a fantastic
format for teachers to create lesson plans in:  provide some
instructions with text and images, embed a video about the topic,
script up a little physics simulation that the kids can experiment
with, embed an abiword table widget which automatically records the
results of the experiment, and place some questions with textboxes at
the end so the kids can answer them and then turn in their "lab."
Heck, you could even automatically check the answers when they are
done, or interactively assist them when they answer incorrectly,
nudging them along or referencing the results table again.

- Eben


On 6/2/07, Rebecca Gettys <rebecca.gettys at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi All,
> I think that sideshows CAN be very sueful in the class room, and they
> have actually taught be to pay attention to detail. You need notes to do
> anything really, and they do have their applications with other
> students. Just a thought.
> ~Rebecca
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