[Etoys] some comments

[Mel Chua]

Adam Hyde from FLOSSmanuals.net has offered FLOSSmanual's services (and
manpower) for making documentation for OLPC software - wants to do
highly-graphical, minimally-verbal (and therefore easy to internationalize)
manuals for XO stuff. I suggested Etoys as a good first start, largely
because of this and similar mailing list threads; there's a lot of
information out there but no starter walkthrough to get people comfortable
playing with everything on their own.

Is anyone on this list interested in putting their notes & materials into
such a "quickstart manual"? Any suggestions for people to ping?

-Mel

On 8/27/07, Paulo Drummond <ptdrumm at terra.com.br> wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 26, 2007, at 10:07 PM, Bill Kerr wrote:
>
> On 8/25/07, carla gomez monroy <carla at laptop.org> wrote:
>
> However, for some people it can be quite intimidating to get a blank
> > screen when they click on "Make A New Project."
>
>
> I'm wondering why the first step is always to make a painting - and then
> when you keep the painting you have an object and can then do more powerful
> things at that point.
>
>
> Imho, the first step is to understand a little of this environment and
> what was the idea behind Etoys. Depending on the age/grade, the deepness
> varies. However, the teacher has a crucial role here: to understand it
> first. The book "Powerful Ideas in the Classroom" is of enormous value.
>
> The next expected step for a child (in this environment) is to create an
> object. Children usually like to pictorially represent their world. They
> need to express it as they need to situate themselves in the surrounding
> society. Contextualize.
>
> They can also use other predefined objects like ellipses/circles,
> rectangles/squares etc to complement  their painting, or give a more
> "realistic" display of their object-symbols. Conversely, they may use the
> paint palete to "personalize" some geometrical primitives they've place in
> their world.
>
> It has been demonstrated (http://www.squeakcmi.org) that kids at initial
> grades can use Etoys as a starting point to understand it and to express
> their ideas, paving the way to more advanced representations using the very
> same environment.
>
> A naive user might think it is just a paint program. Also some people
> don't like painting or are not good at it, eg. me. Also it's hard to paint
> well with a mouse.
>
>
> Children can use Etoys as a mapping tool. Actually they don't give a penny
> about accuracy, just because they don't need to. Adults generally do, even
> not knowing a bit of its usefulness.
>
> Why not have prepackaged sprites which can be loaded immediately (as well
> as the painting option)? Then the user is one step closer to the more
> powerful stuff. It also sends a message that it is not just a paint program
> - there has to be more to it than just loading a sprite
>
> LogoWriter, MicroWorlds and GameMaker all have prepackaged sprites
>
>
> Then Squeak Etoys would be another thing. When not-so-young kids need a
> more sophisticated expression-driven, more in the realm of productivity
> authoring tools — with many of the programmatic aspects of Etoys, they may
> go to another great tool: Scratch.
>
> I have given to the teachers in printed form
> >    * powerful ideas in the classroom
>
>
> I think *all* of the book, Powerful ideas in the classroom, should be
> available on the web. The car tutorial on squeakland is great but it's not
> enough. There are some good pdfs on squeakland too but the site is poorly
> organised
>
>
> Afaik, a new squeakland website is in the works.
>
> and it took me ages to find them. I wrote a blog about the frustrating but
> eventually successful search for etoy resources here:
>
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/04/frustrating-but-eventually-successful.html
>
> It would be good to have a comprehensive help manual in one place. Pop up
> help is good but sometimes more detail is needed. Such a manual would
> probably be used more by teachers than by students but that is still useful.
>
>
>
> I could not agree more. Etoys documentation is really very scarce and
> sparse. With the help of the Squeakland community worldwide, these things
> are starting to show up here and there. It has been posted in laptop.org's
> [Community-news] that the Etoys dev team has started a discussion about this
> issue.
>
> — paulo
>
> --
> Bill Kerr
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
>
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