[Etoys] First use of OLPC feedback (bugs, suggestions, questions)

stephane ducasse stephane.ducasse at free.fr
Sun Nov 11 14:23:12 EST 2007


Hi Walter

Thanks for your answer: just a bit of context to my initial question.
I read that OLPC is not a computer project but a educational one and  
I like that (and I'm a technical person even if I try to educate
myself to education problems -- and was a math teacher and computer  
scientist teacher in another life). I just thought that some
squeak apps that could be packaged (ie use the etoy deployment  
system) as etoy projects could be really
interesting for kids and teachers. My wife (who is a math/physic  
techer) asked me if there was
	- a chess program
	- a music program
	- some other games
and I told here that is already there in Squeak. So we just some  
little tweaks we could get a lot more contents for OLPC without
changing the size of Squeak (it is already in) just not easily  
accessible.
	

>> Will DrGeo be buried in the Etoy projects ?
>
> This is an interesting question that applies more broadly. I had
> discussed with Alan how we might use the taskbar to make some more
> ways into Etoys. Dr. Geo is just one example. We could launch Etoys as
> a Media Player (we already can from the Journal, but that is one step
> removed) or as a Media Maker or as "Turtle Art", etc. Just a thought,
> but my long standing problem with Etoys is that it is so rich that it
> is perhaps asking too much of the novice user when it comes to finding
> an initial focus.

I have the impression that this is selecting the projects that may be  
tedious/confusing.

stef
>
> -walter
>
> On Nov 10, 2007 7:31 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki at vpri.org> wrote:
>>   Stef,
>>
>>   Like Bert wrote, please update the system to see a newer version.
>>
>>> - etoy projects may get in your way: they can stay over the first
>>> etoy window and you do not know how to get rid of them.
>>> of course there is the halos but it feels strange.
>>
>>   If I understand waht you mean, this is fixed.  Now, on OLPC it is
>> not easy to see a ProjectViewMorph.
>>
>>> - when I do load, click on OLPC, get a dialog window, click  
>>> cancel, I
>>> get a primitive fail with a debugger.
>>
>>   Hmm.  Not sure what it is.
>>
>>> - Is there any plans to have access to the squeak games: SameCell,
>>> tetris and chess.
>>> Because a chess program would be cool on this machine.
>>
>>   From the ObjectCatalog, these are relatively easy to access (we  
>> took
>> out Tetris from ObjectCatalog for various reasons, though.)
>>
>>> I could open the sameGame because I could get access to the menu:
>>>
>>> - the size of the square are a bit too small.
>>
>>   We didn't bother to improve the look of these games so far.
>>
>>> - This is a pity that the Squeak classes have so few comments  
>>> because
>>> I'm sure a kid could get alone
>>> the SameGame new openInWorld but if it would be explained. I think
>>> that there is a huge opportunity that such
>>> a "details" can break.
>>
>>   Well, until yesterday, our policy was to discard sources and  
>> changes
>> anyway, so there were no comment at all in system browsers.
>>
>>> - I was wondering why stuff like skipLists are still in this image.
>>> I'm sure that we could have a much better contents
>>> that kids could really explore.
>>
>>   But, Etoys experience, not Smalltalk programmin, is the primary
>> focus.
>>
>>   There are quite a few classes we could get rid of, like SkipList,
>> SmaCC, etc, yes.
>>
>>> Questions for BotsInc.
>>> -------------------------
>>>
>>> - I removed all references to the file system but when I play with
>>> the simple drawing tool I could save drawing to files.
>>> So is it possible or not to save files?
>>
>>   It probably will be to save into a folder.
>>
>>> - I wanted to load my botsInc project so I put it naively on a USB
>>> stick but how can I access it. I could not from a load from the load
>>> your
>>> project list
>>>
>>> - Using the fileList I tried to use usbdev1.2_ep02 and some others
>>> but I failed?
>>> Is there a way?
>>
>>   If you update your image to, say, build 625, the system should  
>> mount
>> it automatically.  You could still open FileList.
>>
>> -- Yoshiki
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Walter Bender
> One Laptop per Child
> http://laptop.org
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