[Etoys] two hours of tales (squeak etoy video tutorials)

Timothy Falconer timothy at immuexa.com
Thu Oct 18 14:41:45 EDT 2007


I've just posted my eighth 15-minute Squeaky Tales tutorial, bringing  
the collective time to two hours of Etoys fun:

http://waveplace.com/movies/

My plan is to create four 15-minute movies each week for the next  
eight weeks for a total of ten hours of video tutorial.

How does this translate to the classroom?  I'm not completely sure  
yet, but I'd guess that each 15-minute tutorial could form the basis  
for an hour of hands-on instruction, with the mentor first presenting  
the concepts in their own fashion, then leading the class for the  
remainder of the time.  The videos themselves are aimed at the  
mentor, not at the students, though I suspect older students could  
watch the videos on their own.

What topics will I cover?  Well, I'm trying to make the Squeaky Tales  
series as subject-neutral as possible.  My hope is that this approach  
will allow mentors to adapt the concepts to different ages and  
subjects more easily.   By necessity, there will be rudimentary math  
concepts like addition and multiplication, but these will be  
presented as a means to another end, not a discussion of math itself.

As the name of the series implies, my ultimate goal is storytelling.   
I'm teaching programming as a means to telling stories, which  
hopefully will engage students that might otherwise be timid about  
math and science. 
  


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