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Scratch, besides being a very neat "other system for kids" in
Squeak, also has really fabulous documentation, website, etc. They have
done so many things so well! <br><br>
Mitchel and I talked a lot about this in the offsite that our two groups
have each year (held last week).<br><br>
We also discussed the big differences between having great documentation
and having great curriculum materials. <br><br>
There are also important differences between a productively environment
(Scratch is aimed at productivity) and an educational one (EToys is more
aimed in this direction).<br><br>
Kathleen Harness from U of Illinois is a teacher who has done lots of
great documentation for Etoys and is currently doing a large amount of
stuff for the OLPC version.<br><br>
One thing that could help from this list is for people to submit
scenarios of how they think the out of the box experience should take
place.<br><br>
Cheers,<br><br>
Alan<br><br>
<br>
At 09:43 PM 8/26/2007, Mel Chua wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">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. <br><br>
Is anyone on this list interested in putting their notes & materials
into such a "quickstart manual"? Any suggestions for people to
ping?<br><br>
-Mel<br><br>
On 8/27/07, <b>Paulo Drummond</b>
<<a href="mailto:ptdrumm@terra.com.br">ptdrumm@terra.com.br</a>>
wrote:<br>
<dl><br>
<dd>On Aug 26, 2007, at 10:07 PM, Bill Kerr wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<dd>On 8/25/07, carla gomez monroy</b>
<<a href="mailto:carla@laptop.org"> carla@laptop.org</a>>
wrote:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>However, for some people it can be quite intimidating to get a blank
screen when they click on "Make A New Project."<br><br>
</dl><br>
<dd>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. </blockquote><br>
<dd>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. <br><br>
<dd>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. <br><br>
<dd>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. <br><br>
<dd>It has been demonstrated
(<a href="http://www.squeakcmi.org">http://www.squeakcmi.org</a>) 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. <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<dd>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. </blockquote><br>
<dd>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. <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<dd>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 <br><br>
<dd>LogoWriter, MicroWorlds and GameMaker all have prepackaged
sprites</blockquote><br>
<dd>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. <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<dl>
<dd>I have given to the teachers in printed form <br>
<dd> * powerful ideas in the classroom<br><br>
</dl><br>
<dd>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 </blockquote><br>
<dd>Afaik, a new squeakland website is in the works.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<dd>and it took me ages to find them. I wrote a blog about the
frustrating but eventually successful search for etoy resources here:
<br>
<dd>
<a href="http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/04/frustrating-but-eventually-successful.html">
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/04/frustrating-but-eventually-successful.html
</a><br><br>
<dd>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. </blockquote><br>
<dd>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
<a href="http://laptop.org">laptop.org</a>'s [Community-news] that the
Etoys dev team has started a discussion about this issue.<br><br>
<dd>— paulo<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<dd>-- <br>
<dd>Bill Kerr<br>
<dd><a href="http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/">
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/ </a><br><br>
<dd>_______________________________________________<br>
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<dd>_______________________________________________<br>
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</a><br>
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</dl><br>
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