hi paulo,<br>
<br>
Thank you for the link to squeakcmi, it looks great, I'll spend some time there<br>
<br>
I'm a secondary teacher and in the past few years I've mainly been
using GameMaker - but now think Squeak / Etoys is potentially more
powerful for a variety of reasons which I have articulated a little but
it needs improvement<br>
<br>
The Game Making approach is flavour of the month and is good for
motivation and engagement of many students (not all). Also many
teachers are engaged by the concept. I received hundreds of emails from
teachers in just one state of Australia when I initially promoted Game
Maker a few years ago. However, it is also true that many teachers
oppose Game Maker because they don't see a clear link to curriculum,
some see it as pandering to populism.<br>
<br>
Both you and alan have mentioned this outlook, to quote from alan in this thread: "a productively environment
(Scratch is aimed at productivity) and an educational one (EToys is more
aimed in this direction)"<br>
<br>
I sort of agree with this approach but am also torn. Game Maker is
unashamedly populist, the focus is absolutely clear from its name. So
kids end up programming on an inferior platform - no morphic, no late
binding, Windows only, proprietary code. It would be nice if more young
people spontaneously picked up on etoys / squeak, that it could
generate that sort of appeal. The way kids view school these days to promote something as "educational" is almost the kiss of death!!<br>
<br>
I would see Etoys / Squeak as more powerful than either Scratch or Game
Maker. I wouldn't see young students moving over from Etoys to Scratch
as a step upwards, it seems more like a step backwards to me. <br>
<br>
I like the low entry, high ceiling approach. You don't need the high
ceiling for all students but in any group a small proportion of hackers
emerges, say 5%, which does need the high ceiling. One aim ought to be to
encourage that advanced group, one thing they do is drag the general
level upwards<br>
<br>
For the students I teach (secondary) the quality of their sprites is
very important. I have seen them abandon their game making projects simply because they
couldn't find the sprites they wanted on the web. <br>
<br>
I'm still a beginner with etoys / squeak but have done more study
recently and now understand how the morphic approach fits in to etoys
(the Player class, prototyping approach). <br>
<br>
What I'm saying is that it would be good to have multiple pathways into
etoys, not always starting with a painting, which is a v strong default
at the moment. This would probably mean the ability from the start to
select a variety of morphs from a supplies or widgets tab, which is a
feature of eg. my squeak 3.8 full image but not a feature of the
OLPC/etoys image. You only get the paint option. I can't find the world
menu to access morphs in that way at all in the etoys image so I'm
wondering about the design decisions that have been made in this case
and the rationale behind them.<br>
<br>I think what you and alan will say is that the target group for the OLPC is ages 6 to 12, one of the core_principles: <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Core_principles">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Core_principles</a><br>
<br>Fair enough but I think for this group my comments still do have some relevance, so I'll send to the list as well<br><br>
cheers,<br>
- Bill<br>
-- <br>
Bill Kerr<br>
<a href="http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/">http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/</a><br>
<br><br><span class="gmail_quote"></span><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/27/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Paulo Drummond</b> <<a href="mailto:ptdrumm@terra.com.br" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
ptdrumm@terra.com.br</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><br><div><span><div>On Aug 26, 2007, at 10:07 PM, Bill Kerr wrote:</div><br></span><blockquote type="cite"><span>On 8/25/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">carla gomez monroy</b> <<a href="mailto:carla@laptop.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
carla@laptop.org</a>> wrote:<br></span><div><span><span class="gmail_quote"><br></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
However, for some people it can be quite intimidating to get a blank screen when they click on "Make A New Project."</blockquote></span><div><br>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.
<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.
</div><div><br></div>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.
</div><div><br></div><div>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.
</div><div><br></div><div>It has been demonstrated (<a href="http://www.squeakcmi.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">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.
</div><div><br></div><div><span><blockquote type="cite"><div><div>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.
<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span>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.
</div><div><span><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><div>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>LogoWriter, MicroWorlds and GameMaker all have prepackaged sprites<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span>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.
</div><div><span><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I have given to the teachers in printed form
<br> * powerful ideas in the classroom</blockquote><div><br>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
<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span>Afaik, a new squeakland website is in the works.</div><div><span><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><div> and it took me ages to find them. I wrote a blog about the frustrating but eventually successful search for etoy resources here:
<br><a href="http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/04/frustrating-but-eventually-successful.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/04/frustrating-but-eventually-successful.html
</a><br><br>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.
<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span>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" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">laptop.org</a>'s [Community-news] that the Etoys dev team has started a discussion about this issue.</div><div><br></div>
<div>— paulo</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><br></div>