[OLPC library] Scratch cartoons for physics and health education - New universal language?

[Bryan Berry]

Henry,

That's a fantastic idea 

I love EToys and Scratch. What I love about both tools is that it is
fairly easy for someone to "discover" how your Scratch toy works and
modify it. It is much harder to do that w/ regular code.

Henry, I would love to use your scratch activities in Nepal. I know that
John Maloney is working on porting scratch to the XO but I don't know
the status. Once he does, it would be fantastic if you could package
each of your scratchlets as individual xo activities.

It is very easy to localize the images in a scratch activity. I don't
know how easy it would be to use pootle in conjunction w/ Scratch


-- 
Bryan W. Berry
External Relations Manager
OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org

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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:38:17 -0700
From: "Brown, Henry, DoIT" <Henry.Brown at state.nm.us>
Subject: [OLPC library] Scratch cartoons for physics and health
        education -     New universal language?
To: "Edward Cherlin" <echerlin at gmail.com>
Cc: arjunsarwal at gmail.com, library at lists.laptop.org
Message-ID: <6FFE840122A2544C957E2A59474FFAD803B16198 at CEXMB2.nmes.lcl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Take a look at scratch.mit.edu it is for kids to create and share
cartoons.
Many of the pictures can be taken from the web.
I cannibalized a German cartoon about bees and flowers targeted to 1st
graders to build RNAi, Fusion, and Power Grid cartoons.
I am not an artist.
Just a Dad with kids who want to cannibalize the Scratch cartoons and
learn science in the process.
What we need is cartoons for developing nations kids. They need a
graphic approach to concepts.
In Jamaica, WI as a Peace Crops volunteer I helped build water treatment
plants, methane digestors, etc.
 
But the biggest problem was HIV/AIDS. I did my thesis on mapping genomes
(Human and HIV) at Los Alamos.
My room mates were all physicists.
How to discuss the disease with young children? Through RNA the
messaging system for biology.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/51835
 
But Physics is my son's passion. 
Where to find basic physics cartoons that motivate kids? Make them? He
wanted fusion reactors?
So I made
them:http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/34906 <http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/34906> 
Cartoons are the universal language. Look at Saturday morning (Pokeman,
Simpsons, etc.)
The kids of today are open to manipulating objects on the web
(Runescape, etc).
So lets give them an interactive learning env. Lets make learning
cartoons for kids. 
OLPC could run Scratch, Alice, etc.
We just need armies of adults to build the cartoons. Kids will clone the
good ones.
 
 
Henry Brown
henry.brown at state.nm.us
cell 795-3680
office 505 827-2509