[Its.an.education.project] Another set of thoughts

[Greg Smith (gregmsmi)]

Hi Kim,

Thanks for the link.

Can you comment on your experience with this curriculum and eToys in
general?

How well did this work? What was a challenge and what clicked with the
kids right away? Also, how much teacher engagement is needed? How
successful have you been in distributing this or other curriculum beyond
your immediate involvement?

In short, what do you suggest are the most important elements of
successful computer based learning tools?

A few comments on eToys from e-mail exchanges with XO sites:

- Nepal uses eToys solely as an authoring environment. Its available to
kids so over time we will see how many pick it up on their own. They
want to train teachers to use it too but haven't yet had time. See:
http://blog.olenepal.org/?s=etoy and
http://www.olenepal.org/activities_download.html

- Uruguay wants to use eToys but its not in Spanish yet. I think that
translation is underway but not sure of the details.

- Waveplace (http://waveplace.org/) used eToys and had the kids create
projects in the Virgin Islands. I think they plan to do the same in
Haiti with a French version.

That's FYI. You may already have all that input as I know these sites
work closely with the eToys organization directly.

A few comments from my experience:

- I loaded eToys and poked around while reading the quick start. It took
me over an hour to figure out that I need to press the alt key in
Windows to see the object viewer. After that I started a project example
and got a little further before getting sucked in to reading the e-mail
lists :-)

- My 11 years old son found scratch more accessible than eToys. That may
be due to the online site of Scratch examples or because of the UI and
focus on animation. However, after building and posting a few scratch
animations he is back to Age of Mythology and Never Winter Nights like
before. I just convinced him to play D&D with me so there's still hope
:-)

I'd like to learn as much as possible from your experience to help
decide what is the best UI for learning overall. I want to find the
right themes at the OS/shell level and the application/authoring
environment level.

I've read some comments from Alan about ~natural language vs.
computerese languages for programming. In addition to GUI, training, and
capabilities, any comments re: programming language appreciated. 

Links to previous discussions or research also welcome. I've looked at
the surface of eToy/squeaks site but haven't read VPRI's site. Any
pointers to the most relevant info appreciated.

I'm a skeptic. I love learning the theory but I only believe something
after I see or hear it first hand. So any comments on real world
experience is especially helpful for me.

Thanks,

Greg S

-----Original Message-----
From: Kim Rose [mailto:kim.rose at vpri.org] 
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 2:56 PM
To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
Cc: its.an.education.project at tema.lo-res.org
Subject: Re: [Its.an.education.project] Another set of thoughts

Hi, Greg -

The book Alan refers to is "Powerful Ideas in the Classroom" by BJ Conn
and me  -- you can see more here:
http://www.squeakland.org/sqmedia/books/kimbjbook.html

The essay Alan "passed around" was originally the foreword for this
book.

cheers,
Kim


On May 2, 2008, at 11:51 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) wrote:

> Hi Alan et al,
>
> Great article, thanks. I'm struck by how similar it is to Marvin 
> Minsky's recent post on learning mathematics 
> (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Marvin_Minsky_essays
>
> Interestingly, both use the same topology (mapping) analogy for 
> learning.
>
> The end of your article refers to a book and projects in it. Can you 
> send a link to that?
>
> I really like your case that children have to try it out for 
> themselves to fully appreciate the meaning of length or size.
>
> Understanding what science means by "knowing" was brought home for me 
> when the Children's Museum in Boston took out the old T-Rex model (now
> outside) and replaced it with a new very different one. Until I was 
> about 20 years old, everyone said the old one represented what T-Rex 
> really looked like. Then he changed!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg S
>
>
> Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
>
>> At the risk of trying to talk about education, here is another little

>> essay with a few observations...
>>
>> http://www.vpri.org/pdf/human_condition.pdf
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