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

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

  Hi,

  Kim and perhaps Alan will write more but here is from my opinion.

> 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?

  Especially in Japan and Spain, there are quite a few books published
(search for them), universities and local communities hold workshops,
etc.  These workshops, to me, tend to be inherently shallow
unfotunately.  As they have limited time and let kids do "whatever you
want" in a few hours.  But the result is usually not very deep.  Among
others, Kyoto University and Keio University wrote longer structured
books and used it affiliated elementary schools and high schools.
There are many schools in Tokyo that built their own longer term
curriculum and steadily using it.

  In other countries like Germany, South Korea, etc., to my knowledge
there aren't published books on Etoys (yet), but educators are heavily
involved.  There are papers at the C5 conferences, SqueakFest, etc.

  In short, the VPRI's involvement is very small in comparison to the
entire community.

  The challenge, is to make kids do deeper stuff.  It is so easy to do
easy stuff in Etoys (like painting and make it go circle).  Some kids
spent 75 minutes out of 90 minutes workshop time just to paint a car.
But for example, they should be doing more with how to draw certain
polygon, etc.

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

  I'd say teachers and adults who understand *it*.  We try to push
Etoys and computer as a tool to learn mathematics and science, but
most parents and most of the workshop organizers tend to think Etoys
as a fun art tool.  Kids can paint cool pictures and make them move a
bit, but hey, kids can paint on paper and cut them and move.  What is
important is not to mimic the old media but built new kind of
mathematics system on computer.  But this part is very hard to
understand for them.

> 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

  Yes.  We've met with Luke Gorrie while he was working on it.  Such a
good guy, and prove that anybody can start writing code in
Smalltalk/Squeak.

From my experience, the trust among locals are the best.
Foreigners or unfamiliar guys try to teach adults is a tough deal.

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

  That is a bit strange.  As I wrote, Spanish (in Spain and) is one of
the strongest language group among Etoys community.  Translation for
the has not really caught up the latest changes yet, but "it is not in
Spanish yet" would be some misunderstandings.

> - 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.

  Yes, Tim is a great mover.

> - 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 :-)

  Sorry about that.  The initial version was built on/for one-button
mouse and modifier was ok.  But now XO has two buttons, and for the
next version, we are swtiching the default for the Windows version so
that the right button gets you the halo.

> - 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
> :-)

  Yes, Scratch definitely has lower entry barrier, thanks to Mitch,
Brian, John and all other Scratch people's efforts.  If you want to
make a project with more than one object, it becomes tricker in
Scratch.

> 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.

  Well, this is a difficult question as there is no the best.  What
kind of "themes" do you have in your mind?  At the authoring level for
a certain age group, my bias is the way Scratch or Etoys does; where
kids start with some thing they can relate to (a cat, a drawing they
make, etc.) and gradually grow the object.

> 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.

  Well, where are you located?  Go and visit a local school that uses
Squeak/Etoys.  We occasionally surprised that many tried without
telling us.  And read papers that describe their experiences.

-- Yoshiki