[IAEP] An example on statistical (Bert Freudenberg)

[Greg Smith (gregmsmi)]

Hi Bert et al,

I appreciate all the comments, suggestions, flames and criticisms etc.
Its on the only way I know how my message is being received.

All my incoming messages appear in the same font so I forgot to check
outgoing format.

I see it was HTML (default) and that also munged the quote at the top in
text e-mail readers.

Here it is again in plain text mode. Hope that works better. 

I'll try your suggestion on opening the activity on a windows box. 

Thanks,

Greg S

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Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 18:21:33 -0400
From: "Greg Smith (gregmsmi)" <gregmsmi at cisco.com>
Subject: Re: [IAEP] An example on statistical
To: <its.an.education.project at tema.lo-res.org>
Message-ID:
	
<B02C78B842B89E448937F82241C96A2B04F2DB4D at xmb-rtp-20c.amer.cisco.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi Alan and Yoshi,
 
Thanks for your insightful comments. Nothing like an e-mail from Alan
Kay to trigger an interrupt in my e-mail processing queue!
 
As Pappus said of Apollonius "he spent a very long time with the pupils
of Euclid at
Alexandria and it was thus that he acquired such a scientific habit of
thought." 
 
I hope to learn how to build useful educational applications, but I
clearly need to do my homework. My goal is to acquire an educational
habit of thought by spending many small slices of virtual time with the
pupils who have the most experience (e.g. you).
 
When I comment without personally going through the educational process,
I try to include my perspective so you know how to value (or not) my
input. 
 
I read your "eToys and learning" PDF. That gives me a better perspective
on the whole learning cycle and capacity of students before they get to
this subject. If I understand correctly, having the kids build the
simulation is the most important aspect of the learning. In that case
I'm not sure what kind of input would be helpful on Yoshi's Combined Gas
Law simulation. 
 
Anyway, input from the teachers and students will be more useful than my
comments so I'll listen for that. 
 
In general, do eToys projects try to direct kids to build something
which the teacher has already defined?
 
The only book on pedagogy I have read is Pedagogy of the Oppressed by
Paolo Freire. Freire taught me that the process of finding meaningful
themes is the key to getting students engaged in education. In that
sense the kids and teachers together would choose the Ideal Gas Law as a
relevant theme for them. Then together they can find a simulation that
helps them overcome barriers to understanding it.
 
Once the kids-teachers choose a theme, the challenge may be to to ensure
that the right "objects" are available for them to work with. Then
Yoshi's simulation is one example of how they might assemble the
available objects. The work for outside programmers is only to build the
right kind of pre-made pieces, a point also raised by Tony. Let me know
if that is a useful area of inquiry or perhaps we assume the kids
already have all the objects they need and there is nothing required
from outside programmers.
 
I hope that's not too far off track. If so I apologize for the churn.
I'll read, test and code more before commenting in the future. Any
suggestions for further links or areas of study appreciated.
 
On a practical note, I couldn't get to the project from your etoys.image
in IE 6.0 or Firefox 2.0 on windows. I see the "gallery of objects
cloud" and can run "justpaintedcar" but can't scroll to the "bottom
row". Probably  because I am using windows and that etoys.image appears
to be for XO/Sugar. Let me know if there is a different etoys.image file
that I should be opening in Windows. I tried IE 6.0 or Firefox 2.0 in
all tests.
 
Just FYI as I got it running on my XO build 656. Its very slow and
doesn't quite give me the bubbling sensation I got with
windows/gamemaker. I tried setting it to two or two hundred particles
and that pushed the "lid" off the top! I wonder if that's how an Ideal
Gas would behave or if its a bug. I need to think about the law some
more to decide... I got the lid back on by toggling through the
topEdgeMode options. 
 
I need more time to get beyond adjusting the existing variables but its
seems I found an off ramp from The Royal Road :-)
 
Have a great weekend.
 
Thanks,
 
Greg S
 
PS In high school, Appolonius' conic sections excited me much more than
algebra. Like Euclid, its a geometric and continues conception with no
numbers. I wonder what programming language would help teach that way of
thinking...

********* 
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 00:42:53 +0200
From: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
Subject: Re: [IAEP] An example on statistical
To: "Greg Smith (gregmsmi)" <gregmsmi at cisco.com>
Cc: its.an.education.project at tema.lo-res.org
Message-ID: <758467FD-D76E-4AA6-BDC0-D987A6BCF8C7 at freudenbergs.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

On 24.05.2008, at 00:21, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) wrote:
> On a practical note, I couldn't get to the project from your 
> etoys.image in IE 6.0 or Firefox 2.0 on windows. I see the "gallery of

> objects cloud" and can run "justpaintedcar" but can't scroll to the 
> "bottom row". Probably  because I am using windows and that 
> etoys.image appears to be for XO/Sugar. Let me know if there is a 
> different etoys.image file that I should be opening in Windows. I 
> tried IE 6.0 or Firefox 2.0 in all tests.

If you run the image, what does IE or Firefox have to do with it? Just
drag it onto Squeak.exe.

In case your screen is too small to see all, click the rectangle in the
toolbar and choose "scale to fit". This emulates the XO screen
resolution, for best experience resize the window to the XO display's
physical size (6"x4.5"). This is assuming you got the OLPC etoys image
which is set up with larger fonts.

- Bert -

PS: would be nice if you did sent email not in a light blue tiny font
... plain text works best on mailing lists. thanks.