[IAEP] GPA notes Thursday 7-9-09

[Caroline Meeks]

We will be reburning the sticks on Monday to get a new version of Turtle Art
on.  Some of the core activities can't be updated via
Activities.sugarlabs.org.  This is a bug we should fix.

Please let us know if there are any other things you think we should do or
add to the stick.  I know there is talk about Jabber_IDs all being the same
being part of our collaboration issue so we'll probably get rid of those
too.

Did we have one stick failure or did everyone's sticks eventually work?

For the first day we had everyones computer all set up and booted and we
used extension cables.  This time we had the kids plug the USBs directly
into the front of the machines then turn the machines on.  Some needed help
with this as the USB ports are very annoying on these computers.  Once the
boot started we had them goto the rug and Walter talked while the machines
booted.  Next time we should try to time the amount of time it takes from
walking into the room to everyone's computer is booted.  This is critical
number for use in schools.

This project, using Turtle Art to label maps with the activities they are
doing this summer is going to be very interesting. For instance, the kids
have not been exposed to coordinate systems before.  They are definitely
being challenged and having to develop new ways of thinking which is what we
want.  They are defintiely engaged and motivated so I think they will be
able to do it.  The teachers had a clear theme for the summer (community)
and themes for each week. I think that helped us find a good project.

The projector works well for teaching.  I wonder if the XO deployments would
be well served by a "Projector Activity" where one person could share their
screen with the rest of the class.  It could be used by the teacher or for
students to do the equivlent of going up to the board to work a problem for
the class.  At the GPA, with the setup we have, having the kids come to the
center rug and using the actual projector and a laptop is probably better
for us.



On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:

> One addendum:
>
> By default, Turtle Art stores numbers as real (floating point) and so the
> labels on the number line were printing with a decimal point and one
> trailing zero. This really confused the students, who don't know about
> decimal notation. I've made a change to the print and show functions to only
> show decimal places for real numbers that are not equal to integers. This
> will be part of the next release, some time over the weekend.
>
> -walter
>
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 6:22 PM, Anurag Goel <agoel23 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Here are some notes I took from today's session at GPA:
>>
>> We got there around 10 a.m to set up all the computers, the projector, and
>> debug collaboration (still isn't working properly).
>>
>> The kids came in around 11:30 and as usual sat on the rug in the middle of
>> the room. Walter told the kids the today we will be using Turtle Art to work
>> with number lines. Walter then showed some of the basic functions of Turtle
>> Art. Walter showed the kids how to change colors by inputting different
>> numbers into the Set Color box. Surprisingly none of the kids questioned why
>> we couldn't see what color we were selecting before we actually select it.
>> Perhaps we should allow kids to see what color they are selecting, similar
>> to how they select a color in Paint?
>>
>> One kid asked, "how about the number 92?" Walter inputted the number 92
>> into the set color box and the kids were surprised as the turtle starts
>> drawing in a purple color.
>>
>> Next Walter showed how to set pensize.
>> Kid: can you do 1000?
>> Kids scream in excitement as the entire screen turns into an orange color
>> Walter plays around with other numerical values ranging from from 16 all
>> the way to 2009
>>
>> Walter created a number line in Turtle Art in increments of 100.
>> Turtle starts at 0, goes to 100, 200, 300.
>> Next walter uses the back button to make the turtle go backwards in
>> increments of 100 until the turtle is back at 0.
>>
>> Walter showed the kids how to print the value of the current x-coordinate.
>> Kid asked how can we make the number smaller. Walter changed the text size
>> using set text size.  He changed it to something really small. Kids says,
>> “now it’s tiny” same kids asks Walter to type her name on the screen.
>>
>> Walter asked the kids to play around with text, forward, backward, line
>> thickness, and colors. Kids then leave the carpet to go to the computers.
>> One of the kids changed his XO color but after doing changing it the
>> computer would reboot and go to the Fedora login screen, instead of
>> rebooting directly to sugar. After pressing Enter, Sugar booted.
>> Kids seemed to be getting a better understanding of how Turtle Art works
>> in comparison to Tuesday. I noticed that kids were easily able to get rid of
>> blocks they did not want and move the Turtle back to the center of the
>> screen when they wanted to start over. I think the introduction at the
>> beginning of today's session was really beneficial for the students because
>> it gave them some kind of direction.
>>
>>  Walter brought students back to the carpet to get their attention.
>> Walter asked, "Does everyone know what a map is?"
>> Kids: “YEAAA”
>> Walter showed kids a map of the Charles River on Turtle art.
>> Kid: How did you make that map appear?
>>
>> Walter: I will explain that to you a little later.
>> Walter used the print-ycor and print-xcor buttons to show the kids how to
>> determine the x and y coordinates of the turtles current location. Walter
>> then used the Show block to write Gardner School where it was located on the
>> map. He then placed a Cartesian coordinate system on the map and used the
>> setyx block to show the students how the turtle can be placed on different
>> parts of the map such as the Gardner School and the Charles River
>> Reservation. Previously the kids assumed the setyx block was only to bring
>> the turtle back to the center of the screen.
>>
>>
>> Walter then showed the kids how to load a picture/map into Turtle Art.
>> Walter put a satellite map of the Gardner School and surrounding area into
>> Turtle Art.
>> Kids: “whoa”
>> Walter: "Now we will play with the map and label different things on the
>> map"
>>
>> However, by this time it was time for the kids to leave the computer lab
>> so they never actually got a chance to use Turtle Art to move around in the
>> map and label different sections. Perhaps we will continue with this
>> activity next week. The kids are supposed to go to the Charles River
>> tomorrow for a field trip. We are hoping the teachers will upload pictures
>> of the field trip online so we can use them next week in the Memorize
>> activity.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Anurag Goel
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20090709/8544ab31/attachment-0001.htm