[IAEP] GPA notes Thursday 7-9-09

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 03:29, Caroline Meeks<solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Do we have a ticket? It should mention which/some activities cannot be updated.

Thanks,

Tomeu

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>