[IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys

[Cherry Withers]

The very first time a child sees their object move with a simple forward
script is always a magical moment for me and the kids. Never fails.
Exploration and excitement explodes after that. I'm new to teaching Etoys as
well. Definitely caught the bug. :-)

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Simon Schampijer <simon at schampijer.de>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am teaching on a regular basis in the Planetarium pilot in Berlin,
> Germany [1]. I have been using Etoys now for several weeks and here is
> some first feedback.
>
> First: The kids do like it a lot! I want to encourage everyone to
> include it in his curriculum.
>
> For example you can teach easily the concepts of the coordinate system
> with Etoys. You create an object and print out the X and Y values when
> moving it on the screen. Or you can use a joystick to alter the position
> of this object and use this method to deepen the coordinate system concept.
>
> Of course we did as well the famous car example. It was slightly changed
> in my class: A bug has to crawl a lane using one or two sensors to stay
> on the lane. A lot of interesting concepts to learn here, too (positive
> and negative numbers for example).
>
> And to bring this all together into a portfolio you can use the book
> tool (found in the treasure chest) to create a story including all your
> objects and games, pictures etc you created.
>
> I wrote down a few items I was missing when using the book tool and
> while doing so, I figured they were all there, just hidden by default.
>
> - resize all of the book not just one page
>     - maybe that could be the default option?
> - duplicate a page
> - different background color
> - different sound when turning the page
>
> When you hit the little button at the far left you will get more
> options. And when you use the menu in the middle of the book toolbar you
> get all of these options and a lot of more. Just in case someone runs as
> well into this :)
>
> A few things that I came across, too:
> - German: When you drop the 'joystick up down' and 'joystick left right'
> option onto the world it will change to English. Not when you use it in
> a script though.
> - some buttons are hard to use: for example when you want to alter the
> behavior of the X value of an object (increase..). Those are hard to
> navigate. Or dropping options into the test script does not work as smooth.
>
> That's all for now - keep up the good work, team Etoys!.
>
> Thanks,
>     Simon
>
> PS: Of course I am happy to turn items into bugs later. Just thought I
> give here a little summary first.
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployments/Planetarium
>
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