[IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys

[Cherry Withers]

Gerald,

It's definitely a balancing act trying to get them to focus on finishing up
something and getting them to explore. Once they realize that they
can affect the object by scripts they just want to do everything they can
possibly do in one sitting (dragging and dropping tiles in one script window
..then I'm in fire fighting mode). Too much resulted in chaos in my class.
Not doing THAT again. I now give them some time to go nuts on exploration
then pull them back in to finish a project. Now I'm introducing just a max
of two concepts (or tiles) in one 40min. session.

Kathleen Harness has really good lesson plans for teaching one concept at a
time: www.etoysillionois.org

I would like to hear more best practices/ideas, etc. for teaching Etoys in
the classroom.

Cheers,
Cherry

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Gerald Ardito <gerald.ardito at gmail.com>wrote:

> I agree. Watching the car script is fun for a while. But when they make
> their own first script, it is exciting each and every time.
>
> I also find that the students (I work with 10 year olds) get overwhelmed by
> the number of choices they have.
>
> Anyone else have that experience?
>
> Thanks.
> Gerald
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:11 PM, Cherry Withers <cwithers at ekindling.org>wrote:
>
>> 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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>>
>>
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