[IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Tuesday 28 Sep 2010 2:59:57 am Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote:
> The 5th graders took pretty well to Etoys. It is the drawing piece that
> hooks them, and then the scripting part that really challenges them. And
> the 7th and 8th graders love Scratch. It is interesting to me because they
> also do plenty of "painting" of sprites and backgrounds, but something
> about the bricks seems to match their thinking process.
This could be due to Stroop Effect.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

5th graders may prefer to doodle with colors, shapes, icons and "physical 
models". They can spend more time with manipulating morphs directly and 
creating patterns in Etoys. 7th graders, with their language dominant modes, 
look upon this as "kids stuff" and would dive right into "programming". For the 
literates, Scratch is much easier than Etoys.

> I am getting ready to introduce my current 7th grade classes to Scratch and
> am looking forward to that
I came across some cases where this "doodling" actually helped boost learning 
levels (across the board). So don't give up on Etoys yet :-). Dual modes 
(visual/textual) may be a good thing.

Subbu