[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2011-12-01

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com> wrote:
> Walter,
>
>  thanks for taking a whole point of your report to discuss a subject I
> brought up.
>
> Unfortunately my point or its further clarification were not clear enough.
>  You are still not getting it right.
>
> The only reason I offered a link to the game "Circle-the-Cat" was to offer
> an example of an easy to use application.
>
> What I meant by that is that you are already using it after a single clic on
> the link I sent.
>
> No downloading or installation is required.  It works with any computer
> connected to internet (or to a school server??),  using any operating
> system.
>

Carlos,

In some of my projects, we don't have the luxury of a school server.
How would this work in a "XO only" environment?

> Let me offer another example,  an application I constantly use:
>
> Real time translation
> http://tradukka.com/
>
> ¿Want to test it quickly?
>
> I just translated the portion of your message that was written in French.
>  This is the result,  without any retouching:
>
> "I have made it longer because I did not have time to make it shorter."
>
>
> By the way,  if you tried to impress and/or intimidate me with your French,
>  let me tell you that in the public high school I attended in Montevideo,
>  we had French courses during 4 years.
>
> At the end of that period we all were able to read without any problem and
> to visit France or Quebec for business or pleasure without any communication
> problem.
>
> What you actually gave me with the French quote is another good example of
> how to alienate uruguayan teachers.
>
> Here in Uruguay we speak Spanish and that is the language teachers teach us
> in school.  Not quite sure if they still teach French in public schools.
>
> Also,  looking now at the meaning of the quote,  I have to admit you
> perfectly describe the situation of Sugar.
>
> My question is now:
>
> ¿Do the children have the time to wait until Sugar is easily usable by
> everyone,  not geeks only?
>

We have children in India who use Sugar quite nicely without any prior
computer experience
(http://bhagmalpur.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/so-whats-working/). In
fact, I would add that my personal usability with Sugar and GNOME is
better than my usability with MacOSX, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and
KDE.

I don't buy your assertion.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Professor, Information Systems
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://olpcsf.org/


> I believe I already told you very clearly why I refuse to discuss the value
> of "Circle-the-Cat" as an educational application:
>
> I am a firm believer no one,  including myself,  should discuss matters that
> are not within our field of expertise.
>
> By the way,  this is a very good use of the signature blocks someone
> suggested long ago to be used in the mail lists.  WIth the torrent of
> information we receive every day,  it is important to evaluate the authors.
>  Someone reading my signature block will see I am not saying I am a teacher
> or educator and will probably not invite me to engage in a discussion about
> the educational value of an application.
>
> I understand there are many teachers in Uruguay coaching children to do
> searches with Navigate and evaluate the results to decide which ones they
> may use for their homework and which ones they better discard.  I strongly
> suggest we use these signature blocks to give a good example to the young
> users of the lists and keep reminding them they have to use their judgement
> to decide what to believe from all they can read.
>
> Carlos Rabassa
> Volunteer
> Plan Ceibal Support Network
> Montevideo, Uruguay
>
>
>
> On Dec 1, 2011, at 1:40 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
>
> 4. Carlos Rabassa posted a link to a fun game, Circle the Cat [5] in
> the context of a question he posed to the list: "Why couldn´t all
> educational applications be as simple to use as this one?" My glib
> response was to quote the French mathematician, Blaise Pascal:
>
> "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le
> loisir de la faire plus courte."
>
> In other words, reaching to simplicity takes time and effort. Alan Kay
> chimed in about Hypercard, reminding us that it took years of
> refinement for it to reach its polished state. It is an open debate as
> to if and when Sugar will ever reach that level of polish and the path
> towards achieving it.
>
> But while Carlos did not want to discuss the value Circle the Cat as
> an educational program, to not do so seems to skirt the central
> question of Sugar: it is an education project after all!! I am
> interested in how we can use a simple game or activity to drive the
> children to deeper principles. So I wrote a Sugar Activity inspired by
> Circle the Cat, but with a twist: The user is invited to experiment
> with the algorithm (Please seeTurtle in a Pond [6])--of course I had
> to use a turtle instead of a cat. The game itself is fun to play and
> arguably of some educational benefit. But there is perhaps more to
> learn from algorithm development. For better or for worse, the user
> needs to load their algorithms written in Python from their Sugar
> Journal. This probably precludes the younger children from
> experimenting, but it presents an open-ended invitation to those
> willing to take the challenge.
>
>
>
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