Changes

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2. Squeakfest Part II: The final day of Squeakfest as was uplifting as my first day at the conference. There were reports from the field using Etoys and many "oh-the-things-you-can-do" presentations by teachers who use Etoys in the classroom. There was a nice mix of projects built by learners – an amazing physics model built by high-school students in North Carolina was a highlight – as well as projects intended to let a learner explore a powerful idea – a beautiful-in-its-simplicity model for estimating the area of a circle; these small projects – "Etoy-lets" – are being shared on line along with an extensive collection of simple guides to using Etoys. Again I was impressed by the extensive use of flaps and books that are created as part of the project generation process and the use of versioning to monitor a learner's progress. These facilities represent a major usability improvement in Etoys in support of pedagogical goals. Etoys is great stuff, well worth the initial investment in time and effort to learn.

2. Squeakfest Part II: The final day of Squeakfest as was uplifting as my first day at the conference. There were reports from the field using Etoys and many "oh-the-things-you-can-do" presentations by teachers who use Etoys in the classroom. There was a nice mix of projects built by learners – an amazing physics model built by high-school students in North Carolina was a highlight – as well as projects intended to let a learner explore a powerful idea – a beautiful-in-its-simplicity model for estimating the area of a circle; these small projects – "Etoy-ets" – are being shared on line along with an extensive collection of simple guides to using Etoys. Again I was impressed by the extensive use of flaps and books that are created as part of the project generation process and the use of versioning to monitor a learner's progress. These facilities represent a major usability improvement in Etoys in support of pedagogical goals. Etoys is great stuff, well worth the initial investment in time and effort to learn.

3. I contrast this with the sad state of the computer industry's attempts to sell computers to schools: "[] says teachers need high-end laptops but students will just be accessing content and communication so need basic functionality." While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with giving children access to content, does that really constitute the basic functionality needed by the learner? The good news is that Sugar (and Etoys) can run on these "basic" platforms. We should stop selling teachers and learning short by dumbing down the opportunities to use computation as a thing to think with.

3. I contrast this with the sad state of the computer industry's attempts to sell computers to schools: "[] says teachers need high-end laptops but students will just be accessing content and communication so need basic functionality." While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with giving children access to content, does that really constitute the basic functionality needed by the learner? The good news is that Sugar (and Etoys) can run on these "basic" platforms. We should stop selling teachers and learning short by dumbing down the opportunities to use computation as a thing to think with.

:''9. Don't train your teachers (nor your school headmasters, for that matter)''

:''9. Don't train your teachers (nor your school headmasters, for that matter)''

:The biggest investment in the .py program has been in teacher training. As the project scales, finding ways to make this process more efficient will be key. But no one has every suggested that it was not a vital part of the process.

:The biggest investment in the .py program has been in teacher training. As the project scales, finding ways to make this process more efficient will be key. But no one has ever suggested that it was not a vital part of the process.

Trucano leaves #10 as an open exercise for the reader. I'll add:

Trucano leaves #10 as an open exercise for the reader. I'll add: