Tonyforster

Me

http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/ blog, random thoughts, Turtle Art samples

http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/ game programming and learning

forster at ozonline dot com dot au

Interests: Activities which maximise the opportunity for self-directed learning: low floor, wide walls and high ceiling with particular emphasis on the walls and ceiling. My Sugar favourites: Turtleart, Scratch, Etoys. Game Maker still my Windows favourite.

Currently user testing Turtleart and Sliderule, experimenting with Pippy. Supporting the Timor Leste deployment.

Preschool student Activities, some links

Radia Perlman in the 70s when at student at MIT did extensive experiments with preliterate children and the LOGO turtle and built a number of interfaces for them. She also spent some time at Xerox PARC and did many similar experiments with chldren 3 years on up.

http://www.formatex.org/micte2006/virtual/pdf/582.pdf see fig 3 with plastic cards showing visual images of turtle commands

http://www.formatex.org/micte2006/virtual/ppt/582.ppt similar image

http://logothings.wikispaces.com/ towards the end, photo of Radia Perlman's Button Box for Pre-Schoolers

http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mcnerney/personal-ubicomp.pdf more discussion than the above

Turtle Art - text free

To what extent could pre-literate children use Turtle Art?

Are graphics on blocks really better than text?

Does keeping text labels help develop literacy?

What graphics are best?

Some features, eg. the heap are unlikely to be used by pre-literate children, should they be omitted or retained with text labels?

The following graphic is a discussion starter

or another [suggested layout]]

Text-less outdoor lesson for Turtle Art

Sliderule

http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2010/09/pippy-sliderule.html Pippy File:Pippy sliderule.doc
http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2010/09/turtle-sliderule.html Turtle art
http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/#lobject Game maker
File:Slideruletute.pdf tutorial

Software Freedom Day Melbourne 2010

File:Softwarefreedomday10.pdf presentation

http://luv.asn.au/sfd2010/ photos

Sea Surface Temperature Mapping

Sea surface temperature mapping, inspired by http://oceanpc.org . Described here is a program to read and display the temperature data which is available at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/sst.html

The data format is described at ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/README

The first record in the file ersst_v3b_2010_2019.asc , the 2010 to 2019 data set, reads:

-9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999   -19    13    18    11     7    25    64   132   255   427   607   791   990  1198  1408  1616  1816  1999  2149  2258  2327  2360  2365  2355  2347  2359  2393  2443  2500  2568  2654  2736  2789  2826  2869  2904  2911  2903 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999  1489  1432 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999 -9999   713 -9999   656   715   780   796   744   669   596   476   298   156   113    70  -134  -180  -180  -180  -180

-9999 represents land, the other numbers are degrees C x100 This record represents a line running from the south pole through to the north pole in 2 degree increments at longtitude 0 for the first month and year. The next record is for lattitude 2 degrees east and so on.

Sample Pippy(Python) program

This Pippy(Python) mapping program is supplied as a starter and as inspiration for further investigation

File:Write Activity sst.odt Pippy code as open office doc. Download and open in Journal. Copy from the Write session, paste into Pippy and run.

Alternatively download this content bundle File:Sst.xol to the journal, starting the bundle from the journal installs the bundle as off line web content which is accessible from the Browse home page as sst in the Science category. This content includes the Python source and a sample data file.

Challenges

Display the other months and years in the file
Display the month and year in the title bar
Animate the display
Do a legend
Display the temperature at the cursor
Map other data
Error checking
Display partly corrupted data sets without crashing
Create models of ocean or atmosphere
More ideas at http://oceanpc.org , http://marinedataliteracy.org/index.html and http://data.worldbank.org/