Difference between revisions of "User:Tonyforster"
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==Text dungeon== | ==Text dungeon== | ||
| + | A text dungeon game for literacy and numeracy | ||
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[[File:Text dungeon.jpg|300px]] | [[File:Text dungeon.jpg|300px]] | ||
Revision as of 08:31, 26 May 2011
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/
(This program has also been done in Game Maker on the Windows OS)
Reflashing Sugar
Unsigned XO1
- Get a developer key and unlock your XO
- Download the OS image (e.g. osxxx.img) and its CRC file (e.g. osxxx.crc) to USB
- Press escape at power on for the OK prompt
probe-usb copy-nand disk:\osNNN.img
Will not work if there are 2 partitions, [1]
To install from Open Firmware on an unlocked XO-1, download the .onu and .uim files and run:
ok update-nand u:\osXX.onu
Unsigned XO1.5
- Get a developer key and unlock your XO
- Download osxxx.zd, osxxx.zsp.fs.zip,
- rename the zip file to fs.zip
- Pressing the "check mark"(tick) game key, Turn on the laptop,
- press ESC (X) to get to the OFW prompt "ok",
fs-update u:\osxxx.zd
Signed builds
- Download osxxx.img, osxxx.img.fs.zip to the top directory of a USB drive
- (osxxx.zd,osxxx.zsp.fs.zip on XO1.5),
- Rename the zip file to fs.zip
- hold the 4 game keys at boot
Deployment key signed builds
http://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/wiki/Installing_signed_builds
Dodo mobile broadband on the XO
Connected to the Dodo mobile broadband network with the Huawei E160E
- username my username
- password my password
- number *99#
- APN dodolns1
- PIN blank
- PUK blank
(best with power management turned off)
Sugar security
Some Activities are 'protected', that is they can't be deleted. This also means that the Activity can't be downgraded or crossgraded to the same revision number.
To achieve this you need to delete the Activity's directory in
/home/olpc/Activities
This is easily done in older builds in Gnome but newer builds have a hidden and protected Activities directory
sudo gedit
allows you to edit files but not delete
chmod 777 ~/Activities
unprotects the directory but it is still hidden, in the file manager nautilus check show hidden files
Enabling debug output
Edit /home/olpc/.sugar/debug and uncomment :
export SUGAR_LOGGER_LEVEL=debug
Starting Gnome
If not in my settings
echo gnome > /home/olpc/.olpc-active-desktop
and restart
Text dungeon
A text dungeon game for literacy and numeracy
(Will transfer this page to Activities/Textdungeon if it gets to a working version.)
The dungeon File:Sampledungeon.doc description file is plain text and can be edited with the Write Activity. It is purposefully unencrypted and easily edited. 'Cheating' by reading or altering the dungeon is encouraged.
At the moment File:Textdungeon.doc the program's Python code works from the command line only, no GTK support, no saving, no Journal support. The next step is to add these features.
The intention is that children would both play and create dungeons to develop math, literacy and problem solving skills:
Playing the game
- visualise 2D spaces (could extend to 3D or even 4D)
- navigate compass directions N E S W and relationship to right, left
- text literacy
- can include subject related content
- problem solving
Making/editing/reading a dungeon file
- all the above plus
- Cartesian coordinates
- variables
- word processing skills
- programming like skills
- create in any language
Dungeon file format
[l,room x,room y] your location
[i, item, item ....] your inventory
[u,room x, room y, item, room x, .....] location of items
[d,room x, room y, direction, closed, room x, .....] status of wall/door segments
[r,room x,room y,direction,item which unlocks,open text,closed text,text when opening]
[r,room x,room y,direction,item which unlocks,open text,closed text,text when opening]
...