Dynabook concept, critic view

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Dynabook concept, critic view

HilaireFernandes
Hi,

Some of you may be interested on the point of view of a
teacher-developer on the Dynabook concept. Here is a little writing about it

http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/The-Dynabook-Concept

Hilaire

--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu



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Re: Dynabook concept, critic view

David T. Lewis
On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 04:12:54PM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Some of you may be interested on the point of view of a
> teacher-developer on the Dynabook concept. Here is a little writing about it
>
> http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/The-Dynabook-Concept

Thanks Hilaire,

This is a really interesting post, and your "Active Essay" page at
http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/Dr.-Geo-and-Dynamic-media is good to read
also.

Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active
and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list
(http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the
discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed
to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the
project can comment further, but that was my impression.

Dave


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Re: Dynabook concept, critic view

HilaireFernandes
Hi Dave,

Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys
with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys
controllable artifacts.

What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of
teacher oriented support/care/attention.

By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use
to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching
model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains
too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept
with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with
Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very
useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If
it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not
do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill
activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.

All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is
children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in
my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.

Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the
Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.

Thanks

Hilaire


Le 19/07/2018 à 18:58, David T. Lewis a écrit :
> Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active
> and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list
> (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the
> discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed
> to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the
> project can comment further, but that was my impression.

--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu



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Re: Dynabook concept, critic view

David T. Lewis
Hilaire,

I see, it makes perfect sense now. I am looking forward to more of
your writings :-)

Dave

On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:41:28AM +0200, Hilaire wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys
> with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys
> controllable artifacts.
>
> What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of
> teacher oriented support/care/attention.
>
> By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use
> to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching
> model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains
> too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept
> with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with
> Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very
> useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If
> it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not
> do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill
> activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.
>
> All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is
> children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in
> my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.
>
> Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the
> Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.
>
> Thanks
>
> Hilaire
>
>
> Le 19/07/2018 ?? 18:58, David T. Lewis a ??crit??:
> > Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active
> > and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list
> > (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the
> > discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed
> > to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the
> > project can comment further, but that was my impression.
>
> --
> Dr. Geo
> http://drgeo.eu
>
>
>

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Re: Dynabook concept, critic view

Hannes Hirzel
Hi Hilaire

The Dynabook concept is often linked to the Etoys concept and
implementation.  I think it is important that you remind us that Etoys
is constructivism oriented and as such is not the only learning model.
So it actually results in the conclusion that the field of application
of the Dynabook idea is much wider.  In the sense of  a 'Dynamic book'
read and used on an electronic device.

A question then is

Do we think of a 'Dynamic note book'?

A note book comes with initially blank pages and this is what the
current Squeak/Pharo/Cuis releases represent at the moment.

If the answer is 'no' as I understand you it means that

a) dynamic essays have to be written by teachers and the students read
them and use the animations to explore the field of a particular
topic.  [1]

b) the teacher on the other side may rely on a collection of dynamic
essays - or we may as well say - 'lessons' or 'teaching units'  to
choose what to present to the students.

c) a dynamic book may be used for self study of a topic. That means
that the student selects for a possibly large collection of dynamic
essays what to study and learn


What does 'writing a dynamic essay' mean?

As with traditional text book writing there is
a) formatted text and
b) graphics. What comes in addition are
c) short scripts relying on existing material to produce graphics and
animations.
d) sound
e) video

Then a last question which I think should be investigated thoroughly
be looking also at past efforts.

What makes such an endeavour successful?

As a contribution towards an answer I have

a) "ease of use".

- This is mostly about the language and DSL used for scripting
- And for this to happen it also means that there is a considerable
collection of examples.

b) availability of a "lesson / teaching units collection" .

In terms of downloads, your Dr. Geo implementation of a Smalltalk
based scripting environment for producing teaching and learning
artifacts is successful. So the question may as well be

"What will make it MORE successful?"

--Hannes


[1] In terms of implementation  _one option_ is that the content is
assembled in the Smalltalk environment and  then an exported version
in HTML/CSS/JavaScript is produced to be read on the web.


On 7/20/18, David T. Lewis <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hilaire,
>
> I see, it makes perfect sense now. I am looking forward to more of
> your writings :-)
>
> Dave
>
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:41:28AM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
>> Hi Dave,
>>
>> Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys
>> with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys
>> controllable artifacts.
>>
>> What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of
>> teacher oriented support/care/attention.
>>
>> By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use
>> to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching
>> model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains
>> too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept
>> with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with
>> Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very
>> useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If
>> it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not
>> do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill
>> activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.
>>
>> All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is
>> children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in
>> my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.
>>
>> Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the
>> Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Hilaire
>>
>>
>> Le 19/07/2018 ?? 18:58, David T. Lewis a ??crit??:
>> > Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active
>> > and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list
>> > (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the
>> > discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed
>> > to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the
>> > project can comment further, but that was my impression.
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Geo
>> http://drgeo.eu
>>
>>
>>
>
>

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Re: Dynabook concept, critic view

K K Subbu
I think the original concept is more like a steadily evolving bag of bits than something created from scratch; closer to what DNA editors do with CRISPR in microbiology today. Of course, without the ethical issues.

Regards .. Subbu

On Tue 24 Jul, 2018, 11:09 AM H. Hirzel, <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi Hilaire

The Dynabook concept is often linked to the Etoys concept and
implementation.  I think it is important that you remind us that Etoys
is constructivism oriented and as such is not the only learning model.
So it actually results in the conclusion that the field of application
of the Dynabook idea is much wider.  In the sense of  a 'Dynamic book'
read and used on an electronic device.

A question then is

Do we think of a 'Dynamic note book'?

A note book comes with initially blank pages and this is what the
current Squeak/Pharo/Cuis releases represent at the moment.

If the answer is 'no' as I understand you it means that

a) dynamic essays have to be written by teachers and the students read
them and use the animations to explore the field of a particular
topic.  [1]

b) the teacher on the other side may rely on a collection of dynamic
essays - or we may as well say - 'lessons' or 'teaching units'  to
choose what to present to the students.

c) a dynamic book may be used for self study of a topic. That means
that the student selects for a possibly large collection of dynamic
essays what to study and learn


What does 'writing a dynamic essay' mean?

As with traditional text book writing there is
a) formatted text and
b) graphics. What comes in addition are
c) short scripts relying on existing material to produce graphics and
animations.
d) sound
e) video

Then a last question which I think should be investigated thoroughly
be looking also at past efforts.

What makes such an endeavour successful?

As a contribution towards an answer I have

a) "ease of use".

- This is mostly about the language and DSL used for scripting
- And for this to happen it also means that there is a considerable
collection of examples.

b) availability of a "lesson / teaching units collection" .

In terms of downloads, your Dr. Geo implementation of a Smalltalk
based scripting environment for producing teaching and learning
artifacts is successful. So the question may as well be

"What will make it MORE successful?"

--Hannes


[1] In terms of implementation  _one option_ is that the content is
assembled in the Smalltalk environment and  then an exported version
in HTML/CSS/JavaScript is produced to be read on the web.


On 7/20/18, David T. Lewis <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hilaire,
>
> I see, it makes perfect sense now. I am looking forward to more of
> your writings :-)
>
> Dave
>
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:41:28AM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
>> Hi Dave,
>>
>> Regarding the teachers, you are right they were involved :) I used Etoys
>> with students too, and wrote Dr. Geo for it and some other small Etoys
>> controllable artifacts.
>>
>> What I have in mind in this latter writing is a different form of
>> teacher oriented support/care/attention.
>>
>> By teacher support, I think about contents artifacts a teacher can use
>> to directly support her/his teaching, whatever the used *teaching
>> model*. Etoys is very constructivism oriented and I think it restrains
>> too much its use case. Sometime the teacher just want to demo a concept
>> with a computerized simulation - as it can be done in geometry with
>> Dr.Geo. Computerized models/micro-world like theses are very
>> useful/practical to teacher, to quickly set up a demo or an activity. If
>> it takes too much time to set up such activities, most teachers will not
>> do it. Some other time, a teacher may just want to build quickly a drill
>> activity with embarked computerized model/simulation.
>>
>> All this kind of support were missing in Etoys, because Etoys is
>> children oriented, not teacher oriented. This is roughly what I mean in
>> my article conclusion. I planned to elaborate more on other writings.
>>
>> Years ago (around 2010) I exposed very briefly this position to the
>> Etoys fellows. But I was then occupied by other activities.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Hilaire
>>
>>
>> Le 19/07/2018 ?? 18:58, David T. Lewis a ??crit??:
>> > Regarding teachers, I had the impression that teachers were very active
>> > and involved in the Etoys project. I recall from that mailing list
>> > (http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/) that much of the
>> > discussions came from teachers, and the people doing development seemed
>> > to be focused on supporting them. Maybe someone who was involved in the
>> > project can comment further, but that was my impression.
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Geo
>> http://drgeo.eu
>>
>>
>>
>
>



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Re: Dynabook concept, critic view

HilaireFernandes
CRISPR-CAS9 and DNA are all but empty bags of technology and sciences.
Following your analogy, a question is what could the minimum content of the
Dynabook bag to make it an evolving entity?

To find a bit about that, I try to follow the learning models path.

Hilaire



-----
http://drgeo.eu
--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Squeak-Dev-f45488.html

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Re: Dynabook concept, critic view

HilaireFernandes
In reply to this post by Hannes Hirzel
Le 24/07/2018 à 06:39, H. Hirzel a écrit :

> The Dynabook concept is often linked to the Etoys concept and
> implementation.  I think it is important that you remind us that Etoys
> is constructivism oriented and as such is not the only learning model.
> So it actually results in the conclusion that the field of application
> of the Dynabook idea is much wider.  In the sense of  a 'Dynamic book'
> read and used on an electronic device.
>
> A question then is
>
> Do we think of a 'Dynamic note book'?
>
> A note book comes with initially blank pages and this is what the
> current Squeak/Pharo/Cuis releases represent at the moment.

For me they are programming Smalltalk environment.

> What does 'writing a dynamic essay' mean?
>
> As with traditional text book writing there is
> a) formatted text and
> b) graphics. What comes in addition are
> c) short scripts relying on existing material to produce graphics and
> animations.
> d) sound
> e) video

f) Glueing together simulation with Smalltalk code

> Then a last question which I think should be investigated thoroughly
> be looking also at past efforts.
>
> What makes such an endeavour successful?
>
> As a contribution towards an answer I have
>
> a) "ease of use".
>
> - This is mostly about the language and DSL used for scripting
> - And for this to happen it also means that there is a considerable
> collection of examples.
>
> b) availability of a "lesson / teaching units collection" .

c) matching the teacher needs

d) ease of re-usability of simulation

f) ease to glue simulations together build meta-simulation

g) in-situ documentation and guiding

> In terms of downloads, your Dr. Geo implementation of a Smalltalk
> based scripting environment for producing teaching and learning
> artifacts is successful. So the question may as well be
>
> "What will make it MORE successful?"
Not sure.

Hilaire

>
> --Hannes
>
>
> [1] In terms of implementation  _one option_ is that the content is
> assembled in the Smalltalk environment and  then an exported version
> in HTML/CSS/JavaScript is produced to be read on the web.

--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu