Hi Bill --
What follows is not an argument against (a) using a game making approach
(great for some kids) or (b) the worth of getting all children to learn
to program (probably a good idea).
What we need to contemplate is the probability of "gaining
enlightenment" by being in contact with various kinds of
environments and epistemologies.
If we look at the class of "those who know how to program" we
see a generally unenlightened group (maybe similar to humans in general,
maybe even less enlightened). In any case, we have to conclude there is
nothing intrinsic about learning to program that leads to deeper
thoughts. One of our rueful jokes about the Logo vogue in the 80s is that
everything would be OK if we could just package Seymour on the floppies!
I think it would be even easier to justify the same generalization about
gamers and game makers.
Or about archers ... There was an intriguing book in the 60s zeitgeist
called "Zen and the Art of Archery" by Herrigel, that made a
similiar point: learning archery doesn't confer any automatic
enlightenment, but it could be used as a path if much were added to
standard training.
Or about any activity that requires concentration, focus and learning. My
grandfather Clifton Johnson (a writer and illustrator of many books and
also an early photographer) once got asked in 1904 to write an article
for the Saturday Evening Post on whether photography could be an art
form. He said "Art enters in when one labors thoughtfully over a
goal; that is, when one cuts loose from actions that are merely
mechanical". It's in that space of "laboring thoughtfully"
where there are opportunities for enlightenment.
"Enlightenment about what?" brings up the environmental
influences. I don't think that archery or cooking (or photography) are
cosmically interesting -- so the kinds of enlightenments in these
environments are likely to be personal ones, but with some flashes of
"the world is not as it seems". On the other hand, if science
is the environment, and one is dealing with its huge epistemological
differences with commonsense perceptions -- that is: science has much of
cosmic significance in its purview -- then there are great and deep
opportunities for enlightenment. (But no guarantees here either, just
higher probabilities.)
My interest in education is not as a form of vocational training or
preparation, but in helping children to become adults who are more
thoughtful, and whose perspectives for thinking are much wider and deeper
than the adults of today. The built-in "universals" that are
destructive to human growth can be countered to a considerable extent by
a modern "real education" that includes powerful invented
points of view (the "powerful ideas") that act almost as
additional brain/minds and can form a much stronger and less brittle
heuristic base for thinking well under wider conditions.
In the end, the epistemology of science can lead to many more and better
perspectives on the human condition, and this is where I think education
should and must go. Whether children learn computers or not is not the
issue for me (nor even whether they gain math or science knowledge) --
it's whether they can gain clearer perspectives on "us and what to
do about us" that is critical here.
The established Arts -- including writing -- have as one of their main
properties to provide other perspectives and wake-up calls, but they have
been less effective than one would hope: they are generally too easily
overwhelmed by distracting media, and they have enough story elements
that they tend to be compartmentalized (as is the natural case with
stories). On the other hand, even though our brain/minds want to make
stories out of everything (and judge them by how apt they seem), science
stubbornly tries to rise above our "storyminds" to help us make
representations of the "what's out there" that are much more
accurate "maps and models" (especially including accurate maps
and models of ourselves). This is what we need to concentrate on when
trying to design new educational experiences.
I don't think we are doing very well at these grand goals for education
at the moment, but we haven't forgotten them in all the technical
flurries that accompany the invention of new media to hold new ways to
look at important ideas.
Cheers,
Alan
At 10:21 PM 8/29/2007, Bill Kerr wrote:
hi paulo,
Thank you for the link to squeakcmi, it looks great, I'll spend some time
there
I'm a secondary teacher and in the past few years I've mainly been using
GameMaker - but now think Squeak / Etoys is potentially more powerful for
a variety of reasons which I have articulated a little but it needs
improvement
The Game Making approach is flavour of the month and is good for
motivation and engagement of many students (not all). Also many teachers
are engaged by the concept. I received hundreds of emails from teachers
in just one state of Australia when I initially promoted Game Maker a few
years ago. However, it is also true that many teachers oppose Game Maker
because they don't see a clear link to curriculum, some see it as
pandering to populism.
Both you and alan have mentioned this outlook, to quote from alan in this
thread: "a productively environment (Scratch is aimed at
productivity) and an educational one (EToys is more aimed in this
direction)"
I sort of agree with this approach but am also torn. Game Maker is
unashamedly populist, the focus is absolutely clear from its name. So
kids end up programming on an inferior platform - no morphic, no late
binding, Windows only, proprietary code. It would be nice if more young
people spontaneously picked up on etoys / squeak, that it could generate
that sort of appeal. The way kids view school these days to promote
something as "educational" is almost the kiss of
death!!
I would see Etoys / Squeak as more powerful than either Scratch or Game
Maker. I wouldn't see young students moving over from Etoys to Scratch as
a step upwards, it seems more like a step backwards to me.
I like the low entry, high ceiling approach. You don't need the high
ceiling for all students but in any group a small proportion of hackers
emerges, say 5%, which does need the high ceiling. One aim ought to
be to encourage that advanced group, one thing they do is drag the
general level upwards
For the students I teach (secondary) the quality of their sprites is very
important. I have seen them abandon their game making projects simply
because they couldn't find the sprites they wanted on the web.
I'm still a beginner with etoys / squeak but have done more study
recently and now understand how the morphic approach fits in to etoys
(the Player class, prototyping approach).
What I'm saying is that it would be good to have multiple pathways into
etoys, not always starting with a painting, which is a v strong default
at the moment. This would probably mean the ability from the start to
select a variety of morphs from a supplies or widgets tab, which is a
feature of eg. my squeak 3.8 full image but not a feature of the
OLPC/etoys image. You only get the paint option. I can't find the world
menu to access morphs in that way at all in the etoys image so I'm
wondering about the design decisions that have been made in this case and
the rationale behind them.
I think what you and alan will say is that the target group for the OLPC
is ages 6 to 12, one of the core_principles:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Core_principles
Fair enough but I think for this group my comments still do have some
relevance, so I'll send to the list as well
cheers,
- Bill
--
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
On 8/27/07, Paulo Drummond
<[hidden email]>
wrote:
- On Aug 26, 2007, at 10:07 PM, Bill Kerr wrote:
- On 8/25/07, carla gomez monroy
<[hidden email]>
wrote:
- However, for some people it can be quite intimidating to get a blank
screen when they click on "Make A New Project."
- I'm wondering why the first step is always to make a painting - and
then when you keep the painting you have an object and can then do more
powerful things at that point.
- Imho, the first step is to understand a little of this environment
and what was the idea behind Etoys. Depending on the age/grade, the
deepness varies. However, the teacher has a crucial role here: to
understand it first. The book "Powerful Ideas in the Classroom"
is of enormous value.
- The next expected step for a child (in this environment) is to create
an object. Children usually like to pictorially represent their world.
They need to express it as they need to situate themselves in the
surrounding society. Contextualize.
- They can also use other predefined objects like ellipses/circles,
rectangles/squares etc to complement their painting, or give a more
"realistic" display of their object-symbols. Conversely, they
may use the paint palete to "personalize" some geometrical
primitives they've place in their world.
- It has been demonstrated
(http://www.squeakcmi.org) that
kids at initial grades can use Etoys as a starting point to understand it
and to express their ideas, paving the way to more advanced
representations using the very same environment.
- A naive user might think it is just a paint program. Also some people
don't like painting or are not good at it, eg. me. Also it's hard to
paint well with a mouse.
- Children can use Etoys as a mapping tool. Actually they don't give a
penny about accuracy, just because they don't need to. Adults generally
do, even not knowing a bit of its usefulness.
- Why not have prepackaged sprites which can be loaded immediately (as
well as the painting option)? Then the user is one step closer to the
more powerful stuff. It also sends a message that it is not just a paint
program - there has to be more to it than just loading a sprite
- LogoWriter, MicroWorlds and GameMaker all have prepackaged
sprites
- Then Squeak Etoys would be another thing. When not-so-young kids need
a more sophisticated expression-driven, more in the realm of productivity
authoring tools with many of the programmatic aspects of Etoys, they
may go to another great tool: Scratch.
- I have given to the teachers in printed form
- * powerful ideas in the classroom
- I think *all* of the book, Powerful ideas in the classroom, should be
available on the web. The car tutorial on squeakland is great but it's
not enough. There are some good pdfs on squeakland too but the site is
poorly organised
- Afaik, a new squeakland website is in the works.
- and it took me ages to find them. I wrote a blog about the
frustrating but eventually successful search for etoy resources here:
-
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/04/frustrating-but-eventually-successful.html
- It would be good to have a comprehensive help manual in one place.
Pop up help is good but sometimes more detail is needed. Such a manual
would probably be used more by teachers than by students but that is
still useful.
- I could not agree more. Etoys documentation is really very scarce and
sparse. With the help of the Squeakland community worldwide, these things
are starting to show up here and there. It has been posted in
laptop.org's [Community-news] that the
Etoys dev team has started a discussion about this issue.
- paulo
_______________________________________________
Etoys mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys
_______________________________________________
Squeakland mailing list
[hidden email]
http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
Locked
