software team meeting, 22-june-2009
Attending: Milan Zimmerman, Scott Wallace, Yoshiki Ohshima, Takashi Yamamiya, Ted Kaehler
Today's talk was largely about our priorities for the summer release, given that we have four weeks left before Squeakfest Brasil. The focus on this release will be to address little stumbling blocks that trip up new users.
We agreed that the summer release would include all of the approved changes since January, along with the following:
- hideable toolbar for pre-XO content
- "standard mode" by default (1200x900 coordinate space, scaled to 800x600 by default on desktops & browser)
- better "introduction to etoys" stuff to intrigue people after the first run
- sharing & loading projects to central server, similar to scratch
Another point that was addressed last week is:
- easy Etoys updates from the server, with periodic reminders
We really need more developers to help us out, both now and in the future. If you have a little extra time to help the children of the world, click "contact" on squeakland.org.
education team meeting June, 18
Randy, Marta, Tim, Rita
Tim told us about the pilot project that has started in Haiti on monday, June 8. There are not just kids, but also teachers attending the Etoys workshops, who can then teach other teachers. Tim has been contacted by OLPC Philippines, they will use Etoys there.
For the Etoys courseware a very important thing is to get a template, so that we can ask others to help developing it. The outline for the basic unit is 1. sketches
2. halos
3. viewers
4. scripts
5. books
6. variables
7. animation
8. supplies
9. tests
10. exploring
Randy has started with units about physical motion, they are based on a story, because that's a good way for children to learn things. He did send the projects to the education team to get feedback. On the outline for the lessons we say that each lessons should be 1 hour long, but that's not easy to do, some topics are more complicated than others. But than you don't have to spend all the time on the computer, with some topics we could provide ideas for classroom discussions etc. So for shorter lessons there is space for related things.
Marta said she has volunteers who could help us with the course material once we have the template done. They can help with translations, too.
Randy mentionend the "big ideas" behind the different sciences covered in school, that we should have in mind when developing course material:
physical science - model and scale
life science - system
earth science - cycle
Tim asked Marta if the name "Etoys To Go" for Etoys on a flash drive would be ok in Brazil, Marta said it is.
Then he told us, that usb drives are noticeably cheaper with less memory, so maybe we should have "Etoys To Go for Windows", "Etoys To Go for Linux" etc. Most people would know which OS they would need. We will see how much memory the Etoys To Go will actually need.
Tim suggested to DVDs with screencasts of the course material for Squeakfest.
Marta told us about a problem of Etoys with a brazilian linux version, it isn't working. She will provide a link for the software team, that they can have a look at it. The government is providing more laptops to schools and teachers from that schools are coming to Squeakfest and of course would like to use Etoys.
Tim brought up the idea of two new mailing lists: one for teacher and one for technical things. The reason to split would be not to bore teachers with technical details. Rita said, that developers often discuss topics relevant for teachers, additional features or changes will affect their work. Since there is not that much traffic on the squeakland list, there is no urgent need to split soon. The main list should be education-focused and hopefully developers will not discuss deep-down technical details there, that should be on a separate list. But generally issues should be talked about on the squeakland list, hopefully in a way that doesn't scares the teachers away.
Randy was impressed by the Etoys video with the MCU interface that has been sent today on the list. He proposed to have a lesson using hardware in the course ware.
education team meeting June, 18
Randy, Marta, Tim, Rita
Tim told us about the pilot project that has started in Haiti on monday, June 8. There are not just kids, but also teachers attending the Etoys workshops, who can then teach other teachers. Tim has been contacted by OLPC Philippines, they will use Etoys there.
For the Etoys courseware a very important thing is to get a template, so that we can ask others to help developing it. The outline for the basic unit is 1. sketches
2. halos
3. viewers
4. scripts
5. books
6. variables
7. animation
8. supplies
9. tests
10. exploring
Randy has started with units about physical motion, they are based on a story, because that's a good way for children to learn things. He did send the projects to the education team to get feedback. On the outline for the lessons we say that each lessons should be 1 hour long, but that's not easy to do, some topics are more complicated than others. But than you don't have to spend all the time on the computer, with some topics we could provide ideas for classroom discussions etc. So for shorter lessons there is space for related things.
Marta said she has volunteers who could help us with the course material once we have the template done. They can help with translations, too.
Randy mentionend the "big ideas" behind the different sciences covered in school, that we should have in mind when developing course material:
physical science - model and scale
life science - system
earth science - cycle
Tim asked Marta if the name "Etoys To Go" for Etoys on a flash drive would be ok in Brazil, Marta said it is.
Then he told us, that usb drives are noticeably cheaper with less memory, so maybe we should have "Etoys To Go for Windows", "Etoys To Go for Linux" etc. Most people would know which OS they would need. We will see how much memory the Etoys To Go will actually need.
Tim suggested to DVDs with screencasts of the course material for Squeakfest.
Marta told us about a problem of Etoys with a brazilian linux version, it isn't working. She will provide a link for the software team, that they can have a look at it. The government is providing more laptops to schools and teachers from that schools are coming to Squeakfest and of course would like to use Etoys.
Tim brought up the idea of two new mailing lists: one for teacher and one for technical things. The reason to split would be not to bore teachers with technical details. Rita said, that developers often discuss topics relevant for teachers, additional features or changes will affect their work. Since there is not that much traffic on the squeakland list, there is no urgent need to split soon. The main list should be education-focused and hopefully developers will not discuss deep-down technical details there, that should be on a separate list. But generally issues should be talked about on the squeakland list, hopefully in a way that doesn't scares the teachers away.
Randy was impressed by the Etoys video with the MCU interface that has been sent today on the list. He proposed to have a lesson using hardware in the course ware.
education meeting June 4
participants: Kathleen, Randy, Rita, Bruno Sperb
Marta could not attend, she asked us to start thinking about our presentations/workshops for Squeakfest Brazil. We came up with some ideas, which we will send to Marta, and we will ask her about her expectations. Bruno told us, that most of the attendees will be new to Etoys, so a lot of introductory level hands-on workshops will be useful.
Rita informed about the "demon castle part II and III", which Takashi has already build. Part II is using the event recorder and is not working on any other computer than a XO. But part II is nice and we would like to use it. We discussed screen resolution and event recorder, Randy pointed out, that the event recorder may not be used that much in the future. Rita communicated the discussions from the software team meeting regarding these problems. One decision was made: when authoring a project, the option "Scale To Fit" should be enabled. Projects will be perfect in XOs and scaled on PCs. Scaling might be a problem with low vertical screens like netbooks, because the objects could become very small. Kathleen mentioned a problem, when authoring with this option, sometimes projects will later not displayed correct. Therefore the "Scale To Fit" - option has to be enabled, too. So a note should be on the website to enable this option with some projects.
Randy suggested to invite Kim to our next educators meeting, when we go on with planning Squeakfest L.A., Rita will invite her.
Bruno is very interested in the new Etoys curriculum, he will use it with a class before Squeakfest. He also is interested in setting up a project server, where teachers and kids can load up projects. Rita will introduce him to Michael Rüger for that.