squeakland Blog from August, 2010

On our meeting today we talked about some feedback I go from the OLPC people using Etoys in Rwanda. I hope we can discuss the issues on the Squeakland mailing list within some weeks, when the brazilian volunteers are back home. They are mostly using books and animation, we will look for example projects or other materials we can send to them.

We will have the next and hopefully final book sprint week starting on September, 6th! There already is a lot of content in the manual, but it needs to be reviewed and finished. Here you can see what we already have:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Etoys/WebHome

Cherry will attend the Grace Hopper conference at the end of September and it would be great to have some flyer or other materials to take. We will prepare something. Let us know if you have any ideas.

Cherry also did a great job organizing the testing of the new Etoys version! She not only applied for some XO 1.5 laptops for several members of our team, she also there also is a test plan. Look here for more information and if you want help testing:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SqueaklandTesters

If you scroll down, you will find a link to a test plan.

Randy told us about an old website where kids could chat using pictures. It sounds like a great idea for Etoys! Does anyone know where to get icons that are internationally understandable? We will talk about this also in our next meeting. Find the chat protocol below.

[26.08.10 18:35:59] Rita Freudenberg: hi

[26.08.10 18:36:08] Beth Santos: yes

[26.08.10 18:36:23] Randall Caton: hi

[26.08.10 18:36:28] Cherry Withers: got it

[26.08.10 18:39:22] Rita Freudenberg: in Rwanda they do books and animations

[26.08.10 18:42:00] Avigail Snir: now I am in

[26.08.10 18:43:27] Beth Santos: i definitely think it's a teaching issue-- not a squeak issue that we should change

[26.08.10 18:44:42] Rita Freudenberg: embedding in a book or in a page could be harder

[26.08.10 18:47:26] Rita Freudenberg: in Sao Tome they had the problem that they wanted to put scripts in a book and it didn't embed

[26.08.10 18:50:26] Randall Caton: I believe the power of Etoys is to learn to think and the embedding if scripts in a book does not need to be changed.

[26.08.10 18:51:30] Rita Freudenberg: book sprint week Septemer 6th

[26.08.10 18:53:39] Rita Freudenberg: material for Cherry for Grace Hopper conference

[26.08.10 18:54:22] Rita Freudenberg: need a one page flyer, maybe Squeakfest flyer as a base?

[26.08.10 18:55:05] Cherry Withers: I'll play around with it and run it by you

[26.08.10 18:58:05] Cherry Withers: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SqueaklandTesters

[26.08.10 18:58:24] Avigail Snir: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t8p4jihMl59ypKuPWvi8fog&output=html

[26.08.10 19:07:25] Rita Freudenberg: Randy reports about sharing with Etoys

[26.08.10 19:07:48] Rita Freudenberg: would like to be able to share projects, not just objects

[26.08.10 19:08:32] Rita Freudenberg: sharing a playfield with things in it is working

[26.08.10 19:10:15] Rita Freudenberg: add info about sharing to the reference manual

[26.08.10 19:10:49] Beth Santos: yeah, i never knew you could share etoys at all

[26.08.10 19:12:28] Beth Santos: i'm not sure 1.0 and 1.5 can share...?

[26.08.10 19:12:39] Cherry Withers: I can try that I have both

[26.08.10 19:12:42] Rita Freudenberg: can kids on the XO work on the same Etoys project at the same time? would be great.

[26.08.10 19:13:00] Rita Freudenberg: promote Etoys sharing on the XO

[26.08.10 19:13:14] Beth Santos: http://liliputing.com/2010/06/olpc-xo-1-5-laptops-dont-support-mesh-networking.html

[26.08.10 19:13:43] Cherry Withers: ah..that's unfortunate

[26.08.10 19:13:54] Beth Santos: i don't know how trustworthy that is but that's what i googled

[26.08.10 19:15:51] Rita Freudenberg: find out abut the sharing on the new XO 1.5

[26.08.10 19:17:30] Cherry Withers: can you "make friend" the other XO randy?

[26.08.10 19:18:18] Rita Freudenberg: both laptops need to use th same access point, then also 1.5 and 1.0 can share

[26.08.10 19:19:33] Cherry Withers: Ah that document is correct...there's no "mesh" on 1.5

[26.08.10 19:19:38] Beth Santos: i just sent an email to community support volunteers at OLPC (also adam holt, sugar labsm etc)

[26.08.10 19:19:45] Cherry Withers: you can't see mesh connection on the neighborhood

[26.08.10 19:21:47] Rita Freudenberg: Randy suggests to Aviagil to use the new build to get Etoys run stable on the XO 1.5

[26.08.10 19:22:36] Cherry Withers: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.2

[26.08.10 19:23:33] Cherry Withers: also on our wiki page :-) Will try to keep up with the updates and instructions as much as I can .

[26.08.10 19:23:45] Rita Freudenberg: great, Cherry!

[26.08.10 19:25:28] Beth Santos: luke faraone at olpc responded to my inquiry--> If they are running the same version of Sugar, and the same version of

the activity in question, then yes. Sugar does not care what the

underlying hardware is, people have used normal desktop PCs loaded with

Sugar to communicate with XOs successfully before.

If the versions are not the same, all bets are off. It may still work,

but YMMV.

[26.08.10 19:26:02] Rita Freudenberg: thanks, Beth!

[26.08.10 19:26:07] Cherry Withers: Ah great! Thanks Beth. Let's see how Etoys shares.

[26.08.10 19:26:38] Beth Santos: i don't have two 1.5s but i have a 1.5 and a 1.0 yes :)

[26.08.10 19:26:42] Rita Freudenberg: Randy reports problems with languages other than English

[26.08.10 19:26:43] Beth Santos: happy to help any way i can!!

[26.08.10 19:29:36] Rita Freudenberg: Randy has an idea

[26.08.10 19:30:38] Rita Freudenberg: there was a website competition with picture chat in Japan

[26.08.10 19:31:56] Rita Freudenberg: provide icons for the chat

[26.08.10 19:32:08] Rita Freudenberg: maybe also let kids draw themselfes

[26.08.10 19:36:31] Rita Freudenberg: http://www.mext.go.jp/programin/

[26.08.10 19:37:06] Cherry Withers: They already have pieces in Sugar that would work. They can potentially integrate it in the Chat activity. But that would be a great activity. Nintendo has PictoChat

[26.08.10 19:37:12] Rita Freudenberg: http://www.mext.go.jp/programin/app/index.html?edit_num=1

[26.08.10 19:40:36] Rita Freudenberg: we should find a set of icons, or we would need designers or maybe students?

[26.08.10 19:42:53] Cherry Withers: Sharing between XO 1.0 and XO 1.5 works using the Write activity.

[26.08.10 19:43:03] Cherry Withers: Testing it on Etoys now.

[26.08.10 19:57:10] Cherry Withers: Ah...you can share objects in Etoys just by dropping them into your buddy's icon. Great! But like Randy mentioned...no sharing of projects.

squeakland Blog from August, 2010

Blog Posts: August 2010