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Arthur a écrit :
<blockquote cite="mid0I5V00IN4WJUFH@mta8.srv.hcvlny.cv.net" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Francois writes -
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I recently discovered the new "croquet project":
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.opencroquet.org">http://www.opencroquet.org</a>
But it's Squeak based :-(
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Let me ask the question generally.
What do see in croquet that is connected to education? </pre>
</blockquote>
I think there are some interesting ideas in what Alan Kay is trying to
archive in term of education:<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/essays/essays.html">http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/essays/essays.html</a><br>
<br>
What I'm the most interested in is the goal to "easily" construct and
modify simulations, through the "power" of abjects, to better
understand scientific phenomenums.<br>
What if everybody could easily elaborate simulations to better
understand an epidemic for example ?<br>
To reach maybe one day this goal I think "objects" could be very useful.<br>
<br>
A real world example:<br>
"Geomags" are littles stick magnets + metallic spheres (
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.geomags.com/construction_sets/">http://www.geomags.com/construction_sets/</a> )<br>
In Europe it has a great success with kids ... and parents and I think
it's partly due to the power of "objects" combination and sharing
experiments.<br>
There are simple objects: sticks with + and - poles and metallic
spheres (objects with properties ans methods to interact with other
object or the rest of the world).<br>
I bough a bunch of them and innocently provided them to work colleagues
and kids. <br>
It was very interesting to see them trying to *imagine* more and more
complex structures and elaborate theorys to see what will happen. They
seemed to take pleasure to confront and share their realizations and
I've quickly been forced to take them out of the work place...<br>
<br>
This very stupid little objects seemed to act as a stimuli to their
imagination.<br>
Albert Einstein, an other Guru, insisted on:<br>
"Imagination is more important that objects"<br>
Therefore I'm interested in systems/programming languages/Environnement
which can act as an "amplifier of imagination" through simulations.<br>
<br>
Why I'm so interested in simulations for science teaching ?<br>
<br>
Well put an object on the floor, take off a shoe for example, push it.
It's stops... Dam, The first law of Newton said it should continue
straight.<br>
Obviously we know we live in a world with frictions. I wanted to say is
that even the most simple laws of science are often not intuitive
either because they are intricate d with other phenomenums or because
we can't grasp them at our space/time scale (humans limitations).<br>
I worked 6 years in a Planetarium and people couldn't understand the
"the sling effect": you want to go to Venus ? Well you better go in
the opposite direction to Jupiter ... Ugh!<br>
Because humans live in a uniform gravitationnal field they have no
intuition of what motion is in central field is.<br>
To overcome this I did a small 2D Flash simulation: people can launch a
satellite in the direction they want with the speed they wanted. Then,
they can act in real time on small booster to modify the motion in the
central field. After 5 minutes of trials ans errors, they usually can
put their satellite on geostationary orbit :<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://francois.schnell.free.fr/bazar/satellite/champs_de_gravite_211203b.swf">http://francois.schnell.free.fr/bazar/satellite/champs_de_gravite_211203b.swf</a><br>
<br>
It seems it helped them to have an intuitive comprehension of the
phenomenum because they lived it.<br>
Well, Einstein Guru said "It's very difficult to understand what you
never lived" (and that's why he needed the "imagination" tool).<br>
I'm now trying to adapt the satellite simulation to vpython which gives
me 3D.<br>
I love vpython but I can't easily/visualy grab the objects like my
"geomags" and enables people to try other combinations (one big
planet there , one small one here, etc...)<br>
I believe if croquet will be succesfull it will be possible to easily
do things like that, confront it with others, share, show, etc...<br>
Because I'm "Python in love" (at least for now) I'd like to see it in
croquet too. :-)<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid0I5V00IN4WJUFH@mta8.srv.hcvlny.cv.net" type="cite">
<pre wrap=""><big><big></big></big>What is the
importance within an educational setting of collaboration in virtual 3d
space? Compared, for example, to collaboration-in-the-flesh
</pre>
</blockquote>
A lot of shy kids in schools reveals them selfs the most active and
leaders in virtual environnremrent or through ICT tools (forums,
etc...).<br>
I think that's interesting it gives them a chance too.<br>
An other weak point I saw with project based learning is that at the
scale of a classroom 2 or 3 projects won't appeal to all your students.<br>
If your classroom has million of students it's probably easier to find
someone which is interested in the same kind of projects as you.<br>
For example if this mailing list was limited to the size of my town
Strasbourg (500 000 inhabitants) I would probably be alone.<br>
Too bad I need you to confront point of views and learn new things.<br>
A lot of you like and understand the interest of open source code (I
do).<br>
Maybe we should open the windows of our schools.<br>
<br>
francois<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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François Schnell - Strasbourg - France
francois.schnell_At_free.fr
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://francois.schnell.free.fr">http://francois.schnell.free.fr</a>
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La liberté ! c'est sur ce principe que repose la démocratie alors pourquoi pas l'informatique ?
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