Squeakfest Uruguay 2011- Day 2

We arrived around 8:30 at the university for Squeakfest and I tested the internet connection for our online talks. Thanks to Bert and the technicians at the university, we got it connected. So Steve's and Walter's talk should be no problem.
I started a bit later than planned, at 9:30 with my presentation. It went well, but was an unusual experience for me. Because Valentina had to translate, I could only say 1-2 sentences at once. Usually, I start talking and get going. Now I had to stop all the time. But the audiencesat sat there, nodding, so they seemd to understand and agree.
Right now, Randy and Ricardo are giving a talk together. This is very nice, Ricardo is showing his Speech Bubbles, graphing tools, etc. which he developed in the GSoC-project. Randy gives the pedagogical background, with Ricardo translating. It is very nice to see how well they work together!

Squeakfest Uruguay 2011

Squeakfest in Montevideo has started today at 7:30 pm. We are in Aula Magna of the Catholic University in Montevideo, a verynice room, it actually looks like a church (and probably is). There are about 100 people in the room at this opening night. Many more are expected tomorrow, when participants from other parts of the country wil arrive.
Mariana Herrera, who organized the conference, opened it at 7:30, then MSc. Ing. Catalina Fellaggiwelcomed us at the university. I was the first to give my welcome speech, which main objective was to thank Mariana for all the work she did to make this happen. Valentina, a 17-year-old friend of Mariana translated my talk, she is really amazing! Then Enrique Verdes from the Uruguayan Linux User Group talked about the importance and possibilities of free software. Finally, Monica Baez from Plan Ceibal welcomed everyone and talked about the importance of educating the children for the technological age. All these organizations supported Squeakfest and helped tomake it happen.
I already met several people, Lino Bessonart, who will conduct the Etoys workshops tomorrow and on Saturday. Ricardo Moran, Gonzalo Zabala and the whole group of "Physical Etoys" are here. After 2 years, I met Marta Voelcker from Porto Alegre again. Right now, she is talking about "Education, Technology and Skills of the 21st Century". Fortunately, she gave me an overview of her talk before, because she is speaking Portuguese. This is very similar to Spanish, so the participants will understand it. Her talk will set the broader context for the then following focus on Etoys.
The conference is supposed to end today around 9:30 pm. Then we will go to dinner, which I have learned is the usual time people in Uruguay go out to eat. But probably I'll stay some time longer and try out the internet connection for the online talks that are planned for tomorrow.

Squeakland week

These were the last two weeks:

#1. Uruguay is now the country with the most registered Etoys users in the world. Congratulations!

#2. Tim Falconer started a discussion "A school is not a building" on several lists, even on the developer chat on Monday this was the topic. [1], [2]

#3. We tested the next environments for online collaboration on the education team meetings. This time it was Skype and GoToMeeting. With Skype, the screen sharing didn't work. This week in GoToMeeting we had an audio chat and could share our screens, so this is working well. It was fun to show each other projects and play around! [3]

#4. Carlos Rabassa did send his notes from the "Digital Citizenship" conference he attended in Montevideo, with detailed feedback for individual presentations. [4]

#5. And here is a nice website with ideas for mathematical doodling, have a look and start your next Etoys project :) [5]

Fun with pattern blogs and transformation tools

Read this great blog from Steve!
http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com

New chapter in Physics FlexBook using Etoys!

Today, I saw this article about a new chapter for a NASA physics FlexBook:


http://www.itnewsonline.com/showprnstory.php?storyid=120290

The chapter called "Modeling and Simulating NASA's Launch Abort System" has been written by Randy Caton, an active member of the Squeakland education team and board. You can find it here:


http://www.ck12.org/flexr/chapter/7847

Enjoy!

book sprint - day 1

When we made the plan, I didn't realize that the first day of our book sprint is labor day! So there was time for a thorough inventory. What do we have so far? I used the time to go over every chapter and put notes and comments in chapter talk of the particular chapter. If you login to FlossManuals, you'll know what I mean.
In order to get finished, we need to cut back on some things. Put everything in we need and leave out the nice-to-have stuff. This will of course not be deleted, but put into appendices or other files for later use.
One convention we agreed on was to base the manual on Etoys 4.0. I think this should still be the case, and we should add notes for the changes in the new Etoys 4.1 version.

Etoys reference manual

We will have a book sprint next week to hopefully finish the Etoys reference manual in time for the next release. A book sprint is usually held in some place, where the participants meet face-to-face and spend a weekend or rather a week writing a book.
Unfortunately, we cannot have the physical meeting, but we can do it online. We are using FLOSS Manuals, a web-based tool for collaborative writing. Since we started last December, we already have gained some experience. I like the tool! It will get more interesting when it comes to the design of the pages and cover. Right now, my biggest problem is to find a good structure for the book. It needs to have numbered chapters and sub-chapters to give the reader the context, but on the other hand, too much numbering (like 2.1.3.4.5) isn't help anymore. So we need to find a good balance. Fortunately, with FLOSS Manuals, the layout is made using css, so we don't need to worry about the design yet and can just write.
We have a wiki page with more information about the book sprint here:
http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Book+Sprint