Revolution and Education... website proposed

Tue May 3 10:25:29 EDT 2005

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Rev is an excellent program for the educational community, though in  
some ways lacking in comparison to HyperCard in terms of simplicity for  
younger grade levels.

Another system you may wish to investigate is Squeak; special Squeak  
distributions and resources specifically designed for the educational  
market can be found at www.squeakland.org -- and Squeak is open-source,  
so it's free.

Squeak is based on the SmallTalk language, so its native programming  
may be a bit rough for most students, but the graphical environment  
sitting on top of Squeak has some fun toys which kids can use to  
produce some nice interactive animations and so forth, and there are a  
number of references and tutorials at the SqueakLand site.

On May 3, 2005, at 9:04 AM, Marielle Lange wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> (Many of you will take me for a newcommer... I have bought my license  
> long ago
> and lurked on the list... I hadn't much chance to participate simply  
> because
> the questions usually get answered before I get a chance to give my 5  
> cents).
>
> A few months ago (back in Oct 2004), there was an interesting thread on
> educational use for revolution.
>
> Several things emerged from this discussion:
>
> 1. A number of metacard or revolution stacks have been produced that  
> cannot be
> found anywhere on the web or in the "user".
> 2. There is a group of enthusiastic teachers on this list who see  
> revolution as
> having the potential to benefit their teaching.
> 3. Most of them have difficulties sharing their enthusiasm with  
> colleagues in
> their institution.
>
> This was for instance, nicely expressed by Gregory [Gregory Lypny  
> gregory.lypny
> at videotron.ca]
>
>> I have long stopped evangelizing courseware because the response I get
>> from colleagues is that they do not want to be involved with its
>> development.  The incentive to do the work is simply not there.  I  
>> make
>> my stuff freely available to my colleagues, but their enthusiasm
>> quickly peters when I explained that some work is required to get it  
>> to
>> do what they want it to do.  They'll only give it a spin if it's ready
>> to go right off the shelf.  [...]
>
>
> I have similar difficulties. I work in a department (psychology) where
> technnology causes fear and apprehension. As Judy had expressed in  
> some of her
> emails, my skills and my tendency to aim for better than what is  
> achieved by
> current practices leads to isolation rather than admiration. I can see  
> me
> loosing courage, gradually, and I feel the need for a place where I  
> can discuss
> some ideas with like-minded persons.
>
> As Gregory mentioned:
>
>> I should leave this with a positive spin:  courseware = cool,
>> untapped potential.  We just need more impressive examples of it in
>> use.
>
> However, if it is left to me alone, in between my teaching, research,  
> admin
> duties, I do not have the time to develop an impressive example of  
> Revolution's
> use for education. Not that I am not trying. To address the problem  
> identified
> by Gregory, I have a project in gestation of a GUI editor for a large  
> range of
> web-based exercises. The idea is to select exercises written in java,
> javascript, Flash, with a content that can be defined in a text file  
> attached
> to the application (see usinaquiz for examples [in French] or formator  
> demo
> [quizz section] for a working demo [enhanced for Safari and Firefox,  
> not tested
> yet with Internet Explorer Windows] and
> http://revolution.lexicall.org/eLearning/AccompanyingDocs-sm.pdf fro  
> textual
> explanations). This will be developed over next summer. (See, John  
> Mathewson
> for a similar project, for a public of school teachers, at
> http://members.maclaunch.com/richmond/default.html). I have another  
> project of
> an revolution application to access an on-line database of learning  
> objects.
> Another one of a database of images, for lecture illustration (I  
> already have
> on my hard disk a well organized archive of 100MB of pictures), where  
> lecturers
> could share and access their resources (see viperlib,
> http://viperlib.york.ac.uk/, for such a project, in the very  
> restricted context
> of visual perception).
>
> Still, alone, there is only so little I can do and it tends to take  
> quite a long
> time to get anything done as I do not have much time to spend on this  
> project. I
> have given a lot of thought to becoming a freelance instructional  
> designer, but
> I really doubt I would be able to make a living from it. So, I will  
> probably
> have to keep my revolution coding as a captivating hobby, to do  
> outside of my
> (already long) working hours.
>
> Recently, in the context of a course on "teaching in digital  
> environment" I had
> been enrolled in, this time as a student, I got to write an  
> assignment,  on
> using Wiki-web for collaborative learning (my own choosing).  
> Obviously, my
> assignment partner and I decided to write it collaboratively, on a  
> wiki-web
> medium. I really enjoyed the experience. There is so much more in 2  
> brains than
> in one... there is so much benefit of having another person's  
> perspective on the
> issue. This got me thinking... why not try something similar with the  
> nice
> people from the revolution community, this time on the use of  
> revolution for
> student-centered learning?
>
> It happens that I recently created a website, that I use in a research  
> context.
> I could easily create a revolution subdomain to host a  
> "revolution-education"
> resource center with : (1) an archive of stacks relevant to education  
> ( I can
> provide up to 200MB), (2) a forum or even better, a wiki for the  
> discussion of
> ideas and guidelines (I have recently set-up a wiki to support one of  
> my course
> and it wouldn't be difficult to set-up another one for discussion on  
> the them of
> revolution-education). I really believe that Wikis are better than  
> forums to
> organize thoughts.
>
> Who knows, this could lead to a book "Instructional Design with  
> Revolution"...
> with the word order that suggests that reaching teaching goals and the
> provision of well-thought exercises would be more important than  
> technical
> aspects (though, both could probably be reconciled with a section on  
> teaching
> (to teachers) programming with revolution).  After all, the reluctance  
> of
> colleagues to be involved in e-Learning does not come from the fact  
> that they
> do not care about the quality of their teaching. It rather has for  
> origin the
> lack of resource printed or digital resource that would let them  
> realize
> something useful without having to spend too much time acquiring new  
> skills. If
> we want to encourage our colleagues to adopt better practices, maybe  
> we need to
> be concerned about creating resources that facilitate their efforts.
>
>
> In fact, I already gave it a start:
>
>     http://revolution.lexicall.org/
>
> You will find there a list of links and information related to  
> eLearning
> (http://revolution.lexicall.org/eLearning/) as well as a listing of  
> the stacks
> I have already produced (under a share alike license), at
> http://revolution.lexicall.org/listing.php. I will add a wiki next  
> week-end.
>
> Educators and non educators alike may be interested to know that this  
> listing is
> automatically produced thanks to the provision of a text file joined  
> to the
> revolution file, with the following metadata.
>
> <resource_description>
>     <name>RSS reader</name>
>     <description>Still another exploration of widgets. Simple RSS
> reader.</description>
>      <author>Marielle Lange</author>
>      <author_contact_details>N/A</author_contact_details>
>       
> <license>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/</license>
>     <url_image>mystacks/rss_reader.gif</url_image>
>     <url_information>N/A</url_information>
>
> <url_download>http://revolution.lexicall.org/mystacks/rss_reader.rev</ 
> url_download>
> </resource_description>
>
> This means that information about the file is separate from the file  
> itself...
> It is possible to create a directory that lists stacks  hosted in the  
> archive
> as well as stacks hosted elsewhere. I can give away the php script to  
> anybody
> interested (written so to understand any metadata, organized in any  
> number of
> sections (details at: http://lexicall.org/repository/standards.php,  
> when used
> in another context).
>
>
> Let me know if you are interested in taking advantage of any of  
> this... but
> please, be patient, my day job does not involve programming with  
> revolution, I
> may take a few days (i.e., next week-end) to answer your emails.
>
> Best,
> Marielle
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> --------
> Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguistics, Lecturer in Psychology and  
> Informatics
> University of Edinburgh, UK
> Email:        M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
> Homepage:  http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mlange/
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>
>
- -----------------------------------------------------------
Frank D. Engel, Jr.  <fde101 at fjrhome.net>

$ ln -s /usr/share/kjvbible /usr/manual
$ true | cat /usr/manual | grep "John 3:16"
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten  
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have  
everlasting life.
$
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