notes-2-16
February 16, 2005Secretary Kunal Aggarwal
Our agenda for today was:
1.) Have students demonstrate any ideas they worked on for possible projects
2.) Talk about possible project ideas and give examples of what is acceptable for Level II
Prof Pitt went over the website: http://squeakcmi.org/ - The site shows a schedule of upcoming squeak related events in the Champaign area. If anyone is interested in volunteer activities, we should speak with him asap.
Prof Pitt also asked the class if we would be interested in seeing some projects from 2nd graders. Will this help us understand how young kids think?
During the first part of class, we looked at a couple student demonstrations:
1) a project that allowed the user to combine logical gates and connectors
Prof Pitt pointed out the maker button – allows you to make multiple copies of an object
2) a demonstration that taught the definition of arrays and how they work/are used
Couple of questions/suggestions prof Pitt raised:
1) There is a decision about whether our focus should be on teaching programming versus teaching computer science in our projects. At one extreme, we are just using squeak as another ed. tech. platform to deliver science content (in this case, computer science). At the other, the users are fully engaged in the design/modeling/programming aspects, perhaps while learning a cs topic. Finally, at the third end, programming and use of squeak is in fact the focus of the lesson.
2) Keep a log of highlights while you work on the project – can help teachers and more advanced users
3) Projects should allow for the user to build on whats already there (modify rules, objects, etc) Get students to add to the project by programming
4) He encouraged us to work in teams on our project
Definition of Level II – early highschool grades 9-10
Projects should focus on level II – they should demonstrate “whats behind the magic” of a particular concept. Something that would classify as a year long science credit.
We also looked over the level 2 objectives in the uploads section and listed some possible project ideas / examples (some of which go into level 3):
1. breaking up English sentences into their grammatical parts / structure – syntax – perhaps students can modify/create rules and see the outcome.
2. Networking – data packets, topology, etc
3. Machine intelligence – expert systems (decision trees), production rules (ab->d)
4. math connections – ie pigeon hold principle, conditionals, functions, growths
5. Cryptography – ie simple substation with arrays, decoder
6. Programming ßfocus on this
7. Simulation – “what are the key processes in simulation?” ie variables, code