En-V-toys Children - level 1 (2nd part)
From OFSET Wiki
Contents |
[edit] Some additional bricks: Bricks of modifications
The tools usable by young people are not limited to only bricks of displacement. One can consider, them to confront, gradually, when they start to have the mechanisms of attribution, with other bricks which will cause, directly, other types of actions : to trace a feature, to change the color, to appear to disappear, modify the form, to produce a sound.
If one examines the field D `action of these bricks, one realizes that they subject the objects to treatments which modify their way of being or their behavior:
- A brick to leave a trace during the displacement of an object.
- a brick to change the thickness of the feature and its color. While pressing on the green arrows one increases or decreases the thickness of the feature. While supporting on the square one changes his color.
- a brick to change the color of certain objects.
The action of this brick will be exerted only on the geometrical forms which one finds in the store of the accessories (ellipse, square, star etc) and not on the objects manufactured on space Dessin .
- a brick to reveal or to disappear an object.
It is important to allot at the same time 2 bricks to the object which they reveal or to disappear, if not if one activates brick of disappearance without to have allotted brick of reappearance, the object disappears from the screen without hope of recovery.
- A brick to modify the shape of an object while making him take L `appearance of another object.
- A special brick, announced by a microphone, proposes a series of preregistered sounds pertaining to the library of the sounds squeak. One can choose them while making ravel a list of onomatopoeias announced by a linguistic identifier of the style of those which one finds in the comic strips (splatsh, click, croah, etc) associated a sound level, which facilitates the choice.
These sounds belong to 2 categories:
- that which identifies and returns to a precise transmitter (coyotte, craoah the frog, engine, chirp)
- that which testifies to an entry in contact of the element indicated in the designator with another thing (another object, the edge of screen etc). These sounds are thus usable in situations of displacements and meetings.
In the first case, the sound returns to the object and is produced one or more time during the activation of brick.
In the second case, one finds in the drawer one 2nd brick-sound equipped with 2 désignateurs (gray squares) who return, on the left, with the object in displacement and, on the right with the object met. The blue bottom of brick indicates that it is in latent activity and the sound that at the time of the meeting will not produce.
This meeting takes place if a brick of displacement is used or if the 2 objects are put in contact by manually moving them on the screen. The sound stops as soon as they are separate.
NB . A point of exclamation was forgotten on blue brick, to remove it if not the brick sounds permanently.
All these operations require a succession of handling which it is necessary to include/understand, retain, and activate in the logic of their succession. Carried out correctly, they testify, already, in addition to the coordination of the gestures, of an effort of concentration and memory. It is a prime objective to be reached, essential, but which does not go beyond the trainings.
[edit] Bricks with the service of the NARRATIVE one
One can then put the question of the framework in which one will use them.
For the Master , An answer can be found while referring to its knowledge of the programming by script of Etoys, and to the use of the structures of tests.
They introduce, in the programming of object, rupture . They are a means of stopping the action of a script to the profit of an other action, or of modifying the state of the object.
The simplest step is that of the meeting.
Is an object as the ellipse which one moves thanks to script `ellipse advances of…'. This object will come into contact with another object or the edge of the screen. It is possible to postulate several possible changes using a TEST which one will introduce inside script .
- It is enough for that to take, with the mouse, the ochre rectangle which is in top and on the right script, and to move it so that it is placed in a beach which opens to this end.
The first line of the test (here ellipse intersection with… star) raises a question which one finds in the CATEGORY `TEST' of the visualisor of the ellipse . and to which one can bring several types of answers that one will choose in the various categories of proposals of the visualisor of the objects which will meet:
- Various , for a certain number of actions (mask, shows etc)
- Colors and edges
- traces of the pencils
whose few bricks at our disposal are the V-toys equivalents (to disappear/reappear, change color, to trace a feature etc).
For the children of level nursery school, one cannot confront them with these too complicated scripts, but one can place them in situation of NARRATION, and to make them DESCRIBE VERBALEMNT which resulted imaginary can cause the meeting of something which they invented with another thing that they choose according to the bricks which are at their disposal and of the universe which is familiar for them .
It will then be necessary for them to build the scene and to select the brick which will come to support their speech.
This `told history' will be a first step towards the logical reasoning which will lead, much later, with the drafting of conditional script.
These `stories' could be very simple and not to even be logical whole, which counts, it is the reasoning which will involve the choice of the suitable elements:
- the child plays hide-and-seek in the house: brick “one seesâ€, 'one does not see '.
- I plunged my pretty yellow part in the water of the magic fountain, it became color of the pink: brick 'to change the color '
- History of frog: brick 'to change the form '
The stories are told by moving the objects on the screen with the mouse and by preparing and activating suitable bricks.
ATTENTION : the objects permutate only when they are drawn on Dessin space. When they are outgoing from SUPPLIES (ellipse, rectangle, star, etc.) they don't permutate
- This choice dictated by imagination or imagination could even be logical or the fruit of a knowledge or an observation, which can make it possible the meeting on computer to be the prolongation of something that one saw or learned elsewhere.
The seed in a pot which becomes a plant like that that one sowed at the bottom of the class ..... And then, then, freedom can take again its rights: “as I want! â€
[edit] At which moment the PROJECT?
It will come one moment when the child will know rather well the few bricks which are placed at its disposal and which he will be able to operate. Is it ready to use its knowledge to serve a personal project?
The experiment is to be perhaps tried very early, following a exercise of training, even if the result is confused, each attempt being an occasion to measure a progression in the research and the coherence of the ideas.
At smallest, a muddle accompanied by a coherent speech can already be regarded as a first victory.
[edit] Space DRAWING
It is the second pillar of the system Squeak Etoys. It was question, on several occasions to use it to manufacture objects which one will move on the surface of the screen. It is thus a help with the programming. But one cannot occult the fact that it is also a means of expression to whole share which has all the virtues of the plastic activity.
It is thus complementary to meetings of data-processing piloting which require them a great concentration It brings one moment of freedom and creativity to the children who are there as at ease as with pencils, paintings and brushes. There is even a true delight to succeed of the first blow of the long and delicate operations like filling of surfaces of color (and one can change several times to know which one prefers), or strew the sky with instantaneously drawn stars.
For young people, it can even be the element first , the incursion towards the first concepts of programming with simplified orders being able to be approached incidentally, in prolongation of a small realization.
“I drew a small mouse! â€
“and if one were going to make it run everywhere! â€
An abundant documentation is at the disposal of the organizer beginner to enable him to familiarize itself with the multiple aspects of the tool drawing and will help it to choose the ways which it intends to follow with the children. It will be simply pointed out here some essential additional operations to answer requirements which accompany work with graphic space by Squeak .
[edit] Passages from one screen to another
It was already seen that to pass on space drawing, there were 2 possibilities:
- or one wants to create a mobile object and one uses the brush which is in the yellow bar of the functions, on the principal screen to reach the space of creation. All that will be manufactured on space drawing will return on the World with the handle FINISHED and will be removable and programmable.
- or one wants to create a fixed decoration, nonprogrammable which will be placed behind the objects and one will click on the bottom of the screen by holding key ALT of the keyboard inserted. A series of handles appearing on the circumference of the screen, one will choose the gray handle which gives access to the screen drawing.
- one can also want to modify an object already created in which case one returns on the screen drawing while revealing the Halation of the object (to press at the same time on the object and key ALT of the keyboard to have the halation. One can then use his gray handle).
The objects of the store of the accessories do not have a gray handle in their Halation and cannot thus change screen.
But if, for a reason or another one wishes to take along one of these objects to make a turn on the screen drawing, it will be necessary to draw on the screen one from the tools contained in the store from the accessories which is called `to seize a piece of screen' . It makes it possible to frame a reason in a rectangle, thus creating a transferable object.
This portion of screen, which one can regard as a copy or a photograph and which contains the element that one wants to take along on space drawing, has, in its halation, the gray handle necessary to the transfer. On the screen drawing it is possible to make several things:
- to eliminate the basic portion which frames the object to restore it in its preceding state,
- to add modifications to the brush on the reason if L `one wishes it, before regaining the principal screen.
Attention: the elimination of the bottom of screen around an element transferred on the screen drawing will be done correctly only with documents extracted the principal screen when it is in activity. If it is about a safeguarded and recovered document, the elimination of a preregistered bottom is done very badly and by leaving screens.
[edit] Operations of SAFEGUARD
One can wish to preserve a work which was made on the principal screen to find it later and continue to work there or to preserve an image of it to communicate it outside for example. These 2 options are treated differently:
- in the first case - it is all the environment which it is necessary to record in the state BY GIVING HIM a NAME and by using the procedures of safeguard of the screen to preserve it in the form of PROJECT.
The key `TO PUBLISH `orange bar of the functions, supported lengthily, will give all information necessary to this operation, and on the other hand, the key `TO SEEK' supported in the same way, will make it possible to find in the state the screen and work previously carried out.
- in the 2nd case, it is a SEIZURE Of SCREEN which must be made and recorded in the form of an image to which one gives a name and which one chooses to record in one of the formats suggested (bmp, GIF, or JPEG) . This operation is carried out starting from the RED MENU of the halation of the seizure of screen, by choosing the option EXPORT. The recall is made starting from the key SEEK orange bar of the functions and option TO FIND it UNSPECIFIED a FILE (chronological order).
In the case of the image to be recorded, if its size proves too important, one can reduce the format of it by making it forward by space drawing where the displacement of a handle, located on the line, makes it possible to reduce the total format without distortions of it.
- Below the image of the screen of Vincent, which one reduced the format to build a document JPEG.
In this exercise, one showed in Vincent how to use the function `to seize part of the screen with a polygon ` (which one finds in small Monde and function NEW MORPH) to surround its bird of a closed ring which makes it possible to obtain a double mobile from it. It will be able to make it move with 2 bricks of displacement.
[edit] Mini-programming with several bricks and DISPLACEMENT Uninterrupted
This first shutter of the V-toys bricks is addressed to children who are not yet, or are familiarized little with the handling of a computer. There is very to learn from the fundamental gestures and to discover tools of the software much. The evolutions which require sometimes much repetitivity, are varied and depend on the age. For those which arrive at that of the trainings of the reading and the writing, perhaps will be able one to try to explain the construction of the repetitive movement to them, and to make them use this particular tool which is called `the container' , and which makes it possible to build brick regroupings which, activated, will turn uninterrupted under the dependence D `clock of starting and stop.
But that will appear in the menu of the next chapter on level 2 of V-toys. …….
Illustrations with the participation of Vincent .
A project playing with some of bricks of modifications (to change color, to be hidden - to reappear)
the project V-toysJeunesEnfants of Level 1 (brought up to date):
