Fraction A Day - Day 33+ Half a Spongebob

"Stencils allow children to explore the math behind the patterns. It is difficult for them to perceive the difference between 1/8 and 3/8 without visual aids in the beginning. Unlike charts, Etoys is interactive. Unlike paper or cardboard, it allows children to repeat any number of times without waste."

- K.K. Subramaniam (who created the Stencil code in squeak to make this possible) 

So I used Stencils (which hopefully will be in an upcoming version of Etoys) to allow kids to explore fractions.  See the example below:

Fractionator  (2011-Jul-30 1:29 EDT) by Mr. Steve <mrsteve>  Tool for kids to create and explore Fractions.

Using this Etoy, kids, can create and explore their own fractions.  Fractions can be made using the "Fractionator" (using the Stencil functionality) or by drawing lines to separate parts of the set.

The line drawing tool, allows you to create multiple segment lines by hitting the key to add a new segment (actually it simply adds a new vertice). If you hold down the a, you can get a behavior a bit like drawing (would be interesting to see how this behaves on a touch screen).

The "Fractionator" lets kids specify the number of parts.  I would like to extend this so kids create their own fractionator tools by writing scripts to set the size of the Fractionator.

The last pages have an explanation of how the the "line drawing" scripts work.  I used a magnifier and speech balloons to explain what was happening, it would be good to add step by step actions as you highlight each scripting tile.

What do you think?  How can this be used? How can it be improved?  Leave a comment.

Another great use of stencils can be found here: http://community.ofset.org/index.php/Grab_area_button This was done by Susanne Guyader, an 80+ year old artist who used Squeak/Etoys to guide art teachers in France. 

http://community.ofset.org/index.php/Grab_area_button