Beetleblocks, finally a reason to get a 3D printer

Somehow I came across Beetleblocks, which is a "graphical blocks-based programming environment for 3D design and fabrication. Use code to control a beetle that can place 3D shapes and extrude its path as a tube. Then make a 3D print!"

It makes building 3D designs fun and "not so hard"

I really liked Jacklyn + Patrick's idea for creating your own modular jigsaw puzzle like pieces.  This picture is my first attempt. Plus some other attempts. 

Get The Facts => Analyze the Facts => Act!

I had a sign on my door at work:

• Get the Facts
• Analyze the Facts
• Act!

To which some observant person put on a sticky not the sign and changed it to:

• Get the Facts
• Analyze the Facts Ignore the facts
• Act!

So I have decided to record a couple of by-products I have observed:

• Get the Facts
• Analyze the Facts Select only those facts that agree with what you want to hear
• Act!

• Get the Facts Select only those facts that will support what you want to hear
• Analyze the Facts
• Act!

• Get the Facts
• Analyze the Facts
• Act!

• Get the Facts Get some facts that are easily accessible
• Analyze the Facts
• Act!

• Get the Facts
• Analyze the Facts
• Act! Do what you were going to do anyway

Day 14-15 - 30 Day Learning Challenge

Sometimes the best thing to learn is that 

I am doing something stupid.

So I spend the Thursday and Friday in a elasticsearch class.  I find elasticsearch very useful and Lucene very cool.  But really what I found most useful was the three really stupid things I had been doing with elasticsearch.

I have one colleague I have worked with who is very bright and often makes a comment along the lines of "we all think we are the smartest person in the room."   And at times I feel this is his goal, to be the smartest person in the room (one he often succeeds at when discussing certain technical topics).

But my goal has always been to be the dumbest person in the room.  Why?  Because then I can learn from so many people and they can compensate for my weaknesses (which are many).

One of the cultural issues I feel hold people back from learning is being afraid to look bad or to make mistakes.  The question I have is how can we install in our students/co-workers/etc a sense that its okay not to know?  In fact its good to admit ignorance, then you can get past that and try and learn something.

Cheers,
Stephen

Day 13 - 30 Day Learning Challenge - Debugging/Simulations Play

Not much to show today.  I spent a good deal of time working on some dice simulations/modeling. My goal was to think about how students might write a dice simulation in various languages and how one could facilitate understanding/learning about the underlying principles involved in dice simulation along with the concepts and ideas that can be explored in this process.

I looked at dice simulations in Scratch, TurtleArt and Python.  I also explored ways I could create dice simulations in Etoys.  As I mentioned in an earlier post I find "step by step" execution useful for not only teaching, but also for myself when the code doesn't do what I think it should.

I also played with various ways to write the simulation.  Partly to think about how kids might do this. Side note - I found it really hard to overcome my pre-existing knowledge as I instantly went to more "advanced" ways of implementing simulations, rather than ways a novice might start out. I also tried various approaches to think about how to create some "good examples" that students can learn from.

These examples ideally would also show the evolution of my thought and try and convey that we don't start out with a thing of beauty but how refactoring and rethinking the problem can help improve your results (although admittedly I have on occasion wound up making things worse by over complicating ;)

Cheers,
Stephen

Post Script - Another way to think about simulations check this Scratch Studio - "Just like real life!" a more "real world" way kids think about simulations/modeling.

Day 12 (or so) - 30 Day Learning Challenge

How to Visualize Program Execution/Step Debugging

So this post was trigger by looking at TurtleJS by Walter Bender.  In playing with TurtleJS (which by the way has a rather nice interface design to support both mouse, touch, large screen and iphone size screens) I made a comment that

... would also be nice to have a "Step" button/icon.  Where kids could step through the scripts.  I often do this when kids don't understand a bug in there code.  Allowing them to step through one tile at a time (and ideally having them narrate what they think should be happening) often helps them debug without me really doing anything other than getting them to slow down and observe what each tile actually does.

So I started to think about different ways this could be implemented in TurtleJS and I prototyped some in Etoys.   Below is the current visualization:

What is hard to see in this image is that the block is highlighted in both scripts.  Here not only is the executing block "highlighted" (actually the block color is lightened to indicate executing), but also the blocks (as the execution is within each repeat) and the block which is waiting for "return" from .

So in effect this implementation is not only showing the "executing" block, but also the "call stack".  I wonder whether showing both the executing block and the "call stack" is a bit much visual/cognitive overload.

The following is my first attempt at prototyping a different visualization:

What I was trying to do here is make it more visually apparent which block is executing and what "script/block" called .   One thing I felt was missing was showing that we were in the loops so I tried the following:

I think I would have preffered to make the "repeat lines" dashes here and not really cray about the "calling arrow" from as I think it is a big.  The whole thing is also a bit too busy as the eye should be drawn to the action and the "main character" (suggested reading -

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation: Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas

great book on design).

So here is my last prototype for the day:

The point is to "gray out" the uniteresting parts to help the user's eye focus on the main action (watch some Disney animation and look at the "lighting").  I wound up "greying out" the "non executing" blocks and using a slighlty less grey mask for the blocks.  I would probably also do a light grey for the .


Last few notes:
1) I think it would be nice if the executing block's grew larger as they executed.  But the particular block library Walter is using apparently messes up layout when you do this.
2) The actions on stepping happen to fast. Ideally when stepping and there is a concrete execution of a block (ie: forward or turn vs. an arithemetic function) it might be good if the concrete action was slowed down so that the forward 100 did took a 1 sec instead of "instantly" (something similar to the way the scratch Glide tile works). Of course if you implemented a glide, that might need to glide slower and could mess up certain debugging cases that rely on timing.  Even if you didn't implement a glide block, someone could conceivably implement their own glide action.

The main problems I am trying to solve are:
1) Getting the students to slow down their thinking
2) Getting the students to pay attention to what they actually told the computer to do vs what they intended to/think they told the computer to do.
3) Providing a more concrete representation of code execution
4) Getting the kids to think about what's going on inside the computer (more on this when I describe how the online Python tutor tries to solve the step debugging problem).

Cheers,
Stephen

Day ~11 - 30 Day Learning Challenge

Too busy with work, which takes a large cognitive load, so at the end of the day I need diffusion/space out time.  Focused thinking after a day of focused thinking is hard.

I did find time while waiting at the bank to re-watch some AngularJS videos and try and apply some of the knowledge.  Below is my updated answer to #5:

5) Applying knowledge of research findings or learning techniques to help me overcome my challenges.

1. Spaced Learning - Well I finally started trying this by re-watching the AngularJS videos and thinking about why they do certain things and what problems they are trying to solve, etc.
2. Pomodoro Technique - Well total failure in applying this.  But this week I will do it.
3. Don't just glance at it and think you know - I am recongizing this problem and admitting it to myself.  Part of the reason I am re-watching the AngularJS videos is to not only for spaced learning, but also to try and get a deeper understanding.
4. Use different problem solving techniques - Well the lessons did go through various ways to produce the same HTML and behaviors, so I could see the advantages of directives and controllers.  Yet, it would be better to compare to completely different ways to solve similar problems.
5. Powers of 10 thinking - I just do this naturally, but again too much time in the clouds trying to generalize and not enough going down deep.

Day 10 - 30 Day Learning Challenge

As part of my Learning How to Learn course I have an assignment due by the 15th.  It is to writ a "Reflective Essay about a Learning Challenge"  Below is a draft:

1) Current learning career and trajectory. 

I am a Director of Customer Support and Operations at a Telecommunications company and also work on "learning software" for OLPC.   I have taken on a 30 Day learning challenge and part of that is to learn about AngularJS for a project at work and also to experiment with implementing something similar to Dan Ingals Lively Web demonstrations using connectors.  I have always been fascinated with how people learn and how you can create learning experiences that facilitate learning.

2) The learning aim that is of importance to me. 

I enjoy programming and do not have much opportunity to do it.  I manage some folks who write code and occasionally write some myself, so I want to be able to ask good questions and challenge my team and myself to think more deeply about the problems they are solving and how they are solving them using AngularJS.  Also as part of my volunteer work with schools I want to explore how to create better learning software and experiences.

3) Biggest mental challenges in achieving your learning aim.  

Managing my time, given a full time job, four home schooled kids and volunteer work.  The biggest mental challenge is having the discipline to spend at least an hour a day working on learning.  The other challenge getting a deep into understanding AngularJS model of writing code.  I am a quick study and can get going quickly, but need to be more persistent in understanding at a deeper level why things work. 

4) Outline existing research or learning techniques that are relevant to your challenges.

1.         Carpenter, S. K., Cepeda, N. J., Rohrer, D., Kang, S. H. K., & Pashler, H. (2012). Using spacing to enhance diverse forms of learning: Review of recent research and implications for instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3), 369-378. This paper tells us that it is very important to space your learning out over several days.
2.         Procrastination--the Pomodoro technique.  This technique involves setting a timer for 25 minutes and focusing only on the topic at hand without being distracted.
3.         Merely glancing at a problem's solution and thinking you know how to do it —as per the “10 Rules of Learning” page.  Being a quick study I often fool myself.
4.        Alternate different problem-solving techniques during your practice - as per the "10 Rules of Learning” page. This I think will help me learn deeper. "You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way" - Marvin Minsky
5.        The following is a tip from Dr. Robert Bilder on how to learn effectively: Uses the "Powers of 10" way of thinking about a problem.  Where you "zoom out and then zoom back in" when thinking about a problem.  Below is the video that inspired the idea.

5) Applying knowledge of research findings or learning techniques to help me overcome my challenges.

1. Spaced Learning - 
2. Pomodoro Technique - 
3. Don't just glance at it and think you know - 
4. Use different problem solving techniques - 
5. Powers of 10 thinking - 

Regarding AngularJS (remember I was learning Angular ;)  I did a code review today.  One way to learn is to study great literature.  I don't know that what this person wrote was great, but it is good.

Cheers,
Stephen

Days 8-9 - 30 Day Learning Challenge

Well figuring this is a Learning Challenge I signed up for the Coursera course: Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects.  Unfortunately I just got back late this afternoon and the first quiz was due this week.  Fortunately I was able to watch all the videos and pass the quiz.  That said I violated one of the principles which is "not to cram" but to do spaced repetitions.  So I will try and go back over the week and review what they taught.

I also completed CodeSchool's Discover Dev Tools course during the train ride from Florida to Lorton VA.  I took this as I figured having tools to help me debug and analyze my Javascript/HTML/CSS would be useful for the Angular work.  Couple of learning design issues I noticed.  While the course wasn't that old, some of the Chrome Dev Tools had changed so the video and challenges did not always match the current version.  That is part of the challenge of designing learning materials for something that is evolving and doesn't maintain backward compatibility.   You need to continuously update your learning materials.  That is one thing I appreciate about Etoys and the community of developers.  There strong commitment to ensuring things don't break.   I once got a fraction project from Alan that was 10+ years old and it still ran on a new machine in the latest version of Etoys (which wasn't even called Etoys at the time).

Cheers,
Stephen

Day 7 - 30 Day Learning Challenge

Completed Shaping up with AngularJS course.
Forcing myself to do this everyday has been a challenge, mostly because we are on vacation.  I may skip a day or two as we are now in Orlando.

Cheers,
Stephen

Day 6 - 30 Day Learning Challeng

Continuing with AngularJS at CodeSchool.  I sometimes get answers "wrong" because I added or am missing an extra semicolon.  This can be annoying and frustrating and it would be good if the "computer" would tell me visually (like some editors do).  These are the kinds of things that can frustrate students and use up time and cognitive load better spent on other tasks.

Here is an example that did not "pass" as correct:
The following code did not "pass":
  app.controller('GalleryController', function(){
    this.current = 0;
    this.setCurrent = function(imageNumber){
      this.current = imageNumber || 0;
    };
  });

Yet by simply adding a semi-colon it did pass (see below):
  app.controller('GalleryController', function(){
    this.current = 0;
    this.setCurrent = function(imageNumber){
      this.current = imageNumber || 0;
    };
  });

Now add to this from what I have read on recommendations "You shouldn’t put a semicolon after a closing curly bracket"

Of course any automated learning program that has to do checks will have issues as there is usually more than one right way to do things.  Now, it seems Code School is looking for specific formats and commands which limits the possible "right" answers.   But since there can be more than one way to do things it would be better to simply pass a set of tests and if they pass the tests you have solved the problem.  That said in the cases I am seeing for Angular the "end result" is exactly the same, but they are trying to teach you a specific way to code so I can see why they check the way they do.

I have also been thinking if Domain Specific Objects/Languages might be better approach for learning environments and also for providing ways for non-experts to "program" as part of expressing themselves and/or playing with ideas.  But right now that is just an idea germinating lets see where it leads.

Cheers,
Stephen

Day 5 - 30 Day Learning Challenge

Try Blockly!!!  I tried it when it first came out and thought well, it has some potential but needs work.  Well they did a lot of work since I last looked at it.

As far as a tool for allowing students to learn about programming using tile scripts while providing a way to switch to Javascript (and I believe also Python, but need to double check that).

I haven't tried building projects with it yet, only played the games and watched some videos.  I recommend the following two videos:

First for educators check out: 

CS4HS Blockly with Ellen Spertus

Second for a great tutorial on how to create your own blocks:

The second is rather well done and the type of supporting documentation that students and teachers need.

Plus it also does Logo see the Turtle example and it can be run Offline!!!

Cheers,

Stephen

P.S. I am having too much fun (mostly with Blockly and thinking about learning/teaching/doing programming.  Oh I also made some more progress at Code School

Day 4 - 30 Day Learning Challenge

AngularJS vs Etoys 

(as a tool for younger people to work very deeply by programming and building stuff)

First this is not a fair comparison, as Etoys was designed for this purpose and Angularjs was not.  Yet I understand the desire to have a tool to that can be used for exploring ideas, communicating and expressing themselves.  I also understand the request to have tool that can be used in a browser.

First I will start with AngularJS’s advantages:

1. It has the support of Google
2. There is a large community of people who use AngularJS and an even larger community who know JavaScript
3. There are many resources on the Web for learning about AngularJS and very good support groups willing to help beginners
4. There are lots of code examples one can learn from and play with on Plunker and JSfiddle.

The challenges of AngularJS:

1. You have to spend a lot of time learning about AngularJS and how to do things in AngularJS which takes away from the time spent  on learning/expressing/exploring.
2. It is built around the Web in particular the DOM.  Ie: you are restricted to what the DOM can do.  Okay not completely true you can blow a hole in the DOM and using SVG or Canvas but the libraries available to do things here (think D3 et al) are very specific and require high learning curves.
3. While the learning curve when compared to other Web Frameworks is not quite as steep, there is a steep learning curve for students especially if they do not have a lot of programming experience.
4. It is a text based language (as opposed to a tile based one) which means syntactical errors are easy to make and take time and cognitive load to understand and correct.

The advantages of Etoys:

1. It was designed for construction and learning by students
2. It supports tile based scripting and lets you switch to text based.
3. It lets you directly manipulate objects and extend their functionality.
4. The community to support learners is responsive and helpful.
5. There are some good educational resources for students and teachers to explore.

The challenges of Etoys:

1. There is no large organization or funding supporting Etoys.
2. The community while supportive and helpful is not large.
3. Etoys currently does not run in browsers or on tablet or phones (Yes, I know it can and there are projects which show its possible, but there is no “supported” fully functional and fast enough version that does so for all “modern” browsers).
4. Etoys is not as popular as AngularJS
5. JavaScript is more popular than Squeak (and thus has a larger base of people who could potentially support teachers and students).

So all this aside perhaps the best tests are how easy is it to:

1. For a teacher to build an educational tool for students
2. For a student to create a form of expression
3. For a student to explore certain ideas

Now to quote Seymour Papert “It’s hard to think about thinking without thinking about something.”  So I will try to think about some things and how they could be done in AngularJS and Etoys (and perhaps some other ways of doing things).  So at some point I will try and think about "something" more concrete.

Ideas and suggestions welcome for “what to build”.

Cheers,

Stephen

P.S. Also made some progress at Code School but poor internet connectivity has limited my time on the computer and increased the time spent with family :)

Day 3 - 30 Day Challenge

Well coding while driving is not easy and since we spent most of the day driving my coding was limited to a few minutes just before I crashed at the hotel.

I did think about coding though while driving which was challenging.  It forced me to a higher level rather than specific code, I thought about the general problem and how I would approach it.  My goal is to take a number of concrete examples of data sources (csv and JSON for now) and visualizations (table and graph) and "connect" those together.  Then see what general patterns I can determine/code from that.  I did manage a brief period to figure out how to walk through a javascript object to get the Keys I would need to tie a JSON feed to a visualization.  My thought is to inspect the data to determine the fields/keys that are available to connect to either a table (will look at using smart table for first attempt, since some folks I know are using that) and also either HighCharts and/or D3.

I plan on creating the data structures, directives, and controllers to allow me to connect the data source to a visualization.  Then the next step after that will be to think about and perhaps try to implement some simple user interfaces that allow a lively like drag and drop connection between the data-source and visualizations.

Cheers,
Stephen

Day 2 - 30 Day Challenge

I completed lesson 3 from Shaping Up With Angularjs.

Since we will be driving to Florida over the next two days I will be thinking about code rather than writing it.  I plan to think about how I can implement something like the lively demo using Angular.  In particular how to "connect" a data source to a visualization and allow for converter code that is all in one place.

Day 1 - 30 Day Challenge

Day 1: Learning AngularJS (vs Etoys)

So I have decided as I learn AngularJS to compare it to Etoys.  Admittedly not a fair comparison as both server different purposes, but hey its my learning journey and I will go where my strange mind and interests take me (I have found this path mostly useful and a lot of fun).

I am Shaping up with Angular.js from Code School.  I completed the first two levels.

So today I learned about:

• Modules
• Controllers
• some directives
• ng-repeat
• ng-show
• ng-hide
• ng-src
• Filters (uppercase, lowercase, currency, date, etc)
• and some things about Bootstrap

The examples used in the course center around displaying a set of product data on the web.

I found myself thinking about how you do things in AngularJS vs how I would do it in Etoys.  Why you may ask would I want to compare two very different things?  Well while they are different at a very high level they are both tools for expressing ideas and both use MVC (Model View Controller).  Now when I say MVC I am not talking about the "modern" definition and use as found in various web frameworks such as AngularJS etc, but in the original definition from Trygve Reenskaug:

"The essential purpose of MVC is to bridge the gap between the human user's mental model and the digital model that exists in the computer." (see here)

Also I feel by trying to compare two very different approaches and trying to get to the "essense" of what they do and how they go about it I may actually gain some slightly deeper understanding.

I actually spent some time trying to build "directives" in Etoys and and while I created a "toUpperCase directive" and mapped a set of data (in a Holder) to a "Form",  it didn't feel right.  

I then recalled Dan Ingalls. The Live Web - Drag 'n Drop in the Cloud (video, JS CONF USA 2012) talk and thought that using connectors and converts would be a better approach. Basically I really like the idea of "connecting to a data source" then writing a converter to massage the data into a format that can be received by a visualization tool (table, list, graph, etc).

Cheers,
Stephen

The 30 Day Learning Challenge

“I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
― Martha Graham

Sadly I have not been able to spend much time writing code, which I really enjoy.  I am working with people who code, reading their code, specifying requirements and on rare occasions doing code walk throughs.  

So I have decided to take it upon myself to "practice" coding everyday for the next 30 days.  My initial thoughts were to practice coding in EtoysJS or  lively-web and perhaps I will get there at some point.  But the pressures of work push me towards AngularJS at the moment so I will start there. That said I also intend to use this not just to practice programming but to explore other topics of interest such as how to teach programming.

“What I have achieved by industry and practice, anyone else with tolerable natural gift and ability can also achieve.”
― Johann Sebastian Bach

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Gigascale Engineering talk by Bruno Bowden

Bruno Bowden (engineer on Google Earth, Enterprise Gmail) gave a great talk on "Gigascale Engineering"

He shared a lot of wisdom, which as the old saying goes, came from a lot of experience, which came from a lot of mistakes (including almost bringing down Gmail, messing up Eric Schmidt's email and having Santa Claus nearly cause an international incident.)

To summarize his points:

1. The best decision is "Not to build"
   Learn to fail fast, give up and quit
2. Recycle
   re-use, don’t re-invent the wheel.  Benefit from someone else's headaches and hard work.  Use something that's been battle tested, and someone  else has already worked through the bugs
3. "Above the fold"
   Example he used was how one change, moving the download button up in the page so for certain displays with low resolution the download button could be seen w/o scrolling, increased the number of downloads of Google Earth by 50-100 million.
   My interpretation was find what will have the biggest impact.  Not what you think is will be cool or  interesting.

Then their was a really interesting section of the talk on "Pushing the reliability/Innovation curve". He showed how simple curve where the more innovation, the less reliability.  The "pushing" involves ways in which you can decrease risk which still increasing innovation. 

Below are a couple of the ideas he shared:

• He talked about the basics such as Code Reviews.
• He also mentioned that while Google "doesn't do TDD" all code is "guilty until proven innocent".   He stressed they do unit testing etc, they just haven't don't but into the "though shall always write tests first" approach.  My thought is that people trump process and TDD may add most value when used with less "experienced" developers to help them stay out of trouble.  That said I do like TDD, but frankly don't always practice it.
• He mentioned that the number one threat to Google software was Google engineers.  And how they set Rate limits (throttling) to keep people from bringing systems to their knees
• Using an exponential backoff strategy on retries to limit potential damage.  This reminded me of retry schemes for collision detection on Ethernet.  
• Having built in "Real Time Controls" designed into the system to help you deal with performance issues
• Having a way to safely/canary in the coal mine test knew code
• Using N+2 Rollbacks
• The advantage of "Keeping it Simple" and how engineers seem to love to create complexity.  A charge I have been guilty of way too many times.
• He used a quote from John Dean "Design for 10x" which I understood as design for a 10 fold growth.
• The earlier you can compartmentalize things the better before it becomes a Monolith
• How when you first startup up you want to push things out as fast as possible and iterate quickly so you can find out what works (and hopefully abandon quickly what doesn't).  But once you start to scale you need to shift to a regular release cycle and a more repeatable process
• Using protocol buffers to help deal with multiple versions of the protocol as you upgrade on a large multi-server environment.
• Importance of managing your managements expectations.  Yes change is risky and when we do this there will be some fires (of course you go through the risk/reward analysis to determine its worth the fires that will happen).
• What to do when failure happens (really important and unfortunately I see too many cases where this isn't handled properly or if they do the Post Mortem, the actions are not followed up on):
• Alert Early - ie: don't hide the problem or cover it up.  Let people know so you can start to deal with it and get some help.
• Escalate Response - Get some help, don't try and solve it all yourself, especially if its a potential crisis in production.
• Stabilize - revert if necessary, but stabilize the system
• Perform a Post Mortem - Ask "How can we avoid this in the future",  usually there are multiple points of failure.
• Where could we have done more "Defensive Engineering"
• Reassess the risks/rewards of what you are doing.

In addition to the wise advise there was a great story about how Santa Tracker almost caused an international incident, by flying over Toronto, Ohio (well he said some Toronto in the US, so I assume Ohio) as opposed to that other one in Canada.  Fortunately the Canadian general was kept sufficiently distracted so that he didn't look at the Santa Tracker until Mr. Claus got back on course.

Here is his Ted Talk on Santa Tracker:

Cheers,

Stephen

[Confab] Circle-Square by Dy/Dan

Dan Meyer had posed a great problem on his blog

[Confab] Circle-Square

believe it originates from The Stanford Mathematics Problem Book, though I've seen it elsewhere in other forms.

Given an arbitrary point P on a line segment AB, let AP form the perimeter of a square and PB form the circumference of a circle. Find P such that the area of the square and circle are equal. 

 In it he posted one comment from Peter Boon (my emphasis added):

Off the ISDDE mailing list, Freudenthal Institute curriculum designer Peter Boon had some useful comments on the use of interactives and videos:

I would like to investigate the possibility of giving students tools that enable them to create those videos or something similar themselves. As a designer of technology-rich materials I often betray myself by keeping the nice math (necessary for constructing these interactive animations) for myself and leaving student with only the play button or sliders. I can imagine logo-like tools that enable students to create something like this and by doing so play with the concept variable as tools (and actually create a need for these tools).

Well for me Etoys is the tool of choice (not perfect, could be better, but a great choice).  Etoys is an educational tool for teaching children powerful ideas in compelling ways and a media-rich authoring environment and visual programming system for kids to create.  Besides logo like programming it hashas GeoGebra like functionality built in with DrGeo. But for this problem you don't even need Dr. Geo.

Below are the simple steps for kids to create a model of the problem.

1) Create a "Square" using the rectangle object. Below is a screen shot where I added one variable and a simple two line script.

2) Create a "Circle" using the Ellipse Object. Below is a screen shot again adding one variable and a simple two line script.

3) Now we need to create the line segment and showing the different segments.  Below is a screen shot of two Rectangle Objects and three simple scripts. Two to have the widths match the square's side and the circle's diameter and one to keep them aligned.

Plus kids can use Etoys to construct Multiplication Models, Explore Fractions and much much more. (See EtoysIllinois from the Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education (MSTE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a great resource)

Haiti Trip

My son and I will be going to Haiti on a mission trip with Foundation For Peace March 16-24.  We will be going down to help at the school and we will be bringing down computers and laptops with educational software from OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), a school version of Wikipedia (they have no internet access, so we will have a local copy, projects from Etoys Illinois and The Colombus School for Girls.

According to the Human Development Index, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, and so especially after their seismic earthquake in 2010, Haiti has had difficulty in recovering as a nation and as a people. While much aid has been promised, not all has been delivered or well used and there is still much work to be done. My team and I will be working through an organization called Foundation for Peace (FFP) who has been aiding those in Haiti since the devastating earthquake.  FFP has local leaders in Haiti and is sending down mission teams about twice a month to continue to support the community and help them to support themselves. They initially built Camp Hope, a tent community of internally displaced persons who fled there for medical care and housing. After Camp Hope, they extended their building projects to include schools where elementary and high school students could learn…and they are learning! Many students are passing their standardized exams. My team will be assisting in the building an even bigger school, one where both academics and vocational trades will be taught, so people of all ages can learn in order to earn good jobs and provide for their families.  

That being said, our team needs your help! Each member of our team needs to raise about $1,800 ($3,600 for the two of us) and I am certain we will be able to raise the funds.  Please consider making a tax deductible donation to help support us.  What is most important in my opinion is your thoughts and prayers.  For the people of Haiti and for son and myself.

If you do feel called to support the team financially, all gifts toward the trip are tax deductible. Checks can be made payable to Westerly Road Church, with the memo line reading my name and the location of the trip. Checks can be mailed to 25 Westerly Road Church, ATTN: Director of Global Outreach; Princeton, NJ 08540.

Thank you again for your thoughts and prayers.

Thanks,

P.S. If you are in the NJ area and have any old computers, laptops, monitors, wireless routers, ethernet hubs, power strips, etc  and would like to see them re-purposed to help the children of Haiti.  Please let me know I will wipe hard drives and put educational software on them.

P.P.S Thanks to the folks at Poisson Rouge who have graciously donated their wonderful educational software to our cause.  If you have never seen it I highly recommend you visit (http://www.poissonrouge.com/).  I have been recording their software to everyone with kids even before they made this wonderful donation.

Balance Scale Test

Instructions:

1) Click the Green Flag to start.
2) Then drag the orange triangle to a spot where you think the items will be balanced.
3) Then press to see the last 10 answers from other players

Once you have played please answer the questions below in the comments:

• Why did the others guess that way?
• Can you come up with a logical reason as to why the other kids may have placed it in a different position?
• Explain what mistakes in thinking you or others made, that caused different answers?