<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> On 6/12/2020 6:21 PM, Hilaire Fernandes via Cuis-dev wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:bb6eaa70-ee1d-594d-80a5-f929fd3aec53@drgeo.eu" type="cite"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">Le 12/06/2020 à 16:06, Juan Vuletich a écrit : </div> <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:5EE38BEB.4020001@jvuletich.org"> I can not help wondering what is still missing for that very article, together with the examples, to be an active essay itself, running in the Smalltalk system. Erudite, Glamorous Toolkit, StyleTextEditor, Morphic Projects are all pieces in that space. What else is needed? How can we move forward? </blockquote> IMO, getting right the backbone where dynamic media will fit in place is the tuff part. Since 5000 years, our culture is text based, the hand and the eyes are its tools. Looking at what is happening in school (primary up to senior high school) is interesting because it is where our culture is transmitted to our young. The way we teach at school is articulated around texts: teachers provide a lot of text documents (book, exercises book), students produce a lot of text too (mainly exercises resolution, drawing - on the desk too -, notes). As a teacher, I only know and speak about this context. But clearly we are not where we could be, I fell daily this frustration. Why be limited to physical text contents, why not digital dynamic media as text, sound, video, lesson, exercises circulating between the teachers and students, annotated, re-annotated, cut in piece for exploration. Sometime I fell like we are stuck in the XIXe century although I use daily computer in front of the students. So yes now we can use computer, but it's like dragging around a cinderblock, so many obstacles for so little outcomes. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:5EE38BEB.4020001@jvuletich.org"> The Dynabook and Active Essays ideas are extremely important for me. Cuis is becoming mature enough to be a good base for them. (Although I think that vector graphics is a must). </blockquote> Cuis is mature and even more importantly it is agile like a ballerina. I use your recommendation: start the morning with a fresh image, load my code, never save the image, only the packages. It is very easy to do with a minimal, easy to remember syntax, very fast and Cuis never crash (ok, just once) Agree about vector graphics, otherwise how will you do state of the art stylus handwriting/sketching on the dynabook? <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:5EE38BEB.4020001@jvuletich.org"> I think that, as you suggest, writing active essays will require, in addition to some natural language, and perhaps topic specific jargon, good Smalltalk skills. But I believe that a casual reader of an active essay should be able to get most of the ideas without needing to understand the code, in the same way we can get a good part of what a technical book is talking about, without looking at the formulas. </blockquote> I wrote another small article discussing about these questions, based on A. Kay writing. <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://blog.drgeo.eu/2018/07/the-dynabook-concept.html">https://blog.drgeo.eu/2018/07/the-dynabook-concept.html</a> </blockquote> Very nice writeup, thanks. I fully agree with what you say. I don't think that Etoys (or Scratch) are the answer. Today, it is possible to build interactive multi-media / hyper-media learning contents. It can even be done very convenient to access, in the form of html + js + canvas. The problem is that it is extremely hard to build such content, and it takes way too much work. And the result is not user editable. What we need is a tool that allows both the consumption and the creation of such contents. That's why I don't think that Etoys or Scratch go in this directions. Something closer to Erudite, perhaps a bit of StyledTextEditor,of course DrGeo, dynamically created vector graphics morphs (code part of the authored content), dynamic simulations (model code, animation code, datasets all part of the authored content), etc, all integrated with good looking text. Untill you interact with the stuff, it should look as good as a .pdf of a professionally edited and typeset book. Then, it would react and be alive. And the, you'd be able to edit it, comment it, re-publish, etc. An integration of Erudite and DrGeo would be a great next step from where we are now. If you haven't yet, read SqueakNews. It is not only really enjoyable, but also the best example of Dynabook content I've seen. And it was done 20 years ago! All the published issues are available at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/tansel/SqueakNews">https://github.com/tansel/SqueakNews</a> . As it is done in an old Squeak, using an older image format, you can't run them with a recent VM. If you have a Windows system, they run perfectly fine. If you have a Mac or Linux PC, it is really worth to install a Windows VM, using VMWare or similar, just to read this amazing stuff. It is really worth it. <blockquote cite="mid:bb6eaa70-ee1d-594d-80a5-f929fd3aec53@drgeo.eu" type="cite"> <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:5EE38BEB.4020001@jvuletich.org"> People are trying to do OpenScience / ReproducibleResearch with Python Jupyter Notebooks. We can do much better than that!</blockquote> I don't know much about this. Experimental science teacher in school could benefit of a content with media of heterogeneous forms: text with some handsketched writing, photography/video, table of data collected from the device input sensors, etc. The mental image I like is to imagine a student A4 textbook, with contents on the forms of handwritten text, an interactive diagram he can play with, a vocal note of a Spanish language exercises, and some data he collected from the temperature sensors plugged to the textbook. For a meaningfull use of IT in education, it would be a good start. Of course student will receive his dynabook at the primary school and keep it at least until senior high. Are we dreaming? ;-) Hilaire <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- GNU Dr. Geo <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://drgeo.eu">http://drgeo.eu</a></pre> </blockquote> Most school kids already have the required hardware. It is us who need to build the missing software parts! Cheers, <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- Juan Vuletich <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.cuis-smalltalk.org">www.cuis-smalltalk.org</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev">https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/jvuletich">https://github.com/jvuletich</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3">https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3</a> @JuanVuletich</pre> </body> </html>