Re: On line MW Lesson

[WendyPetti@xxxx]

Frank, I am fascinated by your approach to the problem. I think your layout 
has real possibilities for the online lesson format. (I was, however, 
confused as to why you have the second (chalkboard) textbox and the cut, 
copy, and paste buttons... wouldn't it be easier if the user just entered 
commands directly into the "instructions" textbox?)

I think your pull-down menus on the left are a great idea, and perhaps there 
could be an entire menu of pull-down lessons (using a larger text area in the 
bottom left frame), with a smaller implementation area on the right. 

For instance, I added one command to the commands already located in the 
"instructions" box: I added "setc color + 1" just inside the final bracket, 
and as I expected, the turtle changed color after drawing each square. It 
looks lovely! I thought that if there were numerous command suggestions in 
the pull-down menu, with accompanying explanations, then the user could learn 
them as he/she tries them out. The user could progress through many, many 
lessons using the same online project to test them out.

In your introductory material you stated that the user could write Logo 
commands and procedures. That is my stumbling block. There doesn't seem to 
me to be any way to name and save an actual procedure with an online project. 
If we could solve that problem then the possibilities, I think, would really 
be endless.

Of course, we probably shouldn't worry about making EVERYTHING doable with 
the MicroWorlds plug-in. Why bother to teach someone increasingly advanced 
programming concepts if they are not even going to purchase MicroWorlds for 
their computer? And if they have MicroWorlds on their computer, then they 
can write and save procedures following suggestions in the cybercourse. It 
is a bit clumsy, because they'd have to toggle between the online course and 
their own project area, but I don't see any way around that. (Well, another 
possibility is to develop a comprehensive tutorial project which gets 
downloaded and can then be run offline using the full version of MicroWorlds, 
I suppose. But then all of the instructional material would have to reside 
in textboxes, I think, rather than in surrounding frames. I think your 
basic set-up makes more sense.)

You mentioned that ultimately a cybercourse should probably make use of the 
interactivity of Flash. Well, it has been sort of a personal vow of mine to 
push the interactivity of the MicroWorlds plug-in to the max. I have been so 
fed up with people who tell me that there is no point in learning Logo 
because there is no use for it in the "real world," and so I wanted to put 
out in the real world as many examples as I could of useful MicroWorlds 
projects. I'm curious to know what you think the course would gain from 
Flash that could not be accomplished somehow with MicroWorlds. I ask this 
truly in ignorance, because I have never tried to work with Flash, and so far 
most Flash projects I've used online, I've thought, "Well, I could do that 
with MicroWorlds."

Thanks for sharing this rich format for online MicroWorlds lessons! Would 
you mind sharing the code for the whole page so that members of this group 
could possibly try their hand at modifications of the layout (resizing the 
frames, etc.)?

Wendy Petti
Math Cats
http://www.mathcats.com
wendypetti@xxxx

> Way back when I had plans to create an online interactive course for
> MW. I started it but never got past the introduction. Trying to fit it
> all in one browser window was difficult and having to read in logo
> commands from a text box and then parsing and running them was limiting.
> However the first lesson has been up om my site and it does get a fair
> number of hits.
> 
> I offer it here not as a solution but as a possible starting point for
> further discussion.

>Frank