From: Leonardo S. <san...@gm...> - 2005-07-20 16:58:31
|
Hi to everyone on the list :). I am sending this mail because I had the same idea about a visualization tool to help teaching programming, so I want to help in anyway I can. What is the status of the project? I know I can't help with code now, but I want to keep an eye in it for me to start helping after summer of code. ps.: I didn't had time to send my projet to summer of code, or else maybe we could be working in something together. --=20 Leonardo Santagada (http://www.lomohomes.com/retype) "In Python, how do you create a string of random characters? Read a Perl file!" |
From: Tero K. <te...@us...> - 2005-07-20 18:52:07
|
Leonardo Santagada wrote: > Hi to everyone on the list :). I am sending this mail because I had > the same idea about a visualization tool to help teaching programming, > so I want to help in anyway I can. What is the status of the project? > I know I can't help with code now, but I want to keep an eye in it for > me to start helping after summer of code. > > ps.: I didn't had time to send my projet to summer of code, or else > maybe we could be working in something together. > Hi, Leonardo! The project was at a standstill for about 10 days since I was busy being an organizer at DebConf5[0]. I've been studying some things as hinted by my mentor, David Ascher, and have done some planning. I'll write something about my current ideas to the project website so you can provide some valuable feedback ;) As for where you could help in addition to giving feedback, I would really like to offload the webmaster task to someone else if you'd be willing and capable of doing that. Also, when code starts to flow to the CVS, I'd like to have it tested by as many people as possible. It isn't _that_ long to the SoC deadline, so you don't need to wait very long to contribute code either. I'd be glad to get some other developers in the project as soon as possible :) [0] http://www.debconf.org/debconf5/ -- Tero Kuusela "If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand." |
From: Leonardo S. <san...@gm...> - 2005-07-20 19:28:09
|
2005/7/20, Tero Kuusela <te...@us...>: > Hi, Leonardo! >=20 > The project was at a standstill for about 10 days since I was busy being > an organizer at DebConf5[0]. I've been studying some things as hinted by > my mentor, David Ascher, and have done some planning. I'll write > something about my current ideas to the project website so you can > provide some valuable feedback ;) Be sure I will. I can already teel you what I think about Jeliot. The program seens nice, but I don't really think that the user want to see every math operation animated or at least this should be configurable. What I would like to do is make a presentation file, where you configure the animator, put the parts that you want to show or don't, and maybe define how you want then animated on the screen. Have you ever used gato (http://gato.sourceforge.net/) ? In it you can only animate graph algos, but what I like in it is that it shows graphs in a graphical way, coloring the node that you are reading from, something that jeliot doesn't apear to do. OpenExVis should have a way for the user to make his own graphical representation of the info, especialy for the black boxes. Some examples would be: - A real semaphore for teaching about concurrency - Some tree representation to show search algos - double linked lists represented by a circle so the users see that if he keeps going left in it it would never end. What do you think? (yep I am really ancious about this) >=20 > As for where you could help in addition to giving feedback, I would > really like to offload the webmaster task to someone else if you'd be > willing and capable of doing that. Also, when code starts to flow to the > CVS, I'd like to have it tested by as many people as possible. As you probably noticed my english isn't top notch, but we can discuss that. I think I can do it, I just want to know exactly what you want.. >=20 > It isn't _that_ long to the SoC deadline, so you don't need to wait very > long to contribute code either. I'd be glad to get some other developers > in the project as soon as possible :)=20 Have you ever considered sending a mail to python in education? or maybe python-users list? I think that a lot of people would find this kind of program a very neat idea and would like to help out. --=20 Leonardo Santagada (http://www.lomohomes.com/retype) "In Python, how do you create a string of random characters? Read a Perl file!" |
From: Tero K. <te...@us...> - 2005-07-21 09:44:56
|
Leonardo Santagada wrote: > 2005/7/20, Tero Kuusela <te...@us...>: >>Hi, Leonardo! >> >>The project was at a standstill for about 10 days since I was busy being >>an organizer at DebConf5[0]. I've been studying some things as hinted by >>my mentor, David Ascher, and have done some planning. I'll write >>something about my current ideas to the project website so you can >>provide some valuable feedback ;) > > Be sure I will. There's now something here: http://openexvis.sourceforge.net/documentation.html Go take a look and let me know what you think. I suggest looking through it before reading the rest of this mail. > I can already teel you what I think about Jeliot. The program seens > nice, but I don't really think that the user want to see every math > operation animated or at least this should be configurable. What I > would like to do is make a presentation file, where you configure the > animator, put the parts that you want to show or don't, and maybe > define how you want then animated on the screen. > Have you ever used gato (http://gato.sourceforge.net/) ? In it you > can only animate graph algos, but what I like in it is that it shows > graphs in a graphical way, coloring the node that you are reading > from, something that jeliot doesn't apear to do. OpenExVis should have > a way for the user to make his own graphical representation of the > info, especialy for the black boxes. Some examples would be: > - A real semaphore for teaching about concurrency > - Some tree representation to show search algos > - double linked lists represented by a circle so the users see that if > he keeps going left in it it would never end. > > What do you think? > (yep I am really ancious about this) > Yes, that's something Jeliot doesn't do nor does it plan to do AFAIK. They are very interesting goals and something I'd definitely like to see at some point. Not until I've reached the SoC goals I've set, though. My approach is a bit different in that I don't plan to construct a presentation file, but instead run the code through the interpreter and make the visualization real-time. This makes things more difficult with non-interpreted languages, of course, but I haven't been thinking about those very much as I see so many benefits in using interpreted ones for educational purposes anyway. As for implementing different visualizations, I had earlier thought about themes that would basically be visualizing variables with something that depicts what they represent (like showing penguin images inside a box for representing a variable counting penguins). Your ideas go farther and require more thought to implement. My first thought would be that in addition to having translators be drop-in components, the visualizers could be such as well. I do have this feeling that the visualization area could need some major rethinking to support this as well, though. Or maybe it would need to be the drop-in component instead of visualizer or the visualizer and visualization area somehow combined, or... Currently, the visualization area is supposed to be just a fairly dumb canvas that takes care of drawing stuff according to instructions from the visualizer. Their tasks aren't set in stone, though, and I haven't quite figured out where the line goes between them. >>As for where you could help in addition to giving feedback, I would >>really like to offload the webmaster task to someone else if you'd be >>willing and capable of doing that. Also, when code starts to flow to the >>CVS, I'd like to have it tested by as many people as possible. > > As you probably noticed my english isn't top notch, but we can discuss > that. I think I can do it, I just want to know exactly what you want.. > Well, what I would _prefer_ is a CMS of some sort that someone else would keep running so that I can concentrate on writing content without thinking about HTML tags, menus and such. Really, I'm not looking for content providers as much as someone to make it easy for me to provide the content. >>It isn't _that_ long to the SoC deadline, so you don't need to wait very >>long to contribute code either. I'd be glad to get some other developers >>in the project as soon as possible :) > > Have you ever considered sending a mail to python in education? or > maybe python-users list? I think that a lot of people would find this > kind of program a very neat idea and would like to help out. Well, I prefer not to keep much noise about my projects until I actually have something for others to play with. So after there's some code, I certainly will consider those lists as well for spreading the word. -- Tero Kuusela "Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds." |