[MWForum]turning teachers on to MW - the graphics are
great!
Harvey Bornfield
mwforum@lists.mathcats.com
Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:22:47 -0700
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John:
Why resort to importing and exporting shapes to render them into more
subtle degrees of "twist", than is available under MW2, when it's possible
to achieve from within MW2. You can exploit the almost arcane colorunder
function to achieve all the shape rotation you need. The game plan is to
appoint a turtle a sponge, place it at the upper left (or any corner) of a
square (or rectangular) matrix of any graphics area, using manual or given
slider-determined parameters. Then you ship him off, courtesy of a loop
embedded within a loop, to sweep up an entire graphics area imprinted in a
stamped turtle shape. One dot at a time, and a little help from lput, and
you stash a list, appending for each pixel-by-pixel stopover, the color
number of the "dot next door", which then can be sprayed back out in a
variety of ways, even "aerated" or distorted.
Then, to effect said enchantment,
hmmm............(this is going to be a difficult one! : ) ),
get out your Harry Potter wand, issue the "Pen Up" spell, relocate the
turtle to a blank foreign land on your project, or create CAREFULLY, a new
page under program control called "backstage" to do this....
Continuing on
Relocate the turtle to the place where its going to appear twisted, do a
pendown, and a hide turtle (speeds up writes), and reusing the same sponge
routine loop structure that captured the dots, in overtime innings,
parachute the entire list of colorunder dots back down on the blank area,
at the desired tilt you want..........
then, Harry_Potter it again, (the verb, to Harry_Potter) or if wand in
drydock, as a dire, fevery alternative use as a last resort , a Snapshape
command....... :) ........ If you created a procedure called "Reserve
<numeric shape list or start-stop number range>, it would be possible to
automate depositing a whole series of twisted rotations in contiguous shape
locations.
The advantage of using such a home home-spun routine, is that you can dish
out the task to your students in components and have a project created
collaboratively. Of course when you spray back out the dots, there is
nothing to prevent you from creating all kinds of interesting graphical
effects, such as "ghosting", rescaling, tinting or opaque'ng (subtract or
add one or more to the colorunder number as you spray it out), and of
course, if you're using alphabet letters as shapes, employing rotations to
achieve writing along bezier curves. Move over, Adobe illustrator! All
sophisticated jousts for advanced MW students and future Microworlds
teachers, Master's theses in architectural design,
Yes, sounds like I've already done this, as though we wrote the routines to
work in 2.0 before Pro appeared. Guilty as charged. Nonetheless, in giving
away even these traces of "How to" I feel guilty of "violating my vows as a
constructionist" blurting out such virtually self-evident strategies. It's
not that one is reluctant to share them, but as Wendi so vocally just
points out, the Microworlds forum exists primarily to champion sparking
imagination and self-guidance modalities where the dividing line between
learning and adventure, far from the code-blue solemnity of schools, is
happily blurred. To sketch, to enable brainstorming, to hint as
alternatives, to translate these into creatively visualizable algorithms,
all this lives, thriving at the heart of the constructionist stream, and
makes an antidote to all suffocating "My size fits all" forms of pedagogy.
That's afterall the unconscious reenactment of the same error which
underwrites the compulsive-obsessive norms-based assessments, and the
chimpanzee rote through which cringing teachers are asked to offer their
noble talents in fear-based theaters. Socratic Inquiry, (Alas, also
Socratic Hemlock!) that dissolves of us from the redneck Neanderthal
assembly line models of education, replaced by the not-too-obvious, ever
emerging art of morphing questions into quest, of which we here all share
an important part, rudders, indeed "destinys" (the verb, to destiny) all
constructionist intent.
We shall explicate with a recreational Jihad: (skip down below the next
segment to omit this)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What we DON'T need is a barrage of short-order cook solutions to
project-authoring challenges when we, as aspiring teachers really owe our
students something more, which would be providing robust and ongoing
exposure to wrestling with thinking and architectural processes which
underlie software authoring. To regard as a good educational path the
sourcing of question/answer formats alone, to continue to enthusiastically
embrace them as viable, worthy, acceptable ways to facilitate the kind of
'trial-and-error-inspired' exploration which creates quality Chefs is,
IMHO, am altogether strange distraction.
The whole Crux of the Jihad's this:
The notion of the "Ask a gunslinger" mode of QA, like presidential press
conferences which aren't geared to open dialogue, but to decree,
pronouncement, policy and similar excuses for interaction, reminds me of
the wonderful opening to the mythopoetic one-of-a-kind western "Quigley
Down Under", which we'll use as a parable:
Quigley (Tom Selleck), a strong, yet altogether modest Zorro-level hero
imported from Dodge City, because he possesses the longest-range rifle in
the world, responding to an ad, hired, pending the display of his prowess
to a wealthy and vastly prejudiced Australian ranch owner, Marsten (played
by the Connoisseur's Evil Heavy Alan Rickman), discovers that Rickman has
placed him on the payroll for morally unacceptable reasons, - in order to
kill Aboriginals in Australia.
Now to be able to supply brilliant, and completely turnkey programming code
in one-day turnaround, in short-order marksmanship mode is altogether
awesome and bladed to behold, and it is applaudable to know that there are
Microworlds Kings on tap to perk the ambience here with such adeptness of
software "thrill'n'(s)kill" yet, after all the sizzling flamboyance, like
anaesthesia to our real purpose wears off, we realize that the Indiana
Jones / James Bond mentality bears a double-O license, and indeed murders
the principles of constructionism, leading both students and other
innocents into a consumer scenario of "I have what you need", rather than
"Let me share with you not the knowledge which I possess, but rather what
kinds of questions which need to be asked and what priorities are best
acquired in order to become a teacher, which is much more difficult than a
doer. (Herein lies the secret of the elevation and healing of the world)
The Western continues:
And not too long after Matthew Quigley demonstrates his most adept
"William-Tell-like G5-apple-splitting marksmanship" on innocent beer cans
barely visible to the mortals, upon discovering he is a vassal of a man who
has an ruthless agenda, punches out his newfound boss, and soon finds
himself straightaway carted out into three days all expenses paid one way
excursion, dragged off, terrestrially keel-hauled from a wagon through 110
degree weather, exiled into the parch and blister of the cruel outback with
his eventual soul mate, our would be hero, thus appointed makeshift haut
cuisine on the 99 cent fast food vulture's menu of central Australia.
Returning now to our regularly scheduled meander,
attempting to source a solution to what might not be a problem......
(Beethoven's "der Schwer-gefasste Entschloss", Op. 135)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A gesture for solution:
So how do we, many of us teachers, for whom the implementation of MW code
is tip of the iceberg, at the very least, indeed an almost trivial
component of the exercise of higher order thought processes (Say it! Higher
Order Thought = Imagination, if our mystical algebra serves us
correctly!) , how do we graduate to the next step of online conversation,
and supply food for imagination to the kids and teachers here? By which I
imply this: Rather than supplying fish, assume the responsibility to carry
them forward, teaching them how to fish.
Now to address this epic shift in paradigm focus, which challenges
especially those several of us who have already put in enough dues in
software design to have something more than well-articulated MW source code
to share, (which, at the very least, Bornfield stagewhispers to himself
would include Daniel, Jeff, Mike, Wendi, Lisa, John, and the lurking Gary
Stager (come out and join us!) ), here's a roughhewn notion, I hesitate to
call it an idea, which might nonetheless work to the furtherance of
constructionist intent within the design and structure of the forum.
Send out an online request to all students who are members here, those
involved in MW_based classes to supply us with the email address of the
teacher under whom they are working. Do this as a condition for continued
membership in the MW_Forum.
Then e-mail all of the teachers thus referenced, and invite them to make
known to us here enclosures of their curriculum or projects and their
course guidelines. Ask them what kind and degree of assistance would
gracefully interface with their academic objectives, both individual and
collaborative. Of course, invite them to "Eavesdrop" on their
students!!!!!, by joining the Forum, and posting their challenges
nationally. One even envisions, the creation of a most refreshing "Create
an Einstein" input, - MW_quests for student online collaborative group
discussion, for from such most fair-weathered mindstorms, I see teachers
creating and sharing in all phases of development, a barrage of thematic
unit templates.
This will pave the way for the possible and eventual creation of a smaller
inner creativity circle of MW teachers and mentors which we'll call
MW_Guru, whose members must be regularly contributing members of MW_Forum
in positions of teaching, mentoring or creative and/or technical expertise
who amongst themselves function like an online university and can so pose
large and long-range ideas which embrace thinking about and acting upon the
relationship between educational philosophy and computer projects, sharing
them at large with the MW_Forum
Target marketing dreams, distant dreams, Quigley's now out of bullets, out
of "Fourth of July" for now, and so from bladed-sunlight-gleam and
cactus-pierced Tucson, from within small pocket of our own Sonoran Outback,
perhaps in an echo, an acupuncture node, in the Southwest, a poor man's
"Down Under" bids you all friendly adieu.
Warm Regards,
Harvey Bornfield
www.mythologics.org
At 09:51 PM 2/26/2004, you wrote:
>On Thursday, February 26, 2004, at 09:11 AM, Mikula Family wrote:
>
>>
>>Other than a screen capture, I am not sure how to capture/copy/paste a
>>shape from MW into AppleWorks. Sometimes MW has the perfect graphic to
>>accompany a story written in AW word processing. Is the following > true?
>>Graphics can become shapes but shapes are not graphics??
>
>It works both ways for me although I've never pasted into the AW paint
>program. You can click once on a shapes box to select it, then go to Edit
>and choose copy, then go to AppleWorks and paste it into a word processing
>document or a drawing document. Most of the computers in my room don't
>have enough RAM to run MW Pro, so we use MW 2.05 on those older
>computers. In version 2 you can't rotate shapes except by 90 degree
>increments. So my students copy the MW shape and paste it into AW draw
>where it can be rotated at any angle. Then the graphic can be copied from
>AW and pasted back into a MW shapes box. This way my students can do an
>animation with an airplane take off or land at a more reasonable 20 or 30
>degree angle rather than 90 degrees.
>
>-John
>
>
>John St. Clair Global SchoolNet Foundation
>john.stclair@verizon.net www.gsn.org
>Vina Danks Middle School LogoForum moderator
>Teacher of Logo and Lego groups.yahoo.com/group/logoforum
>
>_______________________________________________
>MWForum mailing list
>MWForum@lists.mathcats.com
>http://lists.mathcats.com/mailman/listinfo/mwforum
>Attachments archived at:
>http://www.mathcats.com/mwforum/attachments.html
>To unsubscribe or for administrative questions contact
>mailto:mwforum-admin@lists.mathcats.com
"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge
which comprehends mankind, but mankind cannot comprehend."
Ludwig van Beethoven
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<body>
John:<br>
Why resort to importing and exporting shapes to render them into more
subtle degrees of "twist", than is available under MW2, when
it's possible to achieve from within MW2. You can exploit the almost
arcane colorunder function to achieve all the shape rotation you need.
The game plan is to appoint a turtle a sponge, place it at the upper left
(or any corner) of a square (or rectangular) matrix of any graphics area,
using manual or given slider-determined parameters. Then you ship him
off, courtesy of a loop embedded within a loop, to sweep up an entire
graphics area imprinted in a stamped turtle shape. One dot at a time, and
a little help from lput, and you stash a list, appending for each
pixel-by-pixel stopover, the color number of the "dot next
door", which then can be sprayed back out in a variety of ways, even
"aerated" or distorted.<br><br>
Then, to effect said enchantment, <br>
hmmm............(this is going to be a difficult one! : ) ),<br>
get out your Harry Potter wand, issue the "Pen Up" spell,
relocate the turtle to a blank foreign land on your project, or create
CAREFULLY, a new page under program control called "backstage"
to do this....<br><br>
Continuing on<br>
Relocate the turtle to the place where its going to appear twisted, do a
pendown, and a hide turtle (speeds up writes), and reusing the same
sponge routine loop structure that captured the dots, in overtime
innings, parachute the entire list of colorunder dots back down on the
blank area,<br>
at the desired tilt you want..........<br><br>
then, Harry_Potter it again, (the verb, to Harry_Potter) or if wand in
drydock, as a dire, fevery alternative use as a last resort , a Snapshape
command....... :) ........ If you created a procedure
called "Reserve <numeric shape list or start-stop number
range>, it would be possible to automate depositing a whole series of
twisted rotations in contiguous shape locations.<br><br>
The advantage of using such a home home-spun routine, is that you can
dish out the task to your students in components and have a project
created collaboratively. Of course when you spray back out the dots,
there is nothing to prevent you from creating all kinds of interesting
graphical effects, such as "ghosting", rescaling, tinting or
opaque'ng (subtract or add one or more to the colorunder number as you
spray it out), and of course, if you're using alphabet letters as shapes,
employing rotations to achieve writing along bezier curves. Move over,
Adobe illustrator! All sophisticated jousts for advanced MW students and
future Microworlds teachers, Master's theses in architectural design,
<br><br>
<br>
Yes, sounds like I've already done this, as though we wrote the routines
to work in 2.0 before Pro appeared. Guilty as charged. Nonetheless, in
giving away even these traces of "How to" I feel guilty of
"violating my vows as a constructionist" blurting out such
virtually self-evident strategies. It's not that one is reluctant to
share them, but as Wendi so vocally just points out, the Microworlds
forum exists primarily to champion sparking imagination and self-guidance
modalities where the dividing line between learning and adventure, far
from the code-blue solemnity of schools, is happily blurred. To sketch,
to enable brainstorming, to hint as alternatives, to translate these into
creatively visualizable algorithms, all this lives, thriving at the heart
of the constructionist stream, and makes an antidote to all suffocating
"My size fits all" forms of pedagogy. That's afterall the
unconscious reenactment of the same error which underwrites the
compulsive-obsessive norms-based assessments, and the chimpanzee rote
through which cringing teachers are asked to offer their noble talents in
fear-based theaters. Socratic Inquiry, (Alas, also Socratic Hemlock!)
that dissolves of us from the redneck Neanderthal assembly line models of
education, replaced by the not-too-obvious, ever emerging art of morphing
questions into quest, of which we here all share an important part,
rudders, indeed "destinys" (the verb, to destiny) all
constructionist intent. <br><br>
We shall explicate with a recreational Jihad: (skip down below the next
segment to omit this)<br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
------------------------------------------------------<br><br>
What we <font color=3D"#0000FF">DON'T</font> need is a barrage of
short-order cook solutions to project-authoring challenges when we, as
aspiring teachers really owe our students something more, which would be
providing robust and ongoing exposure to wrestling with thinking and
architectural processes which underlie software authoring. To regard as a
good educational path the sourcing of question/answer formats alone, to
continue to enthusiastically embrace them as viable, worthy, acceptable
ways to facilitate the kind of 'trial-and-error-inspired' exploration
which creates quality Chefs is, IMHO, am altogether strange
distraction. <br><br>
The whole Crux of the Jihad's this:<br>
The notion of the "Ask a gunslinger" mode of QA, like
presidential press conferences which aren't geared to open dialogue, but
to decree, pronouncement, policy and similar excuses for interaction,
reminds me of the wonderful opening to the mythopoetic one-of-a-kind
western "Quigley Down Under", which we'll use as a parable:
<br><br>
Quigley (Tom Selleck), a strong, yet altogether modest Zorro-level hero
imported from Dodge City, because he possesses the longest-range rifle in
the world, responding to an ad, hired, pending the display of his prowess
to a wealthy and vastly prejudiced Australian ranch owner, Marsten
(played by the Connoisseur's Evil Heavy Alan Rickman), discovers that
Rickman has placed him on the payroll for morally unacceptable reasons, -
in order to kill Aboriginals in Australia.<br><br>
Now to be able to supply brilliant, and completely turnkey programming
code in one-day turnaround, in short-order marksmanship mode is
altogether awesome and bladed to behold, and it is applaudable to know
that there are Microworlds Kings on tap to perk the ambience here with
such adeptness of software "thrill'n'(s)kill" yet, after all
the sizzling flamboyance, like anaesthesia to our real purpose wears off,
we realize that the Indiana Jones / James Bond mentality bears a double-O
license, and indeed murders the principles of constructionism, leading
both students and other innocents into a consumer scenario of "I
have what you need", rather than "Let me share with you
<font color=3D"#0000FF">not the knowledge which I possess,</font> but
rather what kinds of questions which need to be asked and what priorities
are best acquired in order to become a teacher, which is much more
difficult than a doer. (Herein lies the secret of the elevation and
healing of the world)<br>
<br>
The Western continues:<br>
And not too long after Matthew Quigley demonstrates his most adept
"William-Tell-like G5-apple-splitting marksmanship" on innocent
beer cans barely visible to the mortals, upon discovering he is a vassal
of a man who has an ruthless agenda, punches out his newfound boss, and
soon finds himself straightaway carted out into three days all expenses
paid one way excursion, dragged off, terrestrially keel-hauled from a
wagon through 110 degree weather, exiled into the parch and blister of
the cruel outback with his eventual soul mate, our would be hero, thus
appointed makeshift haut cuisine on the 99 cent fast food vulture's menu
of central Australia.<br><br>
<br>
Returning now to our regularly scheduled meander,<br>
attempting to source a solution to what might not be a problem......
<br>
(Beethoven's "der Schwer-gefasste Entschloss", Op.
135)<br><br>
<br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-------------------------------------------------------------------------<br=
>
A gesture for solution:<br>
So how do we, many of us teachers, for whom the implementation of MW code
is tip of the iceberg, at the very least, indeed an almost trivial
component of the exercise of higher order thought processes (Say it!
Higher Order Thought =3D Imagination, if our mystical algebra
serves us correctly!) , how do we graduate to the next step of online
conversation, and supply food for imagination to the kids and teachers
here? By which I imply this: Rather than supplying fish, assume the
responsibility to carry them forward, teaching them how to=20
fish.<br><br>
Now to address this epic shift in paradigm focus, which challenges
especially those several of us who have already put in enough dues in
software design to have something more than well-articulated MW source
code to share, (which, at the very least, Bornfield stagewhispers to
himself would include Daniel, Jeff, Mike, Wendi, Lisa, John, and the
lurking Gary Stager (come out and join us!) ), here's a roughhewn notion,
I hesitate to call it an idea, which might nonetheless work to the
furtherance of constructionist intent within the design and structure of
the forum. <br><br>
Send out an online request to all students who are members here, those
involved in MW_based classes to supply us with the email address of the
teacher under whom they are working. Do this as a condition for continued
membership in the MW_Forum. <br><br>
Then e-mail all of the teachers thus referenced, and invite them to make
known to us here enclosures of their curriculum or projects and their
course guidelines. Ask them what kind and degree of assistance would
gracefully interface with their academic objectives, both individual and
collaborative. Of course, invite them to "Eavesdrop" on their
students!!!!!, by joining the Forum, and posting their challenges
nationally. One even envisions, the creation of a most refreshing
"Create an Einstein" input, - MW_quests for student online
collaborative group discussion, for from such most fair-weathered
mindstorms, I see teachers creating and sharing in all phases of
development, a barrage of thematic unit templates.<br><br>
This will pave the way for the possible and eventual creation of a
smaller inner creativity circle of MW teachers and mentors which we'll
call MW_Guru, whose members must be regularly contributing members of
MW_Forum in positions of teaching, mentoring or creative and/or technical
expertise who amongst themselves function like an online university and
can so pose large and long-range ideas which embrace thinking about and
acting upon the relationship between educational philosophy and computer
projects, sharing them at large with the MW_Forum<br><br>
Target marketing dreams, distant dreams, Quigley's now out of bullets,
out of "Fourth of July" for now, and so from
bladed-sunlight-gleam and cactus-pierced Tucson, from within small pocket
of our own Sonoran Outback, perhaps in an echo, an acupuncture node, in
the Southwest, a poor man's "Down Under" bids you all friendly
adieu.<br><br>
Warm Regards,<br>
Harvey Bornfield<br>
<a href=3D"http://www.mythologics.org/"=
eudora=3D"autourl">www.mythologics.org<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
</a>At 09:51 PM 2/26/2004, you wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=3Dcite class=3Dcite cite>On Thursday, February 26, 2004, at
09:11 AM, Mikula Family wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=3Dcite class=3Dcite cite><br>
Other than a screen capture, I am not sure how to capture/copy/paste a
shape from MW into AppleWorks. Sometimes MW has the perfect graphic to
accompany a story written in AW word processing. Is the following >
true?<br>
Graphics can become shapes but shapes are not graphics??<br>
</blockquote><br>
It works both ways for me although I've never pasted into the AW paint
program. You can click once on a shapes box to select it, then go
to Edit and choose copy, then go to AppleWorks and paste it into a word
processing document or a drawing document. Most of the computers in
my room don't have enough RAM to run MW Pro, so we use MW 2.05 on those
older computers. In version 2 you can't rotate shapes except by 90
degree increments. So my students copy the MW shape and paste it
into AW draw where it can be rotated at any angle. Then the graphic
can be copied from AW and pasted back into a MW shapes box. This
way my students can do an animation with an airplane take off or land at
a more reasonable 20 or 30 degree angle rather than 90
degrees.<br><br>
-John<br><br>
<br>
John St.
Clair<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> &=
nbsp; </x-tab><x-tab> </=
x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>Global
SchoolNet Foundation<br>
john.stclair@verizon.net<x-tab> &nb=
sp;</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><a=
href=3D"http://www.gsn.org/" eudora=3D"autourl">www.gsn.org</a><br>
Vina Danks Middle
School<x-tab> </x-tab>LogoFor=
um
moderator<br>
Teacher of Logo and
Lego<x-tab> </x-tab>groups.ya=
hoo.com/group/logoforum<br><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
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eudora=3D"autourl">http://lists.mathcats.com/mailman/listinfo/mwforum</a><b=
r>
Attachments archived at:<br>
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eudora=3D"autourl">http://www.mathcats.com/mwforum/attachments.html</a><br>
To unsubscribe or for administrative questions contact
<a href=3D"mailto:mwforum-admin@lists.mathcats.com"=
eudora=3D"autourl">mailto:mwforum-admin@lists.mathcats.com</a></blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font face=3D"Bell MT">"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the
higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind, but mankind cannot
comprehend." <br>
Ludwig van Beethoven <br><br>
<br>
</font></body>
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--=====================_22647635==.ALT--