[MWForum]Re: Welcome to the "MWForum" mailing list
Harvey Bornfield
mwforum@lists.mathcats.com
Fri, 23 Aug 2002 03:05:10 -0700
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At 09:29 PM 8/20/2002 -0500, you wrote:
Good Cyber-time everybody!
This is Harvey Bornfield, from Tucson, Arizona, who develops software in
Microworlds, writes poetry, and lives music. I am thankful and enthused
about being here in the MicroWorlds forum, I'm a classically trained
musician, a pianist and folk guitarist. While doing 10 years of Fortran
programming, and adjunct computer science community college teaching, I
encountered Comal and the very Alladin-like Logo programming language. By
the time Microworlds made her 1993 debut, adding a full-blown
object-oriented environment to the already impressive list processing,
turtle graphics and text capabilites of Logowriter with which I had worked
after first steeping into various Commodore 64, IBM and the Apple IIgs Logo
versions, I began to see this language as an art form, sheer sorcery, a
binary Alice in Wonderland. I had, by that time, left commercial
programming, and fled to the wilds in 1989 to begin a career as an
elementary school computer teacher in Northern Arizona reservations. I
spent most all of the 90's teaching Navajo and Hopi elementary school kids
in three districts using Logowriter, and then Microworlds, leaving behind a
trail of site-licenses, and lots of happy students. We did writing across
the curriculum, retold folk tales, both Navajo and Russian, and using lots
of oral tradition style, a projector, and interactive rehearsing in the K-3
lab I took over in '94, the little ones learned to make moss to place over
windows, animate flames for fireplaces, identify characters and write
sentences about them. Older children slapped digitally-photographed 40 by
40 pixel pictures of themselves on top of scanned dinosaurs and made them
talk. With Harrison Begay the night watchman in Jeddito, we created
bilingual scenes where turtles, when clicked, spoke in either English or
Navajo, used shapes in sentences, and defined words. Every Wednesday
evening I invited children and their parents into the lab, and
photographing the whole family, we created Family-faced Navajo Nation Money
in a whole array of denominations, using button-driven circles or other
regular figures where the radius and the number or sides were the
independent variables and drew polygons round the turtle and inside stamped
numbers. One of the Hopi eighth-graders, a restless rebel who never
accepted the harness of a tranquil and docile destiny, programmed Kachina
turtles, animated them in six positions, and sent them out into the
electromagnetic VGA countryside, performing complex, concentrically-circled
rain-dance. I developed little "Logo-Simm-cities with 20 or thirty
buildings, which second graders had to place on color-coded streets. Older
children learned to estimate distances and sent vehicles around town. After
several winters, I had developed a huge collection of 'Logo-Applets' for
structuring visual components to draw Aztec-like pyramids, stars build out
of two to 8 intersecting polygons, arcs, trapezoids, isosceles triangles,
polygons within polygons and the like. With this software it was possible
to build routines to create architecture penned in in dots, which the kids
had to redraw in solid lines, or Navajo rugs. In an estimation program,
students placed an airplane at a departure city, slid an anchor to a
destination, and adjusted a slider to bet on the pixel distance between two
points. The plane took off, parachuted down a flag at the estimated
distance, and planted it in the ground, then returned to place of origin..
In City of Rivers, we programmed multiple drawbridges to appear and
disappear enmasse on demand, and cars and water-vehicles to navigate the
rivers. The commands hopx and jumpx ('eXperimental') shot turtles to
places three times back and forth with delays, returning them politely to
their locations. On the humanities side, we scanned in real but postmarked
stamps from many nations, digitally altered the postmarks out of existence,
and customized them with the names of new nations and denominations - the
students. Then we placed them on 'living' postcards, learned address
formatting, and friendly letter styles, suitable for emailing, not
available then.
I returned to Tucson in 1999, to start up an online children's university.
I am on the verge of being able to get this off the ground, and through it,
to share the fruits of long winter nights of Logo endeavor with anyone who
wants to use them. I intend to publish the software in thematic units,
utilizing interlinked programs required to make them fly. For More about
these grandiose ideas, visit the University for Imagination can be found
at: <http://www.mythologics.org/>www.mythologics.org
Philosophically, I like to develop exploratory 'least restrictive'
environments for children, where a host of original visual clickable icons
are presented with "little or if possible no verbal description whatever!"
And through experimentation, let students intuitively discover the ground
rules of their use. Which ones choreograph, which draw, which are
parameters affecting scale, size, location, number of sides, radius, roof
pitch, etc. I have come to think of the teacher as an oasis, a source of
loaded questions, of try-out-ables, a shaper of possible alternatives, a
silver iodide to seed the clouds of dream and so to source awakening, to
spark brainstorm. To empower the student to be an adventurer, enable them
to become robust and tolerant in experimentation, laugh at their own
errors, encourage and bolster others, and to walk a broad path to becoming
an author, filled with inspiration to visualize and courage to touch
ground; in this way would they learn to work bathed in the presence of
their own magical and risk-taking energies while more concrete, analytical
and architectural powers emerging, mature to complement their growth. So it
is In the dialogue between the Warrior and the Poet in Yin-Yang embrace,
learning, also known as "responsible celebration", learning, the
improvisatory art of meeting the unknown, becomes like to migration.
What I love most about MW is the bend-over-backwards versatility and the
simplicity of its user-friendly neighborhoods, combined with an immensely
sophisticated, exalting and under-utilized object-oriented environment
lurking backstage. ("Wait until, Done? Touching?") Though the professional
version is an immense achievement, and I admire its power, bells and
whistles and would not want to be without them, yet, strange to say, for a
host of reasons perhaps related to, as the Emperor told Mozart "Too much
dashboard", I prefer to compose in version 2.05 and then port over. 2.05
is a "village" you can travel on tricycle, and Pro is, "urban pavement"
But, to reiterate the obvious, LCSI lends a remarkable musical ear to the
voice of its audience, reliably and miraculously ever outdoing itself in
innovative saavy with each subsequent release. And I wouldn't be surprised
if the next version will be a perfect synthesis of the two.
So what would I like to see changed/expanded? Vita Brevis, Ars Longa (life
is short, art enduring)
Read what follows in several sittings, I've thought about this for years,
there's way too much buffet here, and most of the changes may seem almost
esoteric unless connected with more English-sounding initiatives, such as
portfolios, multiple intelligence, design of simple and elegant
collaborative environments, and the like. Stuff that invites and provokes
savored discussion. So here goes:
I have placed an asterick beside the changes that are definitely, (though
not necessarily easily) programmable without the creation of new primitives
A lot of these I have made considerable headway in completing.
1. Reporters to extract, Commands to initiate complete shape modification
getshapesize, morphshapesize
2. commands to name or rename shapes, return numbers when names are
supplied, and names, if present with numbers are supplied
3. a nextavailable shape reporter
*4. Turtle-layering and re-layering under program control
(you have to absorb all the traits of each turtle to be re-layered
into a list of variables, one for each turtle, then remove it, 're-spawning
in the 'correct' order)
*5. Creation of a program to enable defining and responding to
zone-dependent turtle-clicking areas. Multiple hot zones on a turtle return
different values
which can be used to initiate unique, but related events. Utilize
mousepos & pos, comparing them; create vertical or horizontal "displacement
reporters"
or "distance out from center", to make this happen. To develop a
visual interface to define multiple zones to any turtle without requiring
manual
measurement would be awesome. I'm working on it.
*6. Creating a turtle dock which is populated with various programmed
icons, whose positions, relative to the dock are remembered, either by xy
displacement,
or vectored by heading and distance from dock center. When you unlock
a dock and move (or rotate it), all its 'satellites' are automatically
realigned. Clicking
on the dock near to an installed turtle would trigger help screens or
reveal sliders which reveal the way the docked turtle will function when
clicked.
*7. "Slider-tablecloths" Turtles which are aligned underneath parent
sliders. Two or more 'tabs" extend out beyond the length of the slider,
each a hot zone.
When clicked on these tabs, they will advance the slider (use
set.....value) to the nearest "cleanest" multiple of 10, 100, etc. Will
automatically wrap around
*8 "Shape-Filmstrips". Laid out horizontally, to create collections of
related shapes, such as 10 or 16 birds, cactus, vehicles, mapkey symbols,
buildings, etc,
they're compressed into one filmstrip shape, which is then stashed in
a single shape slot, and summoned up when needed.
You write a program to summon them out of drydock, stamp them on a
scratchpad page, then looping, slice them up into sold-separatelys via
snapshape, and migrated into a predetermined free 'reserved' row of
adjacent, contiguous shapes. And when a different set is required,
the program automatically performs a backup of a row already
populated. (geek plus) you could utilize within a single project a
vocabulary of no less than 256
"revolving turtles" by just encumbering one row of MW 2.05. This in
addition to say 32 "permanent" ones. If you're illustrating and speaking
vocabulary to young
children, that's handy
Eight and half - let Microworlds be "shape-quantity-configurable", then
you can forget implementing number 8.
Minimum of 64, and go up in increments of 16. You'll need a reporter to
deliver the configuration info and setconfiguration <what_to_set> <its_value>
*9 The concept of the Superturtle. A tribe of turtles Replete with a
shaman, a head honcho, a Reptile Overlord: Think 'dock', upon which are
attached satellites.
The naming of the turtles with a shared prefix is the secret.
Functions to name, create tribe affiliation, to include/exclude turtles, to
report membership,
remember location relative to the movable shaman, whereever it be.
(Turtlesown required big time) Necessary to organize docking software.
*10 Scale primitives. A user-friendly interface to spray a turtle grid on a
downloaded map, to adjust its pixel proportions, to assign a scale which
links
automatically to sliders, movable, as mentioned earlier by ones, tens
or user-configurable increments. setscale <leap> <pixels>
setleap
<leap> <no miles, km, inches, cm etc>
setunitofmeasure
<miles or.....>
*11 A text-window toggle program which piggybacks off turtle-clicks, to
turn on and off turtle-sensitive help windows
*12 A portfolio manager for teachers to define in a single text window a
list of collaborative pages, the means to create the pages automatically,
and an icon
"mascot" on each page, installing also on each page hypertextlike
navigation arrows to go home, first, last, next, previous page
(borrows software from number 6). The Home page would be
pictorially capable of housing all the "mascots" organizing it in such a
way as would enable a
user to navigate anywhere in the project without the use of a menu.
(Anticipating Presentation mode)
Examples: Color coded streets on which are located collaborative
sets of work, populated with buildings on a particular single street
A tree, multiple branches, on each similar fruit,
or autos! or birds
A huge skyscraper. Each floor, similar projects,
faces looking out the windows
The Zoo, a Solar System
A small TV set with a "built-in" remote. Turn it
on, to one of three levels of background color
traverse the set of mascots with the navigation
bar until the one you want is on TV.
When you click the mascot, different things will happen,
depending upon the background color,
and whether you've worked in the Aleutian Islands, and
have six months a year of darkness in which to program Microworlds
while waiting for your Gevalia to be parachuted
down into the snow.
*13 The reincarnation of Turtletype, BUT picky, picky! in the font, style
color and size of your choice. See 14
*14 Curve fitting ('sky writing' ) text to a trajectory, or to a
mathematical function.
You collect an alphabet, or spawn one in a loop, each character
printed on a new text line of a textbox, in order to stabilize
to stabilize the xy coordinates. Transparent it, Stamptext it,
then, after coordinating the turtle position with the line-leap in the textbox,
send out a turtle scout to scan, and "sponge up" each
graphically-converted letter utilizing colorunder, and stash each pixel
into a Swiss bank account,
oops, off the lput end of a telescoping list. Then move the turtle
to the crime scene, rotate it and blast out the pixels
(combat boots for sale!) If you play some loop games, you can
create iridescent letters, or rainbow-layer your letters, or create ghost
script
(looks like the ABC word Nightline or IBM)
Though all this seems merely trivial orchestral plumage, yet we do
it for deceptive reasons;
the development of algorithms for the loops practices higher order
thinking, is the point.
*15 Vertical slider, or icons that look like crosses, which adjust both
vertical and horizontal. Good for 'dropping' or shifting around
what I call 'turtle-dots' on graph grids. A turtle graph grid can
be magically concealed
*16 A musical staff-paper, or guitar tablature publisher. Slider hysteria
in determining space b/t lines, b/t staffs, horizontal length, point of
origin, etc
I'm almost done with this one.
*17 Non-internet Hypertext. "Very pastel" rectangle turtles are frozen on
top of selected words of transparent text. Use Courier, fixed-length text
to determine
how long the words are. Overlap two turtles and adjust as a
telescope to adjust the word-coverage. Using Non-Fixed length text it is
also possible,
but move to Pluto first for an exceptionally long winter. After
stamping a textbox, each line of which has a letter, you can have a turtle
determine the
pixel width of each letter of the alphabet for a particular font,
size, style, and store this in a list. (Vector the item number to simulate
the ascii code of the
letter, for easy access. A Blue Cheese Oskar to the first 100
takers. How to keep you're gifted students busy)
We'll talk about "Visual Microworlds", Version 3.0, most favored vaporware,
about what a picture of a repeat would look like. Or a Hobbit foot pointed
left or right, ghosted in dots or solid or double lines, or a shopping
cart for
lists of programs or trajectories which can be dumped and rearranged, their
items accessible via sliders. Or 'inspectors', (sherlocks) which when
clicked on a turtle conjure sliders and construct on-demand dashboards.
We won't even mention geometrically saavy programs what will print out
foldable three dimensional figures like pyramids, obelisks, etc, all
suitable for exploring volume, perimeter, area, etc. Or origami modelling
software, that can work efforlesstly with oblique angles and simulate
dotted lines for folding, or while we're at it, paper airplane factories
you can sell at bake sales till you have enough cash to purchase a
steroid-quality cruise missle for Fortress America.
You can gather from this shopping list of mostly "half-birthed" initiatives
that I am interested in enlisting the shirtsleeve zeal of a
Microworlds-based curriculum-integration community to share the development
labors. Or to supply feedback. Imagine what a library of both growing
online projects as well as "short-order", Logo programming applets
documented similarly to the help screens in MW, would do for saving time ,
promoting visibility, and encouraging international collaborative activity.
Like many of you, I would be willing to assist or host being part of any
Microworlds or Constructionist Philosophy-related enterprise beneficial to
the "de-gearing" of education, i.e., the dissolving of its unnecessary
rigidity and the dismantling of all the King's well-droned conveyor belts.
Standardized testing, and the distrust that the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts, perpetuates is an undiagnosed Terrorism.
We have fallen a lot since ancient Greece.
And close now, with:
"All knowledge is a single point, which the ignorant have multiplied"
Quran
"Imagination is more important than Knowledge"
Albert Einstein
"As the leaves are but the ambassadors of the wind, as the snow is but the
messenger of the cold,
so is the word but the dust from the breath of a creative thought.
Morya
And finally:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and many
miles to go before I sleep."
Robert Frost, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Then Warm Regards to you all,
Harvey Bornfield
>1) What is your background in learning or teaching MicroWorlds?
>
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>difficult or frustrating?
>
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"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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At 09:29 PM 8/20/2002 -0500, you wrote:<br><br>
Good Cyber-time everybody!<br><br>
This is Harvey Bornfield, from Tucson, Arizona, who develops software in
Microworlds, writes poetry, and lives music. I am thankful and enthused
about being here in the MicroWorlds forum, I'm a classically
trained musician, a pianist and folk guitarist. While doing 10 years of
Fortran programming, and adjunct computer science community college
teaching, I encountered Comal and the very Alladin-like Logo programming
language. By the time Microworlds made her 1993 debut, adding a
full-blown object-oriented environment to the already impressive list
processing, turtle graphics and text capabilites of Logowriter with which
I had worked after first steeping into various Commodore 64, IBM and the
Apple IIgs Logo versions, I began to see this language as an art form,
sheer sorcery, a binary Alice in Wonderland. I had, by that time, left
commercial programming, and fled to the wilds in 1989 to begin a career
as an elementary school computer teacher in Northern Arizona
reservations. I spent most all of the 90's teaching Navajo and Hopi
elementary school kids in three districts using Logowriter, and then
Microworlds, leaving behind a trail of site-licenses, and lots of happy
students. We did writing across the curriculum, retold folk tales, both
Navajo and Russian, and using lots of oral tradition style, a projector,
and interactive rehearsing in the K-3 lab I took over in '94, the little
ones learned to make moss to place over windows, animate flames for
fireplaces, identify characters and write sentences about them. Older
children slapped digitally-photographed 40 by 40 pixel pictures of
themselves on top of scanned dinosaurs and made them talk. With Harrison
Begay the night watchman in Jeddito, we created bilingual scenes where
turtles, when clicked, spoke in either English or Navajo, used shapes in
sentences, and defined words. Every Wednesday evening I invited children
and their parents into the lab, and photographing the whole family, we
created Family-faced Navajo Nation Money in a whole array of
denominations, using button-driven circles or other regular figures where
the radius and the number or sides were the independent variables and
drew polygons round the turtle and inside stamped numbers. One of the
Hopi eighth-graders, a restless rebel who never accepted the harness of a
tranquil and docile destiny, programmed Kachina turtles, animated them in
six positions, and sent them out into the electromagnetic VGA
countryside, performing complex, concentrically-circled rain-dance. I
developed little "Logo-Simm-cities with 20 or thirty buildings,
which second graders had to place on color-coded streets. Older children
learned to estimate distances and sent vehicles around town. After
several winters, I had developed a huge collection of 'Logo-Applets' for
structuring visual components to draw Aztec-like pyramids, stars build
out of two to 8 intersecting polygons, arcs, trapezoids, isosceles
triangles, polygons within polygons and the like. With this software it
was possible to build routines to create architecture penned in in dots,
which the kids had to redraw in solid lines, or Navajo rugs. In an
estimation program, students placed an airplane at a departure city, slid
an anchor to a destination, and adjusted a slider to bet on the pixel
distance between two points. The plane took off, parachuted down a flag
at the estimated distance, and planted it in the ground, then returned to
place of origin.. In City of Rivers, we programmed multiple drawbridges
to appear and disappear enmasse on demand, and cars and water-vehicles to
navigate the rivers. The commands hopx and jumpx ('eXperimental')
shot turtles to places three times back and forth with delays, returning
them politely to their locations. On the humanities side, we scanned in
real but postmarked stamps from many nations, digitally altered the
postmarks out of existence, and customized them with the names of new
nations and denominations - the students. Then we placed them on 'living'
postcards, learned address formatting, and friendly letter styles,
suitable for emailing, not available then.<br><br>
I returned to Tucson in 1999, to start up an online children's
university. I am on the verge of being able to get this off the ground,
and through it, to share the fruits of long winter nights of Logo
endeavor with anyone who wants to use them. I intend to publish the
software in thematic units, utilizing interlinked programs required to
make them fly. For More about these grandiose ideas, visit the University
for Imagination can be found at:
<a href=3D"http://www.mythologics.org/">www.mythologics.</a>org<br><br>
Philosophically, I like to develop exploratory 'least restrictive'
environments for children, where a host of original visual clickable
icons are presented with "little or if possible no verbal
description whatever!" And through experimentation, let students
intuitively discover the ground rules of their use. Which ones
choreograph, which draw, which are parameters affecting scale, size,
location, number of sides, radius, roof pitch, etc. I have come to think
of the teacher as an oasis, a source of loaded questions, of
try-out-ables, a shaper of possible alternatives, a silver iodide to seed
the clouds of dream and so to source awakening, to spark brainstorm. To
empower the student to be an adventurer, enable them to become robust and
tolerant in experimentation, laugh at their own errors, encourage and
bolster others, and to walk a broad path to becoming an author, filled
with inspiration to visualize and courage to touch ground; in this
way would they learn to work bathed in the presence of their own magical
and risk-taking energies while more concrete, analytical and
architectural powers emerging, mature to complement their growth. So it
is In the dialogue between the Warrior and the Poet in Yin-Yang embrace,
learning, also known as "responsible celebration", learning,
the improvisatory art of meeting the unknown, becomes like to
migration.<br><br>
What I love most about MW is the bend-over-backwards versatility and the
simplicity of its user-friendly neighborhoods, combined with an immensely
sophisticated, exalting and under-utilized object-oriented environment
lurking backstage. ("Wait until, Done? Touching?") Though the
professional version is an immense achievement, and I admire its power,
bells and whistles and would not want to be without them, yet, strange to
say, for a host of reasons perhaps related to, as the Emperor told Mozart
"Too much dashboard", I prefer to compose in version 2.05 and
then port over. 2.05 is a "village" you can travel on
tricycle, and Pro is, "urban pavement" But, to reiterate the
obvious, LCSI lends a remarkable musical ear to the voice of its
audience, reliably and miraculously ever outdoing itself in innovative
saavy with each subsequent release. And I wouldn't be surprised if the
next version will be a perfect synthesis of the two. <br><br>
So what would I like to see changed/expanded? Vita Brevis, Ars Longa
(life is short, art enduring)<br><br>
Read what follows in several sittings, I've thought about this for years,
there's way too much buffet here, and most of the changes may seem almost
esoteric unless connected with more English-sounding initiatives, such as
portfolios, multiple intelligence, design of simple and elegant
collaborative environments, and the like. Stuff that invites and provokes
savored discussion. So here goes:<br><br>
I have placed an asterick beside the changes that are definitely, (though
not necessarily easily) programmable without the creation of new
primitives<br>
A lot of these I have made considerable headway in completing.<br><br>
1. Reporters to extract, Commands to initiate complete shape
modification<br>
getshapesize, morphshapesize<br>
2. commands to name or rename shapes, return numbers when names
are supplied, and names, if present with numbers are supplied<br>
3. a nextavailable shape reporter<br>
*4. Turtle-layering and re-layering under program control <br>
(you have to absorb all the traits of each
turtle to be re-layered into a list of variables, one for each turtle,
then remove it, 're-spawning in the 'correct' order)<br><br>
*5. Creation of a program to enable defining and responding to
zone-dependent turtle-clicking areas. Multiple hot zones on a turtle
return different values <br>
which can be used to initiate unique, but
related events. Utilize mousepos & pos, comparing them; create
vertical or horizontal "displacement reporters" <br>
or "distance out from center",
to make this happen. To develop a visual interface to define multiple
zones to any turtle without requiring manual <br>
measurement would be awesome. I'm working
on it. <br><br>
*6. Creating a turtle dock which is populated with various programmed
icons, whose positions, relative to the dock are remembered, either by xy
displacement, <br>
or vectored by heading and distance from dock
center. When you unlock a dock and move (or rotate it), all its
'satellites' are automatically realigned. Clicking <br>
on the dock near to an installed turtle would
trigger help screens or reveal sliders which reveal the way the docked
turtle will function when clicked. <br><br>
*7. "Slider-tablecloths" Turtles which are aligned underneath
parent sliders. Two or more 'tabs" extend out beyond the length of
the slider, each a hot zone. <br>
When clicked on these tabs, they will
advance the slider (use set.....value) to the nearest
"cleanest" multiple of 10, 100, etc. Will automatically wrap
around<br><br>
*8 "Shape-Filmstrips". Laid out horizontally, to create
collections of related shapes, such as 10 or 16 birds, cactus, vehicles,
mapkey symbols, buildings, etc,<br>
they're compressed into one filmstrip shape,
which is then stashed in a single shape slot, and summoned up when
needed.<br>
You write a program to summon them out of
drydock, stamp them on a scratchpad page, then looping, slice them up
into sold-separatelys via<br>
snapshape, and migrated into a predetermined
free 'reserved' row of adjacent, contiguous shapes. And when a different
set is required, <br>
the program automatically performs a backup of a
row already populated. (geek plus) you could utilize within a single
project a vocabulary of no less than 256 <br>
"revolving turtles" by just
encumbering one row of MW 2.05. This in addition to say 32
"permanent" ones. If you're illustrating and speaking
vocabulary to young <br>
children, that's handy<br><br>
Eight and half - let Microworlds be
"shape-quantity-configurable", then you can forget implementing
number 8.<br>
Minimum of 64, and go up in increments of 16. You'll need a reporter to
deliver the configuration info and setconfiguration <what_to_set>
<its_value><br><br>
*9 The concept of the Superturtle. A tribe of turtles Replete
with a shaman, a head honcho, a Reptile Overlord: Think 'dock', upon
which are attached satellites.<br>
The naming of the turtles with a shared prefix
is the secret. Functions to name, create tribe affiliation, to
include/exclude turtles, to report membership,<br>
remember location relative to the movable
shaman, whereever it be. (Turtlesown required big time) Necessary to
organize docking software.<br><br>
*10 Scale primitives. A user-friendly interface to spray a turtle grid on
a downloaded map, to adjust its pixel proportions, to assign a scale
which links <br>
automatically to sliders, movable, as mentioned
earlier by ones, tens or user-configurable increments. setscale
<leap> <pixels> <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> =
</x-tab><x-tab> &=
nbsp; </x-tab><x-tab> &n=
bsp; </x-tab><x-tab> &nb=
sp;</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x=
-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> &n=
bsp; </x-tab><x-tab> &nb=
sp; </x-tab><x-tab> &nbs=
p; </x-tab><x-tab>  =
;</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>&nbs=
p;
setleap <leap> <no miles, km, inches, cm etc><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> =
</x-tab><x-tab> &=
nbsp; </x-tab><x-tab> &n=
bsp; </x-tab><x-tab> &nb=
sp;</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x=
-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> &n=
bsp; </x-tab><x-tab> &nb=
sp; </x-tab><x-tab> &nbs=
p; </x-tab><x-tab>  =
;</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>&nbs=
p;
setunitofmeasure <miles or.....><br>
*11 A text-window toggle program which piggybacks off turtle-clicks, to
turn on and off turtle-sensitive help windows<br><br>
*12 A portfolio manager for teachers to define in a single text window a
list of collaborative pages, the means to create the pages
automatically, and an icon <br>
"mascot" on each page,
installing also on each page hypertextlike navigation arrows to go home,
first, last, next, previous page <br>
(borrows software from number 6).
The Home page would be pictorially capable of housing all the
"mascots" organizing it in such a way as would enable a <br>
user to navigate anywhere in the
project without the use of a menu. (Anticipating Presentation mode)=20
<br>
Examples: Color coded streets on
which are located collaborative sets of work, populated with buildings on
a particular single street<br>
&nbs=
p;
A tree, multiple branches, on each similar fruit, or autos! or=20
birds<br>
&nbs=
p;
A huge skyscraper. Each floor, similar projects, faces looking out the
windows<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> =
</x-tab>
The Zoo, a Solar System<br>
&nbs=
p;
A small TV set with a "built-in" remote. Turn it on, to one of
three levels of background color<br>
&nbs=
p;
traverse the set of mascots with the navigation bar until the one you
want is on TV.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> =
</x-tab>
When you click the mascot, different things will happen, depending upon
the background color, <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> =
</x-tab>
and whether you've worked in the Aleutian Islands, and have six months a
year of darkness in which to program Microworlds<br>
&nbs=
p;
while waiting for your Gevalia to be parachuted down into the
snow.<br><br>
*13 The reincarnation of Turtletype, BUT picky, picky! in the font, style
color and size of your choice. See 14<br><br>
*14 Curve fitting ('sky writing' ) text to a trajectory, or to a
mathematical function.<br>
You collect an alphabet, or spawn one in a
loop, each character printed on a new text line of a textbox, in order to
stabilize <br>
to stabilize the xy coordinates.
Transparent it, Stamptext it, then, after coordinating the turtle
position with the line-leap in the textbox,<br>
send out a turtle scout to scan, and
"sponge up" each graphically-converted letter utilizing
colorunder, and stash each pixel into a Swiss bank account, <br>
oops, off the lput end of a
telescoping list. Then move the turtle to the crime scene, rotate it and
blast out the pixels <br>
(combat boots for sale!) If you play
some loop games, you can create iridescent letters, or rainbow-layer your
letters, or create ghost script <br>
(looks like the ABC word
Nightline or IBM)<br>
Though all this seems merely trivial
orchestral plumage, yet we do it for deceptive reasons; <br>
the development of algorithms for
the loops practices higher order thinking, is the point.<br>
*15 Vertical slider, or icons that look like crosses, which adjust
both vertical and horizontal. Good for 'dropping' or shifting around
<br>
what I call 'turtle-dots' on graph
grids. A turtle graph grid can be magically concealed<br>
*16 A musical staff-paper, or guitar tablature publisher. Slider
hysteria in determining space b/t lines, b/t staffs, horizontal length,
point of origin, etc<br>
I'm almost done with this one.=20
<br>
*17 Non-internet Hypertext. "Very pastel" rectangle
turtles are frozen on top of selected words of transparent text. Use
Courier, fixed-length text to determine<br>
how long the words are. Overlap two
turtles and adjust as a telescope to adjust the word-coverage. Using
Non-Fixed length text it is also possible,<br>
but move to Pluto first for an
exceptionally long winter. After stamping a textbox, each line of which
has a letter, you can have a turtle determine the<br>
pixel width of each letter of the
alphabet for a particular font, size, style, and store this in a list.
(Vector the item number to simulate the ascii code of the <br>
letter, for easy access. A Blue
Cheese Oskar to the first 100 takers. How to keep you're gifted students
busy) <br><br>
We'll talk about "Visual Microworlds", Version 3.0, most
favored vaporware, about what a picture of a repeat would look like. Or a
Hobbit foot pointed left or right, ghosted in dots or solid or
double lines, or a shopping cart for<br>
lists of programs or trajectories which can be dumped and rearranged,
their items accessible via sliders. Or 'inspectors', (sherlocks) which
when clicked on a turtle conjure sliders and construct on-demand
dashboards. <br><br>
We won't even mention geometrically saavy programs what will print out
foldable three dimensional figures like pyramids, obelisks, etc, all
suitable for exploring volume, perimeter, area, etc. Or origami modelling
software, that can work efforlesstly with oblique angles and simulate
dotted lines for folding, or while we're at it, paper airplane factories
you can sell at bake sales till you have enough cash to purchase a
steroid-quality cruise missle for Fortress America.<br>
<br>
You can gather from this shopping list of mostly "half-birthed"
initiatives that I am interested in enlisting the shirtsleeve zeal of a
Microworlds-based curriculum-integration community to share the
development labors. Or to supply feedback. Imagine what a library of both
growing online projects as well as "short-order", Logo
programming applets documented similarly to the help screens in MW, would
do for saving time , promoting visibility, and encouraging international
collaborative activity. Like many of you, I would be willing to assist or
host being part of any Microworlds or Constructionist Philosophy-related
enterprise beneficial to the "de-gearing" of education, i.e.,
the dissolving of its unnecessary rigidity and the dismantling of all the
King's well-droned conveyor belts.<br><br>
Standardized testing, and the distrust that the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts, perpetuates is an undiagnosed Terrorism.<br>
We have fallen a lot since ancient Greece.<br><br>
And close now, with:<br>
"All knowledge is a single point, which the ignorant have
multiplied"<br>
Quran <br><br>
"Imagination is more important than Knowledge"<br>
Albert Einstein<br><br>
"As the leaves are but the ambassadors of the wind, as the snow is
but the messenger of the cold,<br>
so is the word but the dust from the breath of a creative thought.<br>
Morya<br><br>
And finally:<br>
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep,
and many miles to go before I sleep." <br>
Robert Frost, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy
Evening"<br><br>
Then Warm Regards to you all,<br><br>
Harvey Bornfield<br><br>
<br>
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<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></html>
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