Educational Considerations

[richmond62]

I started 2 threads on this Forum:

1. BEASTS ago-go

and

2. ANT maze.

Both were intended to guide young (9-12) learners (or, at least complete newcomers) through an easy way to code types of game.

Both have been "hijacked" with comments using code that is NEITHER suitable NOR comprehensible to the demographic I targeted.

All this will serve to do is to drive the target demographic away from these threads (especially 'BEASTS ago-go' as it is NOT completed): and makes the thing look like a sort of mutual admiration exercise between a few advanced programmers.

I am annoyed by what has happened and would request that all the "hijacks' be either deleted or moved to another thread.

You who are massaging each others' egos by showing the fancy tricks you can do with no regard whatsoever to any pedagogical considerations might like to reflect one one or two things:

1. You are advanced programmers who have neither pedagogical experience or qualifications.

2. I am NOT an advanced programmer (and have never pretended to be so), but I am someone with pedagogical and psychological qualifications, and 36 years of educational experience at all levels (Primary to University).

As such I know what I am doing with the way I keep my exercises 'simple' and 'clunky': and would beg you 'clever chaps' to take your clever stuff elsewhere.

My 'BEASTS ago-go thread is now totally disrupted, so "kiddos" wanting to follow along will be unable to because of what they will regard as a mjot turnoff blocking and clogging up the flow of the exercise.

IFF you really want significant uptake of OXT (as you claim) then this is NOT the way to do things.

[FourthWorld]

I started 2 threads on this Forum:

1. BEASTS ago-go

and

2. ANT maze.

Both were intended to guide young (9-12) learners (or, at least complete newcomers) through an easy way to code types of game.

Both have been "hijacked" with comments using code that is NEITHER suitable NOR comprehensible to the demographic I targeted.

Discussion forums can be good for discussion, but do not make a good replacement for a wiki.

[richmond62]

That is a very helpful pointer: thank you.

[FourthWorld]

As the project matures it may be useful to add a wiki to the top-level menu for this domain.

[xAction]

You know what that is? That's KARMA.
Remember the last 20 years or so you have stuck your 2 cents into everyone's thread over here and over there?
It was so bad people were warning me about you personally 17 years ago...

But more to the point:
Children are not going to be showing up to these forums.

They have Roblox:

• There are 3 million developers on the Roblox platform.
• Community developers have made over $701 million on Roblox in the first 9 months of 2023 alone.
• Roblox has over 5.5 million active experiences.
• 60% of Roblox users are under 16.

They have Scratch:

• 151,199,522 projects shared,
• 124,831,965 users registered,
• 924,958,695 comments posted,
• 34,106,662 studios created

Wow, It's become a buzzing social platform

They have Unity, 87,636 projects tagged with that on itch.io
They have Godot, 13,448 projects on Itch.io
They have unreal engine, 11,388 projects on itch.io
They have LÖVE, 2,499 projects on itch.io

They have TikTok: 1.1 billion users

And then there's one project made with xTalk on itch.io


Guess how many views and downloads that has over three years? 129 views, 30 downloads.

If you want to share things, accept that others will share their things too.
Don't assume the whole world is 9 to 11 year olds.

And Stop acting like one of them.

[richmond62]

No, the whole world does not consist of 9 - 11 bairns.

But my post was fairly obviously aimed at 9 - bairns.

And your understanding of how Karma works is at fault.

"Getting what you deserve" is not the same as Karma, so use the first thing if you feel that way.

Karma (in the Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu understandings) operates over reincarnations, and is NOT in the gift of people, but in the gift of Brahman; and NOT in any sense as revenge, but as necessary correctives in the purification of the 'jivātma'. Unfortunately the term is now incorrectly used by people who have never read the original documents (such as some of the upanishads) where it is discussed.

And your responses were NOT 2 cents, they were more like 5000 bucks.

Also, however irritating you may have found my constant 2 cents, they did not totally derail discussions.

[xAction]

Also, however irritating you may have found my constant 2 cents, they did not totally derail discussions.

You were not engaged in a 'discussion', you were shouting into the wind at make-believe children. It did not become a 'discussion' until I added my insight and then instead of moving forward with that information and/or discussing the programming patterns that result in things actually working as intended, you got offended and went on a rant as you are prone to do.

Whole people have left the community, because of conversations like this one, right here. Those people told other people, like myself, about how you personally derailed Runrev with your complaining and bickering like you are doing right here.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but you are living up to the reputation.

We're all trying to do the same thing here, so we should all get along and not see other people's efforts and contributions as an attack or affront.

[richmond62]

You were not engaged in a 'discussion', you were shouting into the wind at make-believe children. It did not become a 'discussion' until I added my insight and then instead of moving forward with that information and/or discussing the programming patterns that result in things actually working as intended, you got offended and went on a rant as you are prone to do.

I was hoping, possibly naively, that anyone commenting on my threads would have tweaked my existing code as it was, rather than suggesting something almost completely different.

I did go on a rant, and the reason for my rant was that I felt (again, possibly naively) that readers would have seen my thread as the "bottom end", aimed at beginners, and as such confined themselves to the "bottom end", or taken a more advanced approach (as yours) into a different thread.

he programming patterns that result in things actually working as intended

The programming 'patterns' in my examples DID work almost exactly as I intended, and beyond speeding them up a bit (which, possibly, only would involve either increasing moveSpeed, or using set rather than move), I had no intention of going further.

The rest of my 'class' (which, now, on the suggestion of Richard Gaskin, I shall see about moving to a Wiki) was going to work on the existing code in a standard pedagogical i+1 way, rather than expecting readers to get involved in major conceptual leaps.

Whole people have left the community, because of conversations like this one, right here. Those people told other people, like myself, about how you personally derailed Runrev with your complaining and bickering like you are doing right here.

I do think you, and a lot of other people, give me far, far too much credit.

And why people should be so sensitive to these things escapes me.

[richmond62]

shouting into the wind at make-believe children

I am not sure what your experience with children is, but my experience is extensive, and it is that children can and do take to xTalk extremely readily if given the chance and some gentle instruction.

In my opinion children are not the problem: and what I do believe are the problems (re uptake of xTalk) are:

1. Decisions made in Ministries of Education (often being monolithic and inflexible).

2. Lack of freedom in schools to choose how to implement a curriculum.

There is a missing factor in this sort of reasoning, and that is the 'hobby' factor.

If xTalk is promoted as a hobby-kit to school children for home-based programming (of, among other things, games) it might pick up,
and, if these "make-believe children" talk to their friends and parents about xTalk, begin to get sufficient traction that decision makers might
begin to see it as the half-way house between SCRATCH & Co. and C++ and so on.

And what I am suggesting is not in any way meant to 'block' xTalk being developed into a fully-blown programming environment that people like Paul obviously envisage.

[richmond62]

see other people's efforts and contributions as an attack or affront.

I do NOT see other people's efforts and contributions as an attack or affront.

But I do feel that in recent cases other people's efforts and contributions were posted in the wrong place.

It would be a good idea if, in the sections we had:

1. OpenXTalk Education: Primary Level.

2. OpenXTalk Education: Secondary Level.

3. OpenXTalk Education: Tertiary Level.

Then characters like myself could be left to my own devices in #1 or #2, and more advanced stuff could be put into #3.

[richmond62]

Children are not going to be showing up to these forums.

Now someone else is getting dogmatic.

[FourthWorld]

see other people's efforts and contributions as an attack or affront.

I do NOT see other people's efforts and contributions as an attack or affront.

But I do feel that in recent cases other people's efforts and contributions were posted in the wrong place.

It would be a good idea if, in the sections we had:

1. OpenXTalk Education: Primary Level.

2. OpenXTalk Education: Secondary Level.

3. OpenXTalk Education: Tertiary Level.

Then characters like myself could be left to my own devices in #1 or #2, and more advanced stuff could be put into #3.

As a long-time moderator of online forums (going back to the CompuServe days), I would recommend building out sections only when needed. It's too easy to start building out categories and subcategories for things we can think of but then remain ghost towns for months or longer, just adding to the options everyone has to sort through to figure out where to post and read.

The LC forums were a strong example of that before the taxonomy overhaul a few years ago, and are arguably still too broad given the number of posts placed in less appropriate categories. I can't blame users; we just shouldn't be overloading them with choices.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

see other people's efforts and contributions as an attack or affront.

I do NOT see other people's efforts and contributions as an attack or affront.

But I do feel that in recent cases other people's efforts and contributions were posted in the wrong place.

It would be a good idea if, in the sections we had:

1. OpenXTalk Education: Primary Level.

2. OpenXTalk Education: Secondary Level.

3. OpenXTalk Education: Tertiary Level.

Then characters like myself could be left to my own devices in #1 or #2, and more advanced stuff could be put into #3.

We already have categories with topic parameters listed. xTalk Fun & Games is one of them. That is where I intended for Amusements stacks, Games & Game Development discussions to be.
That is what your stack was about, animating with still Images and controlling a sprite character.
Honestly this OXT xTalk engine is not parricularly good for that in its current state (but certainly has room for improvement.

And I would second that Karma comments, if for nothing else because of the fact that you have doubled the amount of posts on these forums than the admin (me) has! Some of these topics have pages and pages of single line snarky comments and goofy picts. However on these forums we've all hijacked threads and veered off of the original topic, and I'm OK with that as long as it's generally still xTalk focused (or in the Off-Topic sub-forum). Sometimes a bit of snark or poking helps spur valuable conversations, sometimes it just pisses people off.

[richmond62]

Well, snarky comments can be a bit hit or miss, and it is often difficult in advance to know which will be the result.