Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA School Notes Wed. July 15 - GS
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 15:25, Eduardo H. Silvahoboprim...@gmail.com wrote: My humble opinions on what Sugar could learn from this report are bellow. I agree, that's quite good feedback, could someone check we have tickets for all these issues? Thanks, Tomeu 2009/7/15 Greg Smith gregsmit...@gmail.com: Hi All, Here are my notes from today's class. Anurag will send out notes on what we did in class so I will focus on UI and usability comments. I also recorded the post class warm/cold comments. Sorry I didn't get a chance to get on IRC after the class as planned. We got local collaboration working well so we will go with that and stop debugging Jabber issues for now. About 10 x 3rd graders were in the class today. This was their second time with Sugar. Caroline led the class as Walter is travelling and several kids asked where is the other guy?. The main activity was to get pictures of states of wikipedia, then put those in Memorize and create games (e.g. picture of Texas, word Texas makes a match) and share the memorize so two kids can play together. Warm/cold post class comments: Anurag Warm: Collaboration worked well. Kids were able to join each others games and reload games as needed. They could change partners easily too. The importing map from Wikipedia worked well. They quickly understood how to switch from browse to memorize and how to save and access things from the journal. They retained a lot fo what they learned before. Cold: 3 person collaboration didn't always work. Caroline Warm: Collaboration added to the kids engagement. They learned a lot about state names and the drilling aspects seemed to help them remember. There were multiple steps but they seemed to handle it well. It would have been harder with fewer adults to help each kid but every kid got it. Went great overall. Cold: 3 or person collaboration worked sometimes but not always. May have been a work flow thing (e.g. if two already playing third has to wait until end of game to join). The loading and customization of USB sticks was labor intensive. Greg Warm: Fun time and impressive production by the kids in terms of creating games. Cold: Some tasks were hard and kids needed help (see below). Jennifer Warm: kids were enthusiastic. They learned how to spell state names. Kids helped each other out. Cold: Sometimes when switching partners, some kids were left out. Usability comments from me. Educational Context The kids really wanted to know what to do next. If they didn't know where to click to download an image they would just sit and wait or get distracted or ask a teacher or me. With several kids asking you something at the same time and poking you for your attention, its a little overwhelming: what do I do now?, how do you spell Louisiana?, how do I go back to memorize?, etc. I asked the teacher how he handles that and he said he spends extra time preparing them. Gives exact steps, goes over them several times, and ask the kids to repeat back what they will do. He can handle a few kids asking follow up questions but if more than 2 - 3 need help then it probably wasn't explained well enough in advance. That was not what I expected. My inclination is to say go ahead and do whatever you want. You can do this, but anything you create will be original and interesting. Of course, to a kid, do what every you want turns in to run around in the sun and tickle my class mates. If you constrain it to: in the class using the computer, they want to know what to do next. They want to do the right thing, finish the assignment and accomplish their task. So structure and direction is important. Probably obvious to any teacher but kind of a surprise to me. Steps to accomplish the assigned task. We setup the collaboration and had connected computers in pairs with Memorize open when we started. Their task with steps as we intended was as follows: - Open browse - Go to WIkipedia.org - Type in a state name in the search field - Right click on the picture of the state and choose download - Click continue count down timer ot just wait for download to complete. - Click OK or Show in Journal - Open frame - Choose Memorize - Choose create tab as needed - Choose eye icon to upload state image - Find and select state image on journal - Type state name in matching tile - Click Add pair - Repeat as needed - Save Game - Click Play tab - Open game Play with friend or variant of choose SHare with my Neighborhood and have friend find you. Everybody got it eventually but most needed help somewhere. Examples of things they needed help with, from kids I worked with: - Couldn't remember how to start world AKA browse. - Needed help spelling Wikipedia. - Couldn't find search field on wikipedia because frame was covering half of it - Needed help spelling state names - Didn't remember Right click on image to download in browse. This is one place
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA School Notes Wed. July 15 - GS
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 21:28, Greg Smithgregsmit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, Here are my notes from today's class. Anurag will send out notes on what we did in class so I will focus on UI and usability comments. I also recorded the post class warm/cold comments. Wonder if we could send emails like this to IAEP for more broad feedback, then send a shorter email with specific issues, questions, etc to sugar-devel? I have trouble seeing what we can do from the development side to improve on these use cases, but maybe after some discussion in IAEP this clears up. Keep up the great work, Tomeu Sorry I didn't get a chance to get on IRC after the class as planned. We got local collaboration working well so we will go with that and stop debugging Jabber issues for now. About 10 x 3rd graders were in the class today. This was their second time with Sugar. Caroline led the class as Walter is travelling and several kids asked where is the other guy?. The main activity was to get pictures of states of wikipedia, then put those in Memorize and create games (e.g. picture of Texas, word Texas makes a match) and share the memorize so two kids can play together. Warm/cold post class comments: Anurag Warm: Collaboration worked well. Kids were able to join each others games and reload games as needed. They could change partners easily too. The importing map from Wikipedia worked well. They quickly understood how to switch from browse to memorize and how to save and access things from the journal. They retained a lot fo what they learned before. Cold: 3 person collaboration didn't always work. Caroline Warm: Collaboration added to the kids engagement. They learned a lot about state names and the drilling aspects seemed to help them remember. There were multiple steps but they seemed to handle it well. It would have been harder with fewer adults to help each kid but every kid got it. Went great overall. Cold: 3 or person collaboration worked sometimes but not always. May have been a work flow thing (e.g. if two already playing third has to wait until end of game to join). The loading and customization of USB sticks was labor intensive. Greg Warm: Fun time and impressive production by the kids in terms of creating games. Cold: Some tasks were hard and kids needed help (see below). Jennifer Warm: kids were enthusiastic. They learned how to spell state names. Kids helped each other out. Cold: Sometimes when switching partners, some kids were left out. Usability comments from me. Educational Context The kids really wanted to know what to do next. If they didn't know where to click to download an image they would just sit and wait or get distracted or ask a teacher or me. With several kids asking you something at the same time and poking you for your attention, its a little overwhelming: what do I do now?, how do you spell Louisiana?, how do I go back to memorize?, etc. I asked the teacher how he handles that and he said he spends extra time preparing them. Gives exact steps, goes over them several times, and ask the kids to repeat back what they will do. He can handle a few kids asking follow up questions but if more than 2 - 3 need help then it probably wasn't explained well enough in advance. That was not what I expected. My inclination is to say go ahead and do whatever you want. You can do this, but anything you create will be original and interesting. Of course, to a kid, do what every you want turns in to run around in the sun and tickle my class mates. If you constrain it to: in the class using the computer, they want to know what to do next. They want to do the right thing, finish the assignment and accomplish their task. So structure and direction is important. Probably obvious to any teacher but kind of a surprise to me. Steps to accomplish the assigned task. We setup the collaboration and had connected computers in pairs with Memorize open when we started. Their task with steps as we intended was as follows: - Open browse - Go to WIkipedia.org - Type in a state name in the search field - Right click on the picture of the state and choose download - Click continue count down timer ot just wait for download to complete. - Click OK or Show in Journal - Open frame - Choose Memorize - Choose create tab as needed - Choose eye icon to upload state image - Find and select state image on journal - Type state name in matching tile - Click Add pair - Repeat as needed - Save Game - Click Play tab - Open game Play with friend or variant of choose SHare with my Neighborhood and have friend find you. Everybody got it eventually but most needed help somewhere. Examples of things they needed help with, from kids I worked with: - Couldn't remember how to start world AKA browse. - Needed help spelling Wikipedia. - Couldn't find search field on wikipedia because frame was covering half of it - Needed help spelling
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA School Notes Wed. July 15 - GS
My humble opinions on what Sugar could learn from this report are bellow. 2009/7/15 Greg Smith gregsmit...@gmail.com: Hi All, Here are my notes from today's class. Anurag will send out notes on what we did in class so I will focus on UI and usability comments. I also recorded the post class warm/cold comments. Sorry I didn't get a chance to get on IRC after the class as planned. We got local collaboration working well so we will go with that and stop debugging Jabber issues for now. About 10 x 3rd graders were in the class today. This was their second time with Sugar. Caroline led the class as Walter is travelling and several kids asked where is the other guy?. The main activity was to get pictures of states of wikipedia, then put those in Memorize and create games (e.g. picture of Texas, word Texas makes a match) and share the memorize so two kids can play together. Warm/cold post class comments: Anurag Warm: Collaboration worked well. Kids were able to join each others games and reload games as needed. They could change partners easily too. The importing map from Wikipedia worked well. They quickly understood how to switch from browse to memorize and how to save and access things from the journal. They retained a lot fo what they learned before. Cold: 3 person collaboration didn't always work. Caroline Warm: Collaboration added to the kids engagement. They learned a lot about state names and the drilling aspects seemed to help them remember. There were multiple steps but they seemed to handle it well. It would have been harder with fewer adults to help each kid but every kid got it. Went great overall. Cold: 3 or person collaboration worked sometimes but not always. May have been a work flow thing (e.g. if two already playing third has to wait until end of game to join). The loading and customization of USB sticks was labor intensive. Greg Warm: Fun time and impressive production by the kids in terms of creating games. Cold: Some tasks were hard and kids needed help (see below). Jennifer Warm: kids were enthusiastic. They learned how to spell state names. Kids helped each other out. Cold: Sometimes when switching partners, some kids were left out. Usability comments from me. Educational Context The kids really wanted to know what to do next. If they didn't know where to click to download an image they would just sit and wait or get distracted or ask a teacher or me. With several kids asking you something at the same time and poking you for your attention, its a little overwhelming: what do I do now?, how do you spell Louisiana?, how do I go back to memorize?, etc. I asked the teacher how he handles that and he said he spends extra time preparing them. Gives exact steps, goes over them several times, and ask the kids to repeat back what they will do. He can handle a few kids asking follow up questions but if more than 2 - 3 need help then it probably wasn't explained well enough in advance. That was not what I expected. My inclination is to say go ahead and do whatever you want. You can do this, but anything you create will be original and interesting. Of course, to a kid, do what every you want turns in to run around in the sun and tickle my class mates. If you constrain it to: in the class using the computer, they want to know what to do next. They want to do the right thing, finish the assignment and accomplish their task. So structure and direction is important. Probably obvious to any teacher but kind of a surprise to me. Steps to accomplish the assigned task. We setup the collaboration and had connected computers in pairs with Memorize open when we started. Their task with steps as we intended was as follows: - Open browse - Go to WIkipedia.org - Type in a state name in the search field - Right click on the picture of the state and choose download - Click continue count down timer ot just wait for download to complete. - Click OK or Show in Journal - Open frame - Choose Memorize - Choose create tab as needed - Choose eye icon to upload state image - Find and select state image on journal - Type state name in matching tile - Click Add pair - Repeat as needed - Save Game - Click Play tab - Open game Play with friend or variant of choose SHare with my Neighborhood and have friend find you. Everybody got it eventually but most needed help somewhere. Examples of things they needed help with, from kids I worked with: - Couldn't remember how to start world AKA browse. - Needed help spelling Wikipedia. - Couldn't find search field on wikipedia because frame was covering half of it - Needed help spelling state names - Didn't remember Right click on image to download in browse. This is one place where palettes aren't opened by hovering. The thinking that eben told me, was that in websites with many images, lots of palettes appearing would get in the way. I think it should be tested on
