Hi All, Here are some notes from my 1.5 hours in the computer lab at GPA with 10 3rd graders.
They are also posted here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes Comments before class: - We usually boot up each computer with USB stick but Caroline mentioned that its better to let the kids insert and boot. That way they can choose who sits together. - We saw one kid putting a USB cap in his mouth which is a choking danger. - We reviewed the TA lesson plan from Walter and decided to have someone prepare the computers while Walter presented. Walter showed his TurtleArt game designs which should allow the kids to create the games they defined in the previous class. He put up a turtle and asked the kids to say where various places were by saying North, South , East or West. They enjoyed that. One kids noticed that Walter had two USB icons at the bottom of his frame and asked about that. One of the kids pointed to the Maze icon and asked is that a maze game? They wanted to play "games" and saw that Walter computer had more than they had. After the overview, Caroline had each computer running Turtle Art without the new Game examples loaded. We went to the computers and the kids played with Turtle Art for a while. I was very impressed by how quickly they took to playing with it and moving the turtle around. They also found the prebuilt turtle examples and liked looking at what those created. However, without specific instructions, many started to tire and asked to play games. I worked with some kids to find pictures they had saved before and to download new ones in preparation to make their games. Two follow up items on that: - I think the "Star" will work to flag a set of content for quick access later. The kids didn't try it but I did and it looks OK. - Download images appear with the approximately following name in the Journal: FILE: 86 px http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Map_of_USA_MA.svg [more stuff]. I think the challenge to find things is that there is too much data there to easily find and compare. Maybe we should start with the file name (no path). Then the rest of the data? Not a deal breaker but it seemed to cost some time. Meanwhile Walter and Caroline worked on delivering the new TA programs. We also did that after class. It was not pretty, but I'll leave the details to a follow up e-mail by Walter. Next class Walter and Caroline will not be there. So Anurag will run the class and I will be backup. We thought we had two more classes but turns out that next week is the last. So we will put the game building on hold and come back to it in the fall. Next class we will just download games (e.g. maze) and play. Thanks, Greg S _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
