Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
I think that we could do most of the games with the game logic I can hand off to them in Turtle Art. They won't be doing the back-end programming, but I think they'll learn a lot and they'll have a lot of latitude in creating their games. -walter On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 7:59 AM, Greg Smithgregsmit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Walter, That looks cool. Will it allow the kids to make the games they described? The hardest one may be the last. From the screen shot, it looks like you don't need to learn a lot of Turtle logic to play the game but you may need to learn it to create new games. Do you plan to use this new game type in class tomorrow? I'll see you then. Thanks, Greg S * Well, I couldn't help myself: See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:State-game.png It was pretty easy to code in Turtle Art :) -walter * Walter has given the kids a challenge to make their own game. They came up with 6 examples of games they want to make: 1. Guatemala. Departments numbered and corresponding to images on the map. 2. Sports team logos in the US. Then find the state or city for each team. 3. Presidents. Match pictures of presidents with names. 4. Presidents mashup (word used by kid!). Take a jumbled up a list of pictures of presidents and put them in order. 5. Countries and states in North America. 6. Find me. Start with an animation of a spinning globe. Find north america and show that. Find US, find MA, Find Boston, Find Allston, Find Gardner Pilot Academy. One kid yelled out then find the desk in the office. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
Hi Gary, Thanks for the comments and follow up! BTW I have not been able to keep up with all the buddy/tagging/toolbar design discussions. You guys are just too productive :-) When designing, if you have a specific question re: GPA or something you want feedback on from kids, copy me or call out my name and I'll try to follow up on it. I'll try out the star icon in the journal and comment on that after tomorrow. Addressing two points below from two of your responses: 1 - Name in Journal of file saved from browse I may have mixed two issues. This one is not tagging. The work flow for this is as described in lesson #2 here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Social_Studies_and_History After saving a file from wikipedia then opening Memorize and clicking to load an image from the journal, the files are hard to find in the journal, especially if you saved a couple of them. The journal shows something like: http:/nnn.nn.nn [image size] [more text]. Its just hard to see which one is Texas and which California.Maybe it an issue with interpreting the URL wikipedia uses. It would be better if we could name the journal entry with say the alternate tex (e.g. Map of the United States with Massachusetts highlighted) but that may not be good in all cases. I'll get the exact syntax of what the Journal shows and try to figure out why its hard to interpret tomorrow. A thumb nail of any images would be very helpful too. 2 - Quiz activity That sounds great, thanks for working on it. You could consider a feature to show a new page/image on clicking the right thing. A hyper text-like linking may go a long way if its not too hard to build. I'm thinking of the Zoom In game the girl in GPA came up with. It shows the world then when you click on the right continent it zooms to that and you have to find the country etc. If the kids can define what image with multiple parts they see after each successful click you are well on the way to making web sites and other hypertext concepts. Just a suggestion, time permitting. Thanks, Greg S 1 - Name in Journal of file saved from browse We should use the URL name (not sure of the right technical term but I mean the short name you see in browsers, e.g. www.google.com appears as Google. That or anything that is more intelligible than what you see by default. Will file a bug when I have a chance unless someone beats me to it. I'm not sure what you mean by file a bug for this? Tagging works, and has worked in Journal/datastore ever since I first used it. It's just that the tagging UI in not very well exposed currently (enter tag words in the Journal details view or the naming dialogue, search for tags with the Journal search field or the Activity ObjectChoser). 2 - Quiz activity I have a plan (as yet unfulfilled) for a picture quiz Activity. Initially as a selection of pre-sets (much like Memorize). But, basically a customisable image background + customisable drag and drop to 'sockets' set of text labels (think fridge magnets). Idea is part of the awards concept as it fits quite well. Hopefully have a demo on 0.86 time scale. It should scale quite well, and fit right in to constructionist ideas (kid can draw, create, import, or photographs an image into the Activity, label it, shares it as a quiz for others). It could be all text if that's the goal, (i.e. picture of Romanian words vs. English labels). I think I'd have the quiz only show a % of the questions to keep the game fresh on re-play. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Greg Smithgregsmit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, I posted the full notes here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes Thanks. Three high level points: - Kids have no trouble finding new activities (e.g. Write) and they want to have more to use. - Its still hard to task switch (we may try teaching them alt - tab next week), find thing son the journal and move data from one activity to another. I'm putting tips like that on [[The undiscoverable]]. That brings up the question of how they can tag the items they want to easily find them later. That is, as they look around on Wikipedia or elsewhere and find text and images they want to use, how do we collect them and show them (and only them) on a clean journal view later. It's clumsy, but after you save an image file you can go to the Journal to change the title in the main Journal view, and add a description and one or more tags in the detail view. Then you can search in the Journal for a tag, and get a list of titles. Downloaded images do not show a preview. This is a bug. The workaround is to open the file and quit the session immediately. You will want to work out a reasonably efficient workflow. For example, o Save lots of images. o Go to the Journal, and open and save each image. o Now that you can see a preview of each image, go into each preview and edit the metadata. I recommend having a separate lesson on images in the Journal before you undertake a project using downloaded images. URLs and downloaded images are very hard to find in the Journal. We should use the URL name (not sure of the right technical term but I mean the short name you see in browsers, e.g. www.google.com appears as Google. That's Title in HTML, but it's the title of the page. Unfortunately for your idea, images on Web pages usually don't have titles of their own. That or anything that is more intelligible than what you see by default. Will file a bug when I have a chance unless someone beats me to it. I welcome any suggestions on tagging and collecting items. I believe its just careful use of tagging and filtering but details on expected work flow can save us some time. Thanks, Greg S ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 5:44 AM, Greg Smithgregsmit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Gary, Thanks for the comments and follow up! Addressing two points below from two of your responses: 1 - Name in Journal of file saved from browse I may have mixed two issues. This one is not tagging. The work flow for this is as described in lesson #2 here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Social_Studies_and_History After saving a file from wikipedia then opening Memorize and clicking to load an image from the journal, the files are hard to find in the journal, especially if you saved a couple of them. The journal shows something like: http:/nnn.nn.nn [image size] [more text]. Its just hard to see which one is Texas and which California.Maybe it an issue with interpreting the URL wikipedia uses. It would be better if we could name the journal entry with say the alternate tex (e.g. Map of the United States with Massachusetts highlighted) but that may not be good in all cases. I'll get the exact syntax of what the Journal shows and try to figure out why its hard to interpret tomorrow. A thumb nail of any images would be very helpful too. Workaround: Save file(s) in Browse. Go to Journal. No previews (Ticket #1106), so open and quit each image to create them. Looking at each preview, edit Title, Description, Tags. There is no agreed scheme for naming files on the Web or for alt-text contents, so there is no automatic way to generate a meaningful name for a download. It might be possible to find a solution for just Wikipedia. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_USA_CA.svg Thanks, Greg S Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
Hi All, I posted the full notes here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes Three high level points: - Kids have no trouble finding new activities (e.g. Write) and they want to have more to use. - Its still hard to task switch (we may try teaching them alt - tab next week), find thing son the journal and move data from one activity to another. - Conozco Uruguay is very effective at helping kids memorize. Walter has given the kids a challenge to make their own game. They came up with 6 examples of games they want to make: 1. Guatemala. Departments numbered and corresponding to images on the map. 2. Sports team logos in the US. Then find the state or city for each team. 3. Presidents. Match pictures of presidents with names. 4. Presidents mashup (word used by kid!). Take a jumbled up a list of pictures of presidents and put them in order. 5. Countries and states in North America. 6. Find me. Start with an animation of a spinning globe. Find north america and show that. Find US, find MA, Find Boston, Find Allston, Find Gardner Pilot Academy. One kid yelled out then find the desk in the office. We're not completely sure which authoring environment to use. Walter is taking the lead on that and may use Conozco Uruguay code base or something else. See notes for more details. Suggestions and help customizing apps appreciated. We have one extra week for the kids to collect images and write down ideas before they starting building the interface. That brings up the question of how they can tag the items they want to easily find them later. That is, as they look around on Wikipedia or elsewhere and find text and images they want to use, how do we collect them and show them (and only them) on a clean journal view late. URLs and downloaded images are very hard to find in the Journal. We should use the URL name (not sure of the right technical term but I mean the short name you see in browsers, e.g. www.google.com appears as Google. That or anything that is more intelligible than what you see by default. Will file a bug when I have a chance unless someone beats me to it. I welcome any suggestions on tagging and collecting items. I believe its just careful use of tagging and filtering but details on expected work flow can save us some time. Thanks, Greg S ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Greg Smithgregsmit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, I posted the full notes here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes Three high level points: - Kids have no trouble finding new activities (e.g. Write) and they want to have more to use. - Its still hard to task switch (we may try teaching them alt - tab next week), find thing son the journal and move data from one activity to another. They did readily pick up on using shortcut keys... I told them about F1 and F3 and they almost all started using those two keys instead of going to the Frame. Also, Ctrl-F is not easy to type. - Conozco Uruguay is very effective at helping kids memorize. Walter has given the kids a challenge to make their own game. They came up with 6 examples of games they want to make: 1. Guatemala. Departments numbered and corresponding to images on the map. 2. Sports team logos in the US. Then find the state or city for each team. 3. Presidents. Match pictures of presidents with names. 4. Presidents mashup (word used by kid!). Take a jumbled up a list of pictures of presidents and put them in order. 5. Countries and states in North America. 6. Find me. Start with an animation of a spinning globe. Find north america and show that. Find US, find MA, Find Boston, Find Allston, Find Gardner Pilot Academy. One kid yelled out then find the desk in the office. We're not completely sure which authoring environment to use. Walter is taking the lead on that and may use Conozco Uruguay code base or something else. See notes for more details. Suggestions and help customizing apps appreciated. It could be as simple as a tool that lets them associate a question with a multiple choice answer that corresponds to some label on an image or map. (e.g., the map can have letters and the questions can ask for the letter that corresponds to the answer; no need to do any coordinate system mapping in this case.) We have one extra week for the kids to collect images and write down ideas before they starting building the interface. That brings up the question of how they can tag the items they want to easily find them later. That is, as they look around on Wikipedia or elsewhere and find text and images they want to use, how do we collect them and show them (and only them) on a clean journal view late. URLs and downloaded images are very hard to find in the Journal. We should use the URL name (not sure of the right technical term but I mean the short name you see in browsers, e.g. www.google.com appears as Google. That or anything that is more intelligible than what you see by default. Will file a bug when I have a chance unless someone beats me to it. I welcome any suggestions on tagging and collecting items. I believe its just careful use of tagging and filtering but details on expected work flow can save us some time. Thanks, Greg S ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
Well, I couldn't help myself: See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:State-game.png It was pretty easy to code in Turtle Art :) -walter On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Walter Benderwalter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Greg Smithgregsmit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, I posted the full notes here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes Three high level points: - Kids have no trouble finding new activities (e.g. Write) and they want to have more to use. - Its still hard to task switch (we may try teaching them alt - tab next week), find thing son the journal and move data from one activity to another. They did readily pick up on using shortcut keys... I told them about F1 and F3 and they almost all started using those two keys instead of going to the Frame. Also, Ctrl-F is not easy to type. - Conozco Uruguay is very effective at helping kids memorize. Walter has given the kids a challenge to make their own game. They came up with 6 examples of games they want to make: 1. Guatemala. Departments numbered and corresponding to images on the map. 2. Sports team logos in the US. Then find the state or city for each team. 3. Presidents. Match pictures of presidents with names. 4. Presidents mashup (word used by kid!). Take a jumbled up a list of pictures of presidents and put them in order. 5. Countries and states in North America. 6. Find me. Start with an animation of a spinning globe. Find north america and show that. Find US, find MA, Find Boston, Find Allston, Find Gardner Pilot Academy. One kid yelled out then find the desk in the office. We're not completely sure which authoring environment to use. Walter is taking the lead on that and may use Conozco Uruguay code base or something else. See notes for more details. Suggestions and help customizing apps appreciated. It could be as simple as a tool that lets them associate a question with a multiple choice answer that corresponds to some label on an image or map. (e.g., the map can have letters and the questions can ask for the letter that corresponds to the answer; no need to do any coordinate system mapping in this case.) We have one extra week for the kids to collect images and write down ideas before they starting building the interface. That brings up the question of how they can tag the items they want to easily find them later. That is, as they look around on Wikipedia or elsewhere and find text and images they want to use, how do we collect them and show them (and only them) on a clean journal view late. URLs and downloaded images are very hard to find in the Journal. We should use the URL name (not sure of the right technical term but I mean the short name you see in browsers, e.g. www.google.com appears as Google. That or anything that is more intelligible than what you see by default. Will file a bug when I have a chance unless someone beats me to it. I welcome any suggestions on tagging and collecting items. I believe its just careful use of tagging and filtering but details on expected work flow can save us some time. Thanks, Greg S ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
Hi Greg, On 22 Jul 2009, at 19:58, Greg Smith wrote: That brings up the question of how they can tag the items they want to easily find them later. That is, as they look around on Wikipedia or elsewhere and find text and images they want to use, how do we collect them and show them (and only them) on a clean journal view late. URLs and downloaded images are very hard to find in the Journal. Use a standard tag for them (details view only, I'm afraid, for object downloads), or perhaps star favourite them in the Journal (or both)? Obviously naming the downloaded item also is a good habit, but not sure how that aligns with the literacy level of the class. We should use the URL name (not sure of the right technical term but I mean the short name you see in browsers, e.g. www.google.com appears as Google. That or anything that is more intelligible than what you see by default. Will file a bug when I have a chance unless someone beats me to it. I'm not sure what you mean by file a bug for this? Tagging works, and has worked in Journal/datastore ever since I first used it. It's just that the tagging UI in not very well exposed currently (enter tag words in the Journal details view or the naming dialogue, search for tags with the Journal search field or the Activity ObjectChoser). The 'tags' just appear as a plain text list of words in all current cases, so I agree it needs to have a child friendly/accessible interface/presentation – if that was going to be your enhancement request ticket, please cc me on it :-) But it does need ideas from the field related to what the children are able to accomplish. Regards, --Gary P.S. Any input on the mock-ups at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Journal would be most useful as a number of the images try to expose tagging further than we have so far (I've had minimal feedback on tagging presentation). ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS
On 22 Jul 2009, at 20:09, Walter Bender wrote: On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Greg Smithgregsmit...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, I posted the full notes here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes Three high level points: - Kids have no trouble finding new activities (e.g. Write) and they want to have more to use. - Its still hard to task switch (we may try teaching them alt - tab next week), find thing son the journal and move data from one activity to another. They did readily pick up on using shortcut keys... I told them about F1 and F3 and they almost all started using those two keys instead of going to the Frame. Also, Ctrl-F is not easy to type. Never doubt the power of 'muscle' memory, (well the mostly in the cerebellum if we are being honest). I would put 'muscle' memory above many visual memory tasks in terms of performance. With use, regular use of muscle motions becomes extremely natural to perform (ask any touch typist). - Conozco Uruguay is very effective at helping kids memorize. Walter has given the kids a challenge to make their own game. They came up with 6 examples of games they want to make: 1. Guatemala. Departments numbered and corresponding to images on the map. 2. Sports team logos in the US. Then find the state or city for each team. 3. Presidents. Match pictures of presidents with names. 4. Presidents mashup (word used by kid!). Take a jumbled up a list of pictures of presidents and put them in order. 5. Countries and states in North America. 6. Find me. Start with an animation of a spinning globe. Find north america and show that. Find US, find MA, Find Boston, Find Allston, Find Gardner Pilot Academy. One kid yelled out then find the desk in the office. We're not completely sure which authoring environment to use. Walter is taking the lead on that and may use Conozco Uruguay code base or something else. See notes for more details. Suggestions and help customizing apps appreciated. It could be as simple as a tool that lets them associate a question with a multiple choice answer that corresponds to some label on an image or map. (e.g., the map can have letters and the questions can ask for the letter that corresponds to the answer; no need to do any coordinate system mapping in this case.) I have a plan (as yet unfulfilled) for a picture quiz Activity. Initially as a selection of pre-sets (much like Memorize). But, basically a customisable image background + customisable drag and drop to 'sockets' set of text labels (think fridge magnets). Idea is part of the awards concept as it fits quite well. Hopefully have a demo on 0.86 time scale. It should scale quite well, and fit right in to constructionist ideas (kid can draw, create, import, or photographs an image into the Activity, label it, shares it as a quiz for others). It could be all text if that's the goal, (i.e. picture of Romanian words vs. English labels). I think I'd have the quiz only show a % of the questions to keep the game fresh on re-play. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
