[IAEP] GPA Class Notes August 5

[David Farning]

Greg,

How have you been doing turning these reports in bug reports for the
development side of the project?  If you would like, I can start
working through your reports turning them into bug reports with a
keyword such as GPA.

david

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:12 PM, Greg Smith<gregsmithpm at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Here are my notes from the last class at Gardner public school on August 5.
>
> Caroline, Bill, Anurag and I had a class with 9 x 3rd graders.
> Caroline led the class.
>
> Caroline introduced the class and saying we could not finish making
> the games but we would try to make the computer talk and the kids
> would take the USB sticks home today.
>
> She asked who has computers at home and everyone raised their hand.
> Then she asked what was the "coolest" thing they had done and what was
> the most challenging. Three kids answered:
> 1 -
> coolest: making your own memorize game
> most challenging: playing Conozco Uruguay in Spanish as some kids
> didn't know Spanish
>
> 2 -
> Coolest: painting your own pictures.
> Most challenging: getting pictures from the internet
>
> 3 -
> coolest and most challenging were the same: playing maze game.
>
> Caroline then showed the kdis how to put a CD in and the USB stick
> then reboot to bring up sugar. Kids went to the computers and that
> went well. 4/5 kids got the USB in OK. 1/5 had trouble connecting it
> and asked for help.
>
> Back on the carpet Caroline explained the Home list view and how you
> can flag activities there to show in the Home circle view. Then she
> asked the kids to try that and to try playing some of the games. She
> showed the physics game and the kids "oohed" at that.
>
> Many kids had trouble finding the list view, understanding how to
> click the star to pick activities and most difficult was to get back
> to circle home view. See UI comments at the end for more, in short
> they usually missed the need to click on the dot within circle icon in
> the upper right from the Home|List view.
>
> Several kids really wanted to play Maze but the scale was wrong and
> they couldn't. Same problem for Physics. In both cases, a part of the
> app was off screen. We definitely need a "screen resolution" option.
>
> They tried Speak. In most cases they didn't hear it (possibly more
> debugging data later from the team). It worked for one or two kids and
> for one it was crashing the OS and needing reboot after working a
> while.
>
> We showed them Mama media stick builder, cartoon builder, solitaire
> bounce a bunch of other games. They seemed to like them but often ran
> out of patience or wanted to be shown what to do. Some kids decided to
> try to chat. They needed instructions on how to connect with each
> other (more below) but liked that once it was up.
>
> Back on the carpet, Caroline explained how to go to Sugar activities
> page and download new activities with the Implode game as an example.
>
> Kids really wanted to play Scary Maze
> (http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=scary+maze+game+3&aq=0&oq=scary+maze+game+&aqi=g10&fp=flbC24gbdiA)
> but we said that wasn't available. I tried it via Flash later and it
> worked fine but I wasn't sure its really kid appropriate. I realized
> that they probably like it because of the adrenalin rush at being
> scared when you make a small mistake. I think Nintendo 64, Game Boy
> and other popular younger kid games also benefit from provoking the
> adrenalin response. I think Sugar could use more adrenalin provoking
> games....
>
> Many kids needed help launching Browse and finding the sugar home
> page. BTW often they ask for help because someone is there to help. If
> no one was there they would probably soldier on themselves.
>
> On activities page they tried to find Pacman to no avail. We also
> found Gcompris maze games which they liked. Implode,Gcompris chess,
> and bounce were also popular.
>
> Caroline then exhorted them to wait until the computer shuts down
> before taking out USB. Then they each took a boot helper CD and USB
> stick and the class was over.
>
> We debriefed mostly on UI suggestions and areas which were hard for
> the kids. Not order comments:
>
> - Drop down menus don't show fast enough. In general kids need some
> kind of feedback on each click on when waiting (e.g. hour glass
> cursor). This was most apparent when trying to shut down activities
> because too many are running. I watched a kid do this by opening the
> frame, clicking on the activity, waiting for the drop down, choosing
> stop from that, then clicking the check mark in the Name This Journal
> entry popup. He had about 6 activities open and it took him about 10
> minutes to close them, mostly because he kept looking at what the next
> kid over was doing while he waited for the menu to show. Also, the
> check box to close Journal naming dialog was not obvious and in
> general not needed. Possible improvement would be to make that an "X"
> and to not even show it when someone closes from the frame or home
> view and the activity has not changed since the last save/keep.
>
> - When downloading new activities the count down was not always enough
> feedback that the computer is "working". Also, if you don't click "OK"
> and just download another file next, the original OK dialog/bar stays
> there waiting until its gets its OK click.
>
> - Bill mentioned that the names of "things" often includes the file
> name or other data when it would be better to see a more human useful
> name. One example is when they opened Turtle Art examples they read
> the name nnnn.sa by pronouncing the extension. Seems related also to
> my comment about how hard it is to find journal entries because the
> full URL is listed first.
>
> - Maze and physics were to big to fit on the screen. Not sure if that
> is a problem of the actitvity itself, but a screen resolution changing
> tool would be useful. This is important on SoaS when it wasn't so hot
> on XO.
>
> - Gcompris chess didn't save/keep when clicking the stop button.
>
> - When trying to chat kids instinct was to have both kids open chat.
> The way you must do it is to have one open chat then choose share with
> my neighborhood. Kids needed to be shown where share with my
> neighborhood drop down is. Most kids I saw clicked on the text "share
> with". Its not clear enough that the oblong oval (rounded rectangle?)
> next to that is a drop down list. They needed to be reminded to go to
> the Neighborhood view. Once there they often clicked on the XO icon
> above the chat icon. You need to click on the chat icon itself and
> that's a consistent misconception. One kid asked for "emoticons" and
> other images to put in the chat. Caroline thought that it would be
> wise to allow kids to open chat then see what other chats are shared
> or available from within the activity.
>
> - Activities search tool on Sugar home page was a little troublesome
> in two main ways: 1) hard to go back to start a new search after
> digging a few clicks in. Back button works but would be nice to have a
> "new search" link. 2) Hard to see a a list of all activities. Search
> with blank text does it but not sure any kids would try that. Also, we
> believe that there are some activities on OLPC wiki which are not on
> the Sugar list (e.g. pacman and some eToys examples).
>
> - Switching from list view to circle view was not clear. Here's the
> click order as it stands now:
> 1 -- Start at home|circle
> 2 -- Click list view
> 3 -- star/select activities
> 4 -- Click circle view icon
>
> Its step 4 that's problematic. Instinct when on list view and wanting
> to see the circle is to click the dot within circle icon (F3). That
> just leaves you at List|Home view. Most everyone ran in to this.
> Another challenge is that the icons for switching from list <-> circle
> are in the upper right corner. So you often hit the frame which has a
> nice circle icon on it (=F3). In general, way too many UI elements are
> right near the corner which pops up the frame.
>
> - Kids consistently couldn't find the stop button. Either because it
> was on a different tab or because the icon doesn't ring true.
>
> That's it! Thanks a lot to Caroline et al for the chance to see the SW
> in action.
>
> I hope developers don't get too take it badly that there are lots of
> "suggestions" or complaints. In general the SW is great, things go
> well and its an awesome project. I just focus on continuous
> improvement but ts nit meant as criticism.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg S
>
> BTW I am 1 - 2 weeks behind on reading the lists. CC me directly as
> needed and I hope to catch up a little before the end of August.
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