[IAEP] Notes from GPA 7-21

[Edward Cherlin]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Caroline
Meeks<caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
> 2nd Grade working with turtle art and a community map.

This is an excellent report. I would be grateful if you would add the
issues you found in discoverability to the Wiki page [[The
undiscoverable]], along with hints on how to introduce these topics.

Eventually, I think we need to create a dependency map of Sugar
issues, subject matter topics, and lesson plans. For example, Alan
Kay's third-grade gravity lesson (which I wrote up with Turtle Art
models and some additions at
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Gravity.odt) depends on previous
experience in building turtle graphics models (whether in Turtle Art,
Etoys, or UCBLogo) and in taking videos. It also requires a lesson in
taking frames from a video and overlaying them.

> The goal of the class was to add a photo from a field trip to their
> existing turtle art maps
>
> Demoed
> -entering the neighborhood
> -clicking on shared browse activity
> -opening  bookmark
> -choose an image
> - right clicking to download photo
> -going to turtle art
> - using show block to get the photos into a show block (this task they
> had done before)

That sounds like too many new ideas at once.

> Kids then tried it: Here were the issues at each stage.
>
> Entering the neighborhood.
>
> Kids had trouble getting to the frame. I had not introduced the
> keyboard shortcuts.  We are thinking of getting stickers and putting
> them on the F keys in the computer lab.

They didn't know about putting the cursor in any corner either? Or
they had trouble moving the cursor accurately?

Did you have a projector so that the children could see the state of
your screen?

> TODO Make and buy stickers
>
> Clicking on the shared browse activity
>
> Someone went to the home and clicked on browse rather then to
> neighborhood.  For someone this reopened a shared browse from last
> time. However, the url bookmarked in the old activity required login
> so it didn't work. Thus some kids opened the wrong browse and
> everything appeared the same but when they clicked on the bookmark
> thumbnail it didn't work. very confusing.

There are other issues in discovering how to open old sessions and
clean new sessions of activities.

> TODO: Create a lesson that introduces the neighborhood and shared
> activities and the difference between resumed and new activities.

Do we have a place to put such lesson plans?

> -Choose an image
> We had too many choices. We should have narrowed it down to about 5 or
> 10 choices.  The kids did have a very good time looking at their
> photos and everyone did eventually pick one or more so maybe its ok.
> But I would recommend fewer next time.
>
> We also had them click to the big view to download. Given we want them
> small on the map we could have them download the thumbnail instead.
>
> Right click to download image
> This was very hard for the kids. They weren't aware of two buttons and
> didn't know their right from their left.

You might try it with 'x button' and 'o button' as on the XO, with a
picture or stickers. This issue is why the buttons were marked on the
XO.

> The also have a hard time with the count down and the ok. They miss it.

By count down, do you mean the progress bar?

> As mentioned in previous report we need a way to share files directly
> into student journals.

We have Send for sharing with individuals. Do teachers not have a
broadcast sharing function? Should we do a lesson on the Telephone
Tree concept and exponential growth, where each student sends to at
least two others?

> Going to turtle art
> Hadn't gotten the concept of different activities yet.

This is very basic, and should be covered on the first day. I think we
need to get together on an initial set of show and tell lesson plans
for teachers, covering at least

o Open XO
o Power
o Name
o Personal colors
o Four neighborhood views
o Search for classmate by name
o Make friend
o Frame: Buttons, Journal, Activities, Friends, Hardware, Open Documents
o Start/resume activity from home view
o Favorites: unselect vs. delete
o Quit session, with name, description, and tags
o Keep session state, with name, description, and tags
o Resume from Journal
o Hover menu in Journal: Open With, Install
o View more data on Journal entry with right arrowhead button; Edit
metadata; Close view with left arrowhead button
o Sharing in Neighborhood view, with results in activity view and frame.
o Selected Activities: Something like Paint, TamTam, Chat, Etoys,
Talk, Record, Browse; maybe Write, Turtle Art, and Calculate; not
Terminal or Log at first (We might want to change the initial set of
favorites.)

This is obviously far too much to cover on the first day, which should
include a generous period for free exploration. We need to find a
meaningful and memorable use case for each of these functions,
selected so that we never need to violate dependency order.

(This also means that topological sorting should be taught in
teachers' colleges. That's a mathematician's name for what we were
just talking about.)

> Hard time
> getting to the frame. hard time remembering they needed to click on
> the single dot.
>
> Buttons and a lesson that introduces the concept of activities will be helpful.
>
> Using the show block to get the image into turtle art

Also the Set Scale block to resize it.

> The file name picasso downloaded is long and nonuseful.

You need to teach children how to rename downloaded files. We need to
ask the developers for a dialog, similar to Keep, where users can
enter metadata (name, description, tags) when downloading in Browse.

> Having a
> better way to get the images into the journal would help with this.
> Sometimes they click on a turtle art icon rather then an image, this
> results in a picture of the turtle art activity being displayed. So it
> sort of works.  We need to teach more about what activities are and
> how the journal works.
>
> BUG: journal does not show a preview of the downloaded image.

Have you filed that bug?

Workaround: Open in Image Viewer and save from there. You can also
rename the saved file.

> The kids are also still struggling with X and Y. Now that we have
> collaboration working we can give them a turtle art instance with an X
> and Y coordinate and practice explicitly with that skill.

I have one with a programmable block for the function to graph. You
can also use the plot() function in Calculate. Enter help(plot) for
syntax.

> Our plans are:
> - Thursday we are working with a turtle art clock program
> - Tuesday we will create a turtle art with a coordinate system in it
> and share it with the class and work with that and printing out the X
> and Y.  Then we will do another pass of putting more pictures on the
> map.
>
> Overall its going well and the teachers are pleased. We are
> challenging the kids but they are staying engaged and learning. They
> are picking up on the culture of helping each other.  The novelty of
> the computers and turtle has worn off a bit but they are still very
> engaged in what they are trying to do and create.  Everyone stayed
> engaged and made progress.
>
> They really enjoyed seeing their pictures.  The joy we take for
> granted, getting to look at your pictures all on your own screen,
> switching between pictures whenever you are ready, completely under
> your control, I think that isn't something these 7 year olds get very
> often.
>
> I see evidence for the theory of action that using computers to create
> artifacts that are relevant to their life and that they are proud of
> will engage children and result in them continuing to try when they
> might otherwise give up and that continued effort and engagement, even
> when confronted with initial difficulties, will result in increased
> learning.
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
> _______________________________________________
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>



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