[IAEP] Reflections on giving a Sugar Demo

[Caroline Meeks]

First off it went well. The teacher's loved Sugar, saw a lot of
possibilities and are motivated to help us go forward. People talked with me
about it the entire conference.

That said, I learned a lot of lessons and there are things I would do
differently.


   - Always bring an AP. Don't use existing wireless.

When I tested before class the wireless seemed great. We packed the room.
The wireless network got very flacky.  Next time I'm going to bring an AP
and just try to collaborate locally.  I'm thinking of getting one of the
open-mesh $29.00 units and seeing how that works.


   - Either get USB sticks to boot OR teach about Sugar, don't try to do
   both at once.

The class was packed and although most of the computers finally booted to
sugar it took a lot of time.  Until we really get things down I think I'm
going to hand out LiveCDs then after wards tell people I'll work with them
one-on-one to get it to boot from USB.

We need to create a list of Sugar Basics that we cover before we turn people
loose to explore.


   1. This is the Home Screen.
   2. This icon represents you and its your colors
   3. Here is how you get to the frame.
   4. This is the Neighborhood view.  You can get there from the frame or
   from F1.
   5. Here is how you connect to the AP. More color in the circle means
   stronger signal (Someone told me that he thought he should go for the empty
   ones cause it meant they had more room)
   6. This the your group view. Your friends will show up here.
   7. This is the Journal where your work is saved.
   8. To do something go to your Home screen and click on any of these
   icons. They are the activities.

We didn't do this and people got frustrated needlessly. We want them to
explore but I think we need to figure out what people need to oriented too
before they explore.   I wonder if showing the demo movie would have been a
good way to cover this.

We didn't get to the lesson plan I created because we had so many people and
so many problems booting.  Luckily Walter can do a Sugar and Turtle Art
presentation in his sleep.

One thing we should have done, and would have gotten to if we had been able
to follow our plan, is to demo Write and peer editing.  This is a big deal
for teachers.  We need to remember to do it early in the presentation,
before we get sucked into playing with the cute turtle.

-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20090626/aa13b34c/attachment.htm