Today we worked with two groups on multiplication. They made squares with each side being a different multiplication problem that had the same answer.<div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; border-collapse: collapse; "><a href="http://screencast.com/t/sUbiof2H" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(7, 77, 143); ">http://screencast.com/t/sUbiof2H</a></span></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><a href="http://screencast.com/t/sUbiof2H" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(7, 77, 143); "></a></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">We also had them reflect in their Journals about what they did. </span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">All of this went well.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">What was horrible was trying to get the right point in the project saved to the Journal and then navigating to the correct place to write.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">The solution I suggest is when you click the Keep button (Journal Icon) from an activity that the Journal reflection dialog box appears.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Here are the problems we had.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><ul><li><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Hard to get to the Journal, no easy F# short cut.</span></font></li>
<li><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Hard to find the little arrow that gets you to where you can write. Especially since if the Frame is active, which it has to be to get to the Journal, the little bitty arrow you need to click is covered.</span></font></li>
<li><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">When students did their assigned task they were eager to go back to exploring with Sugar and wrote over their work without it being saved, or using the same name as the assigned activity. This was probably the worst outcome because then it was like they hadn't done the assignment, they had nothing to show for their work and we'll want to use it later for a portfolio.</span></font></li>
<li><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">clicking the Activity Tab to write down the name is a PITA (this one is fixed in .88 I think).</span></font></li>
<li><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">After they reflected they wanted to immediately go back to exploring in TA and we had to stop them, make them change the name again. They were very perplexed by this because they didn't know what to name their new file because they hadn't done anything yet.</span></font></li>
<li><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">The word "Description" is not very friendly. I like "What did you do?" Walter wants to expand it even further, I'm not sure about that, its pretty challenging for the students to type so I'm not sure we want more boxes.</span></font></li>
<li><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Confusion between the Keep button and the samples and the snapshot icons.</span></font></li><li>
<font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">No feedback when you click Keep so there is a tendency to click it repeatedly.</span></font></li></ul>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">I usually try to stick with reporting my observations and not giving specific usability advice but this time I really have an opinion. I think it would be much much more useful to have the Keep button popup the Journal Dialog box. That would let me reflect and also rename if I want to.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">What are the downsides of this?</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Thanks,</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Caroline</span></font></div><br>-- <br>Caroline Meeks<br>Solution Grove<br>Caroline@SolutionGrove.com<br>
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