[Sugar-devel] GPA School Visit report for Tuesday July 14

[Greg Smith]

Hi All,

I'm sending this to the devel instead of the IAEP list as it contains
a number of technical/UI design comments that I think need developer
follow up.

Feel free to forward to other lists, blogs etc. as appropriate.

Notes:

I joined the team (Anurag, Caroline, and Bill) as the class of 22 x
2nd graders was leaving. This was their third class with Sugar/Turtle
Art. They do it twice a week.

As I got there I noticed a kid had unplugged their USB before full
shut down and they were frantically trying to plug it back in while
errors scrolled on the screen. Still not sure if they lost data (will
check tomorrow on kid who made the same mistake last week). Is there
anything we can do to ensure that all data is written/saved ASAP on
clicking Shut down from the menu?

The team told me that they worked with Turtle Art to load a map of the
Charles River and to add tags to it showing where the GPA school is
located. They said that some kids "got it" and some did not. Here's
the warm/cold post class coments:
Caroline
Warm:
More than half the glass got the idea of negative numbers and the gird
(aka cartesian coordinates for placing turtle). A few got the idea of
"putting together a program".

Cold:
There was a large variance in kids who go it and those who didn't.
Those who didn't understand got frustrated and they lost participation
of about 1/3 of the class as a result.

Bill
Warm: A group of kids zero'd in quickly on the ideas of positive and negative.

Cold: One USB was bad and that kid lost the flow and didn't catch up.

Neutral:
One girl finished right away and then didn't know what to do. Caroline
said a few of the kids really looked like they could be programmers.

Anurag
Warm:
All kids seem to be retaining what they learned in previous classes.
Like how to put the turtle in the corner with Set (x,y). Lots of
improvement from last week as a result like using show text, color,
size.

Lots of kids understood that 0,0 is in the center and that helped them
find positions.

Cold:
Some kids lost focus because they didn;t understanbd the required
order of operation in Turtle art (more below). Some built things then
built other unattached programs which therefore didn't work together
(e.g. show on the map then an un atached show text program somewhere
else on the palette). Not enough time in the class.

Other comments in debrief:
The reality of teaching is time constrained. Next class we could just
do the work for the kids who didn't get the GPA school noted on the
Charles River map but they may lose a learning chance that way.
Another option is to slow the class down, let kids who were done do
something else and give the kids still working on the map more time.
Kids seemed to think more this time rather than just clicking around a
lot.

Next class is Thursday. Goal is to put their pictures on the web.

Comments that some kids don't understand the Journal/Keep paradigm
which was introduced this time. An example:

Sometimes they were in Turtle art and wanted to re-load an image from
a previous instance. Many kids used the Turtla Art show tile (my
turtle art is rusty so exact naming may be off). This allows clicking
on it to open a Journal picker then clicking on it again (executing
it?) shows an image of the last Turtle Art screen as seend in the
Journal screen shot.

What they really wanted was to just re-load the map in to the new
blank Turtle Art screen. The suggestion was to rename the Turtle Art
activity, then click Keep (I believe this step is not intended by Eben
et al), then click stop, then open Turtle Art again, load the "Kept"
instance from the journal.  That's what my notes say but maybe Anurag
and/or Caroline can clarify.

Another tough work flow was getting the map in Turtle Art, scaling it
then placing the turtle. The "right" work flow in terms of order
execution of tiles in Turtle art is:
- Move turtle to right place on screen
- Set scale
- Show map

Many kids did this:
- Show map
- Set x,y of turtle
- scale map

Again, I'm not sure why the kids method is wrong but believe its a
nuance of Turtle Art. Clarification appreciated.

Two notes about the computer lab class:
- Its also the library! There weren't a huge number of books and they
were behind book cases kind of pushed out of the way to make room for
computers. That made me a little sad as I prefer spend time with hard
copy books than any other inanimate object and quite a number of
animate ones too. I saw a Dr Seuss book I have never read (The Cat's
Quizzer) and to be honest I would rather my kids read Dr. Seuss than
spend time on the computer any day! :-) Fortunately they can do both.

- The wall had these instructions (algorithm?), each on a separate
sheet of paper:
#1 Sit quietly on the rug
#2 Listen and follow the teachers directions
#3 Only use the program assigned for today
#4 Check your own work then have a teacher check it
#5 Always save your work to your own disk
#6 Close all programs before ejecting the disk
#7 Don't be afraid to ask questions
#8 Treat the computers gently and with care.
#9 Please do not eat or drink near the computers
#10 Please do not power down the computers unless asked to do so.

The assistant principal came by and chatted with Caroline about which
teachers to work with in the fall and the plan overall. She mentioned
that 200+ of the 340 kids come from Spanish speaking homes. Parent
communicatio n is a challenge as some parents are not literate in
Spanish or English. There is a parent/famliy coordinator who holds
open houses meetings with all parents regularly. 1:45 minutes a week
is slotted for professional development of teachers. Some is booked
but some could be reserved for computer learning. I asked about
curriculum.

She gave me this (no time to find links so any URLs/research appreciated).
- Fundations for Phonics K-3
- Making Meaning and Being a Writer for 1 - 5 fluency
- Investigations for K-5 math
- Foss program for science

She mentioned that these are for "curriculum" not "standards".

We also met briefly with the 3rd grade teacher to go over the near
term curriculum. They are doing Parts of the earth, hemispheres,
continents, countries, states for social studies. The next stage is to
find "where is our community"..

In Math they are on Investigations Unit 8 discussion #1, Activity #2
and also Unit 5. (I will try to buy this book ASAP or get it from the
library). Doing "skip counting" (AKA marking every 2,3,5 etc. number
on a grid of all numbers 1 - 100_ Next is learning "places", hundreds,
tenths, ones. They are adding three digit numbers and using various
methods.

A question for teachers: One kids I sat with last week had trouble
spelling equator. His "q"s were usually typed as "p"s. I realized that
they are the same shape with the loop on different sides. Is there a
rhyme or mnemonic device to remember which side the loop goes on? Like
"righty tighty, left loosey" to remember which way to turn a screw
driver? Maybe "p points to progress" showing p's loop is on right hand
side? I'd love to pass along a trick to help this kid if possible...

I also spent 1/2 hour debugging collaboration. Dave and Gary helped on
IRC. They pointed me a tool called Analyze (can someone put that on
the main activities page ASAP? I didn't write down the URL and will
need to fetch it again tomorrow).

Some computers could collaborate via jabber.sugarlabs.org. Others
couldn't. All could ping, traceroute and dig to jabber.sugarlabs,org.
All go through the same gateway IP in the school, not sure if there is
NAT. Two computers that failed to collaborate with anyone on
Jabber.sugarlabs.org were able to see each other (and a computer named
Ben) on schoolserver.media.mit.edu. We tested that by changing it in
the Network control panel and rebooting.

We couldn't get any gabble etc logs despite editing debug file to
uncomment all relevant lines and ensuring right if statement is in
.Xclients file. Analyze seemed to have some good stuff in it (e.g.
jabber id). but I wasn't able to "collaborate" with the jabber servers
when using it so no final word. Dave will see if he can come up with
some useful tests for the future.

Good news as that they consistently fell back to "local"
collaboration. I think Caroline identified some hard coded ID/name on
each USB stick (not sure of exact reference). When removed they seemed
to use local collaboration well. Plan for tomorrow is to try that...

I may have time to open analyze, terminal and IRC around 12:30 ET
tomorrow. If anyone can come up with a useful test for execution
client side look for me on Freenode Sugar IRC channel.

Got to run to meet my son coming back from camp, new report planned
after tomorrow's session.

Thanks,

Greg S