[Sugar-devel] GPA School Notes Wed. July 15 - GS

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 15:25, Eduardo H. Silva<hoboprimate at gmail.com> wrote:
> My humble opinions on what Sugar could learn from this report are bellow.

I agree, that's quite good feedback, could someone check we have
tickets for all these issues?

Thanks,

Tomeu

> 2009/7/15 Greg Smith <gregsmithpm at gmail.com>:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Here are my notes from today's class. Anurag will send out notes on
>> what we did in class so I will focus on UI and usability comments. I
>> also recorded the post class warm/cold comments.
>>
>> Sorry I didn't get a chance to get on IRC after the class as planned.
>> We got "local" collaboration working well so we will go with that and
>> stop debugging Jabber issues for now.
>>
>> About 10 x 3rd graders were in the class today. This was their second
>> time with Sugar. Caroline led the class as Walter is travelling and
>> several kids asked "where is the other guy?".
>>
>> The main activity was to get pictures of states of wikipedia, then put
>> those in Memorize and create games (e.g. picture of Texas, word
>> "Texas" makes a match) and share the memorize so two kids can play
>> together.
>>
>> Warm/cold post class comments:
>> Anurag
>> Warm:
>> Collaboration worked well. Kids were able to join each others games
>> and reload games as needed. They could change partners easily too. The
>> importing map from Wikipedia worked well. They quickly understood how
>> to switch from browse to memorize and how to save and access things
>> from the journal. They retained a lot fo what they learned before.
>>
>> Cold:
>> 3 person collaboration didn't always work.
>>
>> Caroline
>> Warm:
>> Collaboration added to the kids engagement. They learned a lot about
>> state names and the drilling aspects seemed to help them remember.
>> There were multiple steps but they seemed to handle it well. It would
>> have been harder with fewer adults to help each kid but every kid got
>> it. Went great overall.
>>
>> Cold:
>> 3 or person collaboration worked sometimes but not always. May have
>> been a work flow thing (e.g. if two already playing third has to wait
>> until end of game to join). The loading and customization of USB
>> sticks was labor intensive.
>>
>> Greg
>> Warm:
>> Fun time and impressive production by the kids in terms of creating games.
>>
>> Cold:
>> Some tasks were hard and kids needed help (see below).
>>
>> Jennifer
>> Warm:
>> kids were enthusiastic. They learned how to spell state names. Kids
>> helped each other out.
>>
>> Cold:
>> Sometimes when switching partners, some kids were left out.
>>
>> Usability comments from me.
>>
>> Educational Context
>> The kids really wanted to know what to do next. If they didn't know
>> where to click to download an image they would just sit and wait or
>> get distracted or ask a teacher or me. With several kids asking you
>> something at the same time and poking you for your attention, its a
>> little overwhelming: what do I do now?, how do you spell Louisiana?,
>> how do I go back to memorize?, etc.
>>
>> I asked the teacher how he handles that and he said he spends extra
>> time preparing them. Gives exact steps, goes over them several times,
>> and ask the kids to repeat back what they will do. He can handle a few
>> kids asking follow up questions but if more than 2 - 3 need help then
>> it probably wasn't explained well enough in advance.
>>
>> That was not what I expected. My inclination is to say" go ahead and
>> do whatever you want. You can do this, but anything you create will be
>> original and interesting. Of course, to a kid, do what every you want
>> turns in to run around in the sun and tickle my class mates.
>>
>> If you constrain it to: in the class using the computer, they want to
>> know what to do next. They want to do the right thing, finish the
>> assignment and accomplish their task. So structure and direction is
>> important. Probably obvious to any teacher but kind of a surprise to
>> me.
>>
>> Steps to accomplish the assigned task.
>> We setup the collaboration and had connected computers in pairs with
>> Memorize open when we started.
>>
>> Their task with steps as we intended was as follows:
>> - Open browse
>> - Go to WIkipedia.org
>> - Type in a state name in the search field
>> - Right click on the picture of the state and choose download
>> - Click "continue" count down timer ot just wait for download to complete.
>> - Click OK or Show in Journal
>> - Open frame
>> - Choose Memorize
>> - Choose create tab as needed
>> - Choose eye icon to upload state image
>> - Find and select state image on journal
>> - Type state name in matching tile
>> - Click Add pair
>> - Repeat as needed
>>
>> - Save Game
>> - Click Play tab
>> - Open game
>>
>> Play with friend or variant of choose SHare with my Neighborhood and
>> have friend find you.
>>
>> Everybody got it eventually but most needed help somewhere. Examples
>> of things they needed help with, from kids I worked with:
>> - Couldn't remember how to start "world" AKA browse.
>> - Needed help spelling Wikipedia.
>> - Couldn't find search field on wikipedia because frame was covering half of it
>> - Needed help spelling state names
>> - Didn't remember Right click on image to download in browse.
>
> This is one place where palettes aren't opened by hovering. The
> thinking that eben told me, was that in websites with many images,
> lots of palettes appearing would get in the way. I think it should be
> tested on first hand to see if indeed it would make browsing be a
> nuisance.
>
>> - Clicked on drop down instead of icon (e.g. clicking stop they put
>> the cursor over the stop sign then saw the drop down text saying
>> "Stop" then clicked on that and nothing happens. They should click
>> directly on the stop sign itself.
> Stop is probably the first toolbar button a user/kid uses, so I think
> it is normal that they don't yet know how it works.
>
>> - Couldn't remember how to get back to Memorize (aka task switch using
>> the frame).
>> - Didn't know how to find a game they could join (aka go to network
>> neighborhood).
>> - Found a person's icon in network neighborhood and clicked on it
>> instead of the Memorize icon just below the name.
>> - Didn't wait for popup/hover text when moving cursor around network
>> neighborhood so couldn't find anyone.
> The hovering of palettes was delayed a bit in comparison with the
> initial versions of sugar. Could this be fine-tuned to be faster?
>
>> - Wanted to load their own game and share that instead of playing the
>> other kids game.
>> - Weren't sure which item in journal was the state image they just downloaded.
>> - Loaded a picture in Memorize by accident and couldn't figure out how
>> to get rid of it
>>
>> Just observations. Any one of these issues would bring the kid to a
>> complete halt. If they didn't know what to do next they would just
>> look at the screen or ask for help.
>>
>> After going through the whole thing a few times they became more
>> independent.Perhaps these are just things they acquire over time, we
>> will see next class.
>>
>> One thing was clear, they are still acquiring the concept of tasks,
>> applications, activities, and files. Before that, it's just ordered
>> steps to get to a final goal. e.g. looking at the wikipedia page for
>> Louisiana is just seeing stuff on the screen. Its not clear that you
>> are in the browse application that the picture is a file and browse is
>> a tool to find and download that picture so you can use it later in
>> Memorize. That innocence is almost gone already. Very soon they will
>> develop a mental model which is some transformation of how programmers
>> think a computer/OS is supposed to work.
>>
>> FYI I came across one alternative interface recently. See the end of
>> the first paragraph in this post (the rest is irrelevant):
>> http://blog.vlingo.com/2009/05/why-freemium.html
>>
>> The idea is that you say: "send an e-mail to Joe saying, 'Hi Joe, meet
>> me for lunch at noon'". Instead of saying, open the e-mail
>> application, put joe at joe.com in the To field, put meet me for lunch at
>> noon in the Body, send the e-mail, close the e-mail application.
>>
>> I wonder if that is better or just an unnecessary obfuscation.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Greg S
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