[Sugar-devel] GPA Class Notes July 22 - GS

[Greg Smith]

Hi All,

I posted the full notes here:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes

Three high level points:
- Kids have no trouble finding new activities (e.g. Write) and they
want to have more to use.
- Its still hard to task switch (we may try teaching them alt - tab
next week), find thing son the journal and move data from one activity
to another.
- Conozco Uruguay is very effective at helping kids memorize.

Walter has given the kids a challenge to make their own game. They
came up with 6 examples of games they want to make:
1.  Guatemala. Departments numbered and corresponding to images on the map.
2. Sports team logos in the US. Then find the state or city for each team.
3. Presidents. Match pictures of presidents with names.
4. Presidents mashup (word used by kid!). Take a jumbled up a list of
pictures of presidents and put them in order.
5. Countries and states in North America.
6. "Find me". Start with an animation of a spinning globe. Find north
america and show that. Find US, find MA, Find Boston, Find Allston,
Find Gardner Pilot Academy. One kid yelled out then find the desk in
the office.

We're not completely sure which "authoring environment" to use. Walter
is taking the lead on that and may use Conozco Uruguay code base or
something else. See notes for more details. Suggestions and help
customizing apps appreciated.

We have one extra week for the kids to collect images and write down
ideas before they starting building the interface.

That brings up the question of how they can tag the items they want to
easily find them later. That is, as they look around on Wikipedia or
elsewhere and find text and images they want to use, how do we collect
them and show them (and only them) on a clean journal view late. URLs
and downloaded images are very hard to find in the Journal. We should
use the URL name (not sure of the right technical term but I mean the
short name you see in browsers, e.g. www.google.com appears as Google.
That or anything that is more intelligible than what you see by
default. Will file a bug when I have a chance unless someone beats me
to it.

I welcome any suggestions on tagging and collecting items. I believe
its just careful use of tagging and filtering but details on expected
work flow can save us some time.

Thanks,

Greg S