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

[Walter Bender]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Greg Smith<gregsmithpm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

They did readily pick up on using shortcut keys... I told them about
F1 and F3 and they almost all started using those two keys instead of
going to the Frame. Also, Ctrl-F is not easy to type.

> - 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.

It could be as simple as a tool that lets them associate a question
with a multiple choice answer that corresponds to some label on an
image or map. (e.g., the map can have letters and the questions can
ask for the letter that corresponds to the answer; no need to do any
coordinate system mapping in this case.)

>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org