Suggestion

[Carly]

We are excited to start to try to use this program in our japanese 103
curriculum. I've worked on developing a similar program for tablet
pc, but had to abandon the project due to lack of time. But since
I've spent a lot of time on this area, I have a few suggestions, if
you don't mind:

1) Writing Feedback: showing students a percentage of 'correctness' of
their writing is not terribly helpful. I think it would be more
helpful to show them their written character with an semi-transparent
overlay of the model character so that they could see where they need
to improve.

2) Make the writing pressure sensitive. I know this can be done on
iPhone/iPad. And it would really help with the minutia of writing
characters.

3) Maybe I just haven't figured it out yet, but it would be great to
study more than one flash deck at a time. Or make an aggregate flash
deck that would review previous ones.

4) I would like to make the list of flash decks shorter. We aren't
including pictures, and the rows for each deck name are unnecessarily
large. We'll be loading a LOT of flash desks on the iPads for the
whole term for the students, so they will have to scroll down to find
the decks they need later in the term. Given the large screen size of
the iPad, it seems a shame.

I'll probably have more feedback as we use the software. But I'm very
excited about it. I wish we could find similar apps for the other non-
Roman languages we teach! Thank you!

Carly Born
M.A. Teaching Japanese
Carleton College

[Raeldor]

Hi Carly,

Let me take these one at a time...

1. We already show the semi-transparent outline against the students
drawing if they draw it incorrectly. It even shows the animated
stroke drawing on top too. If you want to see this everytime they get
it wrong, you just need to set the retry count to 'none' in the
options screen.

2. I would love this to be the case, but I think you may be incorrect
here. The Apple touch hardware is capacitive based, not pressure
based. It detects finger position based on current draw from the
position of your finger on the screen, so it's not related to
pressure. Even if it were possible, it would be purely aesthetic, as
the source data for stroke order and positioning does not contain any
width data to compare against.

3. It's not possible to study multiple flash decks, but we created the
concept of flash deck sections for this purpose. A deck would
normally relate to a book or study material and the sections would be
the chapters. You can then play individual chapters as you're
studying or in the 'switch deck' option at the bottom of the section
list you will see an 'all' option that will allow you to study
everything in the book (flash deck).

4. This is a great idea, and one I think we can accommodate. I'll
look at putting this into an update shortly.

Hope this helps.

Thanks
Ray

[Carly]

Ray,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

Thanks for the tip on how to set the retry count, I hadn't yet
explored all of those settings to observe their behavior. That might
do for our purposes.

I was under the impression that something like pressure sensitivity
was possible, mostly because of the art apps out there that have
implemented something like it. I ask because the instructors here are
particular about the pressure/line-thickness, as well as the minutia
of the hooks and such of the lines. So the more precise the better. I
may try to go back to the source for the stroke order data and see if
I can get more info from them.

As far as combining flash decks, what I'm looking for is the ability
to study chapter 1 in week 1, and then chapters 1 and 2 in week 2, and
keep building up to studying 'all' sets. I'd like the students to
have the ability to choose which sets, or combination of sets that
they can study throughout the term as they need to. So putting
everything into one deck, doesn't really help with that cuz it's one
of the sections or all of the sections, right? Or am I missing
something?

Thanks for your help and response, I very much appreciate it!

carly

[Raeldor]

Hi Carly,

So, I think I have a solution for your multiple chapters issue. When
you are playing a game you can select the section 'All' (switch
deck). When you do this and then go to the picker tab you can turn on
and off individual cards, so all you need to do is turn everything off
and then turn on the kanji from the first chapter. After studying the
second chapter, you turn those kanji on too in the picker. The picker
will remember the selections you have set for each game/chapter
combination, so this should work quite well for you.

Regards
Ray

[Raeldor]

Hi Carly,

Update just went onto the App Store for making the flash deck list lines
smaller if the deck has no image. You should be able to download it.

If you have any other questions, please let me know. Also, if you have a
moment and are able to post a review for us on the App Store, that would be
great too. Positive reviews help sales and sales help fund enhancements.

Thanks
Ray