Epaati comments
Ties Stuij
don't have anything constructive to say about synchronizing all the
different environments in which the children can make progress, other
than that I didn't think so big. What I myself had been thinking of
was summarizing/displaying activities progress on the game collection
top level. See text below for details. Also I'd be happy to implement
it when I come round to it.
Ok, I've written some thoughts on the activities I've seen so far. I
guess some stuff is quite obvious and you guys might ignite in
murderous rage, but I wish people woul come with detailed critique on
the site I'm working for. And it might be a bit much, but I thought
I'd write it down right now before the
overexposure-statusquo-acceptance kicks in. Enough with the excuses,
let's bring on the critisism!
notes on activities, taken from the latest downloadable demo i could
find on the ole blog:
- overall
1. The activities aren't well synchronized as scoring goes. The most
obvious is the difference between the more exploritory activities and
the drilling activities. I guess that's intentional, and that seems
logical to me. The rest has mostly to do with time pressures I guess,
but I thought I'd just enumarate them when I talk about the individual
activity.
2. What I'd like to see (and this is really my biggest point in this
post) is some indication on the activity selection screens on how the
kids are doing. Which exercises did they already finish? The teacher
could use this in the class to get a quick view of the childs
progression, when he/she parades the rows. This way she/he can also
quickly give them a relevant follow up activity, if the child has
nothing to do.
How would this look like? First of all I'd add a visual marker on the
activity screenshot if the child has passed it. I'd change it's color,
and put a green V over it for example. Also I'd put some text next to
it, indicating the current level, and the score in that level. I'd
also add the total time spent in the activity thus far. The time
indicator might often be quite useless (recess or not closing it while
going home come to mind). But still it might be useful in some
instances.
Also a 'save session score' and an 'upload to web' button might be
useful. Am not really sure how etoys session management is handled on
the xo.
- adding up to ten
The activity uses bars in stead of letters, perhaps a mix would be
possible here, cause you wouldn't want to take away the time pressure
element. But it would be nice to come back from the activity with
something measurable, along the lines of the other activities, which
is of course trivial, cause it follows the same idea.
- puzzle123/abc
1. Play sound of letter/number you are using. Point of the game comes
better across, and child gets some extra neuron reinforcements for no
extra cost at all, except a lot more noise in the classroom.
2. I don't want to push the measuring/gameplaying/goal-oriented angle
to much but the puzzles could be game-ified quite easily methinks, by
adding one to the scoreboard once a puzzle is completed. And having a
button to go to the next and not switch directly, so as not to loose
the exploratory/fiddle around elements. This would give them a bit
more meat. Adding some more pictures would help also of course (time
constraints, I know)
- direction
I didn't get this. What does this have to do with english, and what
does this have to do with direction learning? Isn't this just pattern
recognition? Again, playing a sound to denote the direction and of
course a word to show it's meaning would help, but I guess this
activity wasn't ready yet.
- direction and animal identification
scoring panes present but not implemented. Should be implemented?
Again, guess the activity wasn't ready yet.
- identify currency
I'd add a button to flip over the bank note. I'd guess clicking the
note itself isn't always obvious, while people (children included is
my guess) know big shiny buttons are supposed to do stuff.
- MakeBarGraph1
I didn't get this. This was made with a higher goal in mind I guess? I
know I'm supposed to sort the items, but once i'm done, there's
nothing more to do. The initial container overlaps the playing area
and the rest of the world is just empty tiles, which confused me
greatly to make any conceptual sense out of it. It would help of
course if I could speak Nepalese, but then again, can the children
already?
That brings me to another question, for which age groups are these
activities made?
- Counting sheep
Me like!
- AddingNumerals
For me this was by far the most useful application! Perfect for
learning Nepalese numerals to westerners with a strong grasp of basic
arithmatic. I can proudly say I've now learned nepalese base 10 number
representation. Which leads me to wonder if Nepal always had base 10.
- AddingFromWords1
Again, how cool. Didn't get it though for obvious reasons
- AddingNumerals, AddingFromWords1
As a comment on both, the scoring is out of whack. I'd take the score
down a notch when they say something wrong, but maybe let them stay on
the bottom of one of the 'level' they're on, in stead of letting them
go to the level below. Otherwise they'll just need to figure out that
they can click on all of them in a row for a few times to advance to
the next level.
And overall I really like the artwork.
And now I'll patiently wait for the wall of holiday silence to hit me...
Happy new year btw,
/Ties