[sq-education] Re: [etoys-dev] popups in project-info

[Timothy Falconer]

On Aug 31, 2009, at 12:47 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:

> At Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:17:15 -0400,
> Timothy Falconer wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 8, 2009, at 4:45 PM, <kharness at illinois.edu> <kharness at illinois.edu
>>> wrote:
>>
>>> Bert,
>>> Will the above 18 label carry connotations of the movie ratings:
>>> adult content? These ratings may not be in use world wide, I don't
>>> know.
>>> I think age is adding an unnecessary and complicating bit of
>>> information.
>>> Kathleen
>>
>> I really do think "target age" is useful, particularly as we try to
>> convince teachers to use Etoys in the classroom . . . any time we can
>> save them as they look for relevant examples will help increase Etoys
>> usage.
>
>  The usefulness of the target age is one thing, but pre-set list of
> ages is another.  If you say, "8 to 12", or "9 to 11", it means
> different things from a region to another with different school
> systems.  We can't dictate globally there, I think.  And some put the
> target age based on the relevance with the school curriculum, but
> others put some other criteria.  Some want to put the grade number
> but some want to put the age.
>
>  So, having the age part is ok but probably better to be a free-form
> field.
>
>  Just my $0.02.

Having it free-form, or tag-based, will make it nearly impossible to  
usefully group, which will be a problem for people looking for  
relevant content.

Think ... 1000 projects and I have twenty minutes to try 5  
projects ... I'm a 3rd grade teacher in the united states wondering  
how I could include Etoys throughout my school day.

500 different ways of saying 3rd grade will all but prevent that  
person from finding 5 great projects in 20 minutes.

You might say, "well, they need to spend more time", but THEY WON'T.

This is the point ... get them to the most relevant stuff (to them) as  
quickly as possible, or they won't use Etoys.  They won't get to the  
"ah ha!  This is for me" moment.

My curriculum templates idea in the original squeakland.org proposal  
would help solve this, but in until then, the ability to say "my kids  
are 9 and 10, show me what they might learn" is invaluable.

This isn't about being official, this is about saving someone time  
(while trying not to offend other cultures too much.)

There's got to be some international standards body that could be  
helpful here.   International Baccalaureate?

Tim