[etoys-dev] popups in project-info

[Timothy Falconer]

On Sep 1, 2009, at 6:42 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

>
> On 01.09.2009, at 10:54, Timothy Falconer wrote:
>
>> On Sep 1, 2009, at 2:25 AM, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
>>
>>> K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
>>>> On Monday 31 Aug 2009 9:10:39 pm Timothy Falconer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What does the larger group think?   Would you see "sixteen and  
>>>>> older"  in the drop-down as saying "put your adults-only stuff  
>>>>> here"?
>>>>>
>>>> I am wary of using ages in Etoy projects. It is tough on children  
>>>> who drop out and rejoin later. How about culturally neutral terms  
>>>> like  "Levels" 1 thru 5 or multi-age groups like {primary, higher  
>>>> primary, secondary, higher secondary, graduate}.
>>>>
>>> I think that we are mixing up two things here:
>>>
>>> - projects that are meant to help teachers getting started using  
>>> Etoys in the classroom, where the age category would be helpful  
>>> (I'm fine with grade, age or elementary/middle/highschool), and
>>>
>>> - projects that will be uploaded by the broader community, which  
>>> are meant to show what someone did, where we don't need any  
>>> categories at all
>>>
>>> I see two different structures for these different kinds of  
>>> "showcases". The "official" showcase will be the one with  
>>> categories, age groups etc., because we want to help teachers  
>>> getting ideas. And these projects will be selected carefully.
>>> All the other projects belong to a "public" showcase, where we  
>>> don't need these categories. Most of the students will not bother  
>>> to think about subjects when uploading their work, and they don't  
>>> have to, since categories are optional. We could even use tags for  
>>> the public showcase, because this showcase serves another purpose,  
>>> it is the possibility for everyone to share their work. We can  
>>> pick up the best projects from the public showcase to put into the  
>>> official one, "we" means all the people who apply to do that.
>>> So it wouldn't be necessary to categorize every project that goes  
>>> to the showcase, the categorization could be done later, when a  
>>> project gets selected. And of course there are projects which are  
>>> explicitly developed to be on the official showcase, but I don't  
>>> think that anyone here has a problem with categorizing these  
>>> projects by age, because that clearly means "target age".
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Rita
>>
>>
>> A few thoughts from this . . .
>>
>> First though, everyone should know that there are now two sections  
>> in the showcase that we're launching this month, the "featured"  
>> section, and the "public" section.   Featured projects are hand- 
>> picked by the squeakland education team.  Public projects are  
>> moderated for inappropriate content, but otherwise left alone.   As  
>> Rita says, there will be 30 to 100 featured projects, and many  
>> thousand public projects.
>>
>> 1. I see the public showcase perhaps a bit differently, not just as  
>> a place for individual users to show off their work (as they do on  
>> the Scratch website), but as the place for teachers from around the  
>> world, such as Chris Gordon from USeIT, to show off their students  
>> work, and their own demonstrations, etc.   My belief is that there  
>> will *MANY* projects that come from classes and homeschoolers that  
>> are appropriate for categorization.  These will all start out in  
>> the public section.   The Squeakland showcase is really focused on  
>> encouraging such projects, in contrast with the Scratch site which  
>> is more "look at what I did".    Obviously we don't want to  
>> restrict "look at what I did", we want people to do what they  
>> want.  But the tone I'm hoping to set is that of a worldwide  
>> educational resource, with many, many examples of teacher/student  
>> use, not just what we feature.
>>
>> 2. These categories are optional, and that the drop-down says that  
>> they're optional.  No one has to pick target age, subject, or  
>> region if they don't want to.
>>
>> 3. We want to encourage people to choose these categories from the  
>> very beginning, so that when we promote a project from public to  
>> featured we don't have to guess what the author's intent was.
>>
>> 4. Let's at least see the new showcase before critiquing it.  It's  
>> just about done, and we can change things as we go (aka, agile :)
>>
>> Take care,
>> Tim
>
>
> 1) "Public Showcase" is a misnomer. We want a "public" repository  
> for everyone to share projects, *and* a "showcase" with selected  
> content.

That's one way of looking at it.   Showcase is a place you put your  
best stuff.   I think you & Rita are thinking the "you" is  
Squeakland.  I'm thinking the "you" is everyone.

I've also thought about changing the name for "showcase" to "gallery"  
or something else, but my current thinking is that we want to  
encourage this:

http://squeakland.org/images/illo-showcase.png

We want the world to show the stuff that they're proud to show, just  
as a child puts a drawing on the refrigerator or a teacher puts a  
drawing on the classroom wall.  We want them to feel more special  
about this than sharing to YouTube.

I've used the term "showcase" with perhaps two hundred people or more  
from different cultures in the last year.  Most seem fine with the  
term, and eager to contribute.

Also, in my experience, the people who care most passionately about  
semantics are those inside an organization . . . the vast majority  
doesn't think that much about it . . . they know what to expect when  
they click Showcase, and if there's momentary confusion about featured  
vs public, the one-line text on the section page (and at the top of  
each page) clears up the distinction immediately.


> 4) having two sites with different designs and contents is a  
> fundamentally different user experience than one "showcase" with a  
> "public" toggle. Sure it can be implemented as such behind the  
> scenes, but the public sharing site needs to be clearly separated,  
> and hence visually different from the edited site.

Rita has made this point several times, and I just don't see it.   How  
is clicking on "featured" any different from clicking on "top rated"  
on a site like Scratch or any other gallery site?

Why specifically does there need to be a different look and user  
experience?