[Squeakland] musings

Kim Rose kim.rose at squeakland.org
Tue Sep 6 10:06:17 PDT 2005


Hi, Mark -

Thanks for the report!

Just as a reminder for all -- the etoy interface we use today was 
*never* intended to use with children younger than 7 or even 8 years 
old.  Many people have been interested in "experimenting" and pushing 
use to younger kids, but we were never advocates for such since we 
knew many of the aspects of the UI would be inappropriate for smaller 
hands, hand-eye coordination, etc., etc.

This is why we encouraged the folks at Columbia in Chicago to create 
a *new* user interface (which they did by creating very larger 
sliders and buttons, etc.) for their work with kindergartners and 1st 
graders.


So, with that said....have fun as you continue...

cheers,
Kim



>I just finished my first week with our entire first grade (60 
>children) and have the following reflections to offer:
>
>1. Alan and the team, Squeak works intuitively (not news to you) and 
>I heard lots of "awesome" "cool" "bad".
>2. A one-button mouse is by far easier with this age group. 10 out of 
>the 12 macs have the normal one-button mac mouse and the others a 
>three button one and they click accidentally and activate the halos 
>which are confusing. This issue may only be of concern for really 
>newbees because I am guessing they may want the functionality later 
>as both their intellectual and fine motor skills develop.
>3. Have you considered adapting to an easier icon-based navigation 
>system for younger students?
>4. The halo icons are too small for this group to hit easily.
>5. I started by just letting them explore the drawing tools and they 
>discovered really cool things to do with them. They got excited many 
>times by doing something that some teachers might say was wrong from 
>a following the rules perspective. These getting lost experiences 
>always turned into exploration experiences and increased learning. As 
>programmers you might think how this can be planned for and used to 
>tall our advantage.
>6. I will now move on to teaching them to move an object and to have 
>more than one object on the screen.
>7. Have you considered that Squeak helps with basic reading and 
>language acquisition literacy with young children?
>
>Enough for now. I'll post again after next week's adventures.
>
>Mark
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