Hi,
I was playing with Paint and it wasn't very satisfying, there are much more fun painting programs including for Linux. My goal is to go into a school where kids who have used KidPix and give them a drawing program that they won't think is "lame". But I also want it to be usable to a younger sibling that hasn't used a computer very much.
Ed pointed out that eToys has great paint tools.
We discussed this on IRC and the desired use case is.
A young child wants to draw. They open up an icon that clearly says "I want to draw". What this opens is a UI or "room" in eToys with a UI that is a lot like the Paint program. After the young child has created that drawing, or maybe 6 months later, it should be easy to move on and do more. But when I start it can't be too easy to pull up a zillion buttons that confuse me.
the hope is to create classic low floor - high ceiling. Make it easy for the kid who is at the stamp pad state to move seamlessly over a couple of years to making eToy projects.
Is creating a new UI for eToys the right way to do this? Is sugarizing Tux Paint better?
I will be doing a pilot of Sugar on a Stick next Sept in a Boston Public School and this is just one item of many important ones, so I'm hoping to be a cheer leader not a leader in making something happen.
thanks, Caroline
We had at one point discussed other easy paths into Etoys, for example, into the document creation tools. I think it would be a great!!
-walter
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 1:10 PM, Caroline Meeks caroline@solutiongrove.com wrote:
Hi,
I was playing with Paint and it wasn't very satisfying, there are much more fun painting programs including for Linux. My goal is to go into a school where kids who have used KidPix and give them a drawing program that they won't think is "lame". But I also want it to be usable to a younger sibling that hasn't used a computer very much.
Ed pointed out that eToys has great paint tools.
We discussed this on IRC and the desired use case is.
A young child wants to draw. They open up an icon that clearly says "I want to draw". What this opens is a UI or "room" in eToys with a UI that is a lot like the Paint program. After the young child has created that drawing, or maybe 6 months later, it should be easy to move on and do more. But when I start it can't be too easy to pull up a zillion buttons that confuse me.
the hope is to create classic low floor - high ceiling. Make it easy for the kid who is at the stamp pad state to move seamlessly over a couple of years to making eToy projects.
Is creating a new UI for eToys the right way to do this? Is sugarizing Tux Paint better?
I will be doing a pilot of Sugar on a Stick next Sept in a Boston Public School and this is just one item of many important ones, so I'm hoping to be a cheer leader not a leader in making something happen.
thanks, Caroline
-- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove Caroline@SolutionGrove.com
617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax
Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys
At Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:18:10 -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
We had at one point discussed other easy paths into Etoys, for example, into the document creation tools. I think it would be a great!!
I haven't forgotten your suggestion, but it still doesn't have the thing unfortunately. But, I can show how you would do. I made a little Etoys project. Download this:
http://dev.laptop.org/~yoshiki/etoys/SimplePaint.005.pr
and save it somewhere.
If you resume this project, you see two buttons at the bottom of screen. Click on "Paint" to start painting. Don't worry about these obscure four buttons in the painting tool. If you are done, press "Save". It puts the painted picture into the Sugar's clipboard, and Etoys quits. As simple as that, and you can make this kind of customization in minutes.
-- Yoshiki
I understand that you could open, for example a saved paint project, but I suppose you'd have to do a "keep" in order to ensure that the .pr opens a fresh instance of paint each time (unless of course you want to revisit a previous project)?
-walter
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima yoshiki@vpri.org wrote:
At Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:18:10 -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
We had at one point discussed other easy paths into Etoys, for example, into the document creation tools. I think it would be a great!!
I haven't forgotten your suggestion, but it still doesn't have the thing unfortunately. But, I can show how you would do. I made a little Etoys project. Download this:
http://dev.laptop.org/~yoshiki/etoys/SimplePaint.005.pr
and save it somewhere.
If you resume this project, you see two buttons at the bottom of screen. Click on "Paint" to start painting. Don't worry about these obscure four buttons in the painting tool. If you are done, press "Save". It puts the painted picture into the Sugar's clipboard, and Etoys quits. As simple as that, and you can make this kind of customization in minutes.
-- Yoshiki _______________________________________________ Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys
At Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:30:10 -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
I understand that you could open, for example a saved paint project, but I suppose you'd have to do a "keep" in order to ensure that the .pr opens a fresh instance of paint each time (unless of course you want to revisit a previous project)?
The "Save" button in this project quits Etoys without messing the original project. In a sense, the .pr in the Journal acts like an painting application, if you press the "Save" button.
One could further customize it so that it saves the picture objects into Journal not clipboard it currently does.
-- Yoshiki
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
At Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:30:10 -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
I understand that you could open, for example a saved paint project, but I suppose you'd have to do a "keep" in order to ensure that the .pr opens a fresh instance of paint each time (unless of course you want to revisit a previous project)?
The "Save" button in this project quits Etoys without messing the original project. In a sense, the .pr in the Journal acts like an painting application, if you press the "Save" button.
One could further customize it so that it saves the picture objects into Journal not clipboard it currently does.
It's also a easy one button click to wrap up a .pr to a .xo in FileList so a project appears as a activity.
Karl
On 21.11.2008, at 22:09, Karl Ramberg wrote:
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
At Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:30:10 -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
I understand that you could open, for example a saved paint project, but I suppose you'd have to do a "keep" in order to ensure that the .pr opens a fresh instance of paint each time (unless of course you want to revisit a previous project)?
The "Save" button in this project quits Etoys without messing the original project. In a sense, the .pr in the Journal acts like an painting application, if you press the "Save" button.
One could further customize it so that it saves the picture objects into Journal not clipboard it currently does.
It's also a easy one button click to wrap up a .pr to a .xo in FileList so a project appears as a activity.
It works yes but is not much more than a proof of concept - it would have to be integrated with the Journal, there should be a different icon etc.
But anyway - did someone try that lately? Does it work reasonably wrt save and resume? I'm pretty sure we did not iron out all the wrinkles yet.
- Bert -
At Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:43:54 +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On 21.11.2008, at 22:09, Karl Ramberg wrote:
It's also a easy one button click to wrap up a .pr to a .xo in FileList so a project appears as a activity.
That is right!
It works yes but is not much more than a proof of concept - it would have to be integrated with the Journal, there should be a different icon etc.
But anyway - did someone try that lately? Does it work reasonably wrt save and resume? I'm pretty sure we did not iron out all the wrinkles yet.
Resuming doesn't work on joyride 2515 (well it is a bit old), although in this particular case, one shouldn't pause it (therefore this project should hide the keep and stop button even).
http://dev.laptop.org/~yoshiki/etoys/SimplePaint-5.xo
-- Yoshiki
On Saturday 22 Nov 2008 12:48:36 am Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
I haven't forgotten your suggestion, but it still doesn't have the thing unfortunately. But, I can show how you would do. I made a little Etoys project. Download this:
This is still modal. I found young children (non-English) have trouble dealing with such modal painting environments without "training". The paint tools are not child-friendly. The tool cursors has no visual feedback of the picked color. The circle cursor even has its hot spot at 10 O'clock instead of the center. The auto popup color panel is a major irritant. Just move the cursor from the upper part of onion skin towards "clear" or "toss" to see what I mean. Whatever happened to the principle of least astonishment?
Children learn to compensate for these irritants over time but is a modal paint tool really necessary? Many of the paint tool functions can be achieved if we allow children to "embed" or "stamp" by a press-n-hold or lay pen trails using hold-n-drag. A child can spend more time "thinking" than worrying about missteps.
Subbu
At Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:40:48 +0530, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Saturday 22 Nov 2008 12:48:36 am Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
I haven't forgotten your suggestion, but it still doesn't have the thing unfortunately. But, I can show how you would do. I made a little Etoys project. Download this:
This is still modal.
Well, nobody claimed that it solves this problem.
I found young children (non-English) have trouble dealing with such modal painting environments without "training". The paint tools are not child-friendly.
Do you mean that it can be fully non-modal?
The tool cursors has no visual feedback of the picked color.
Yes.
The circle cursor even has its hot spot at 10 O'clock instead of the center.
Yes. That is easier to fix.
The auto popup color panel is a major irritant.
I think so, too.
Just move the cursor from the upper part of onion skin towards "clear" or "toss" to see what I mean. Whatever happened to the principle of least astonishment?
Children learn to compensate for these irritants over time but is a modal paint tool really necessary?
Well, we aren't married to it. I once advocated that we really don't need the rainbow palette, but some 100 colors is enough (and that makes color-sees easier).
Many of the paint tool functions can be achieved if we allow children to "embed" or "stamp" by a press-n-hold or lay pen trails using hold-n-drag. A child can spend more time "thinking" than worrying about missteps.
Isn't holding a key a modal operation?
-- Yoshiki
On Tuesday 25 Nov 2008 12:22:25 am Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
At Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:40:48 +0530,
K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
I found young children (non-English) have trouble dealing with such modal painting environments without "training". The paint tools are not child-friendly.
Do you mean that it can be fully non-modal?
All paint tools are modal to some extent. It is just that the current paint tool is difficult for children with non-English backgrounds to use without training. Direct tools like Lasso are more intuitive.
Many of the paint tool functions can be achieved if we allow children to "embed" or "stamp" by a press-n-hold or lay pen trails using hold-n-drag. A child can spend more time "thinking" than worrying about missteps.
Isn't holding a key a modal operation?
Yes but it is intuitive and does not break the workflow. I have noticed that when kids work in Squeak, their thoughts tend to get ahead of their hands. If the operation is not intuitive then the train of thought gets interrupted. Over the next few weeks, I will get an opportunity to engage about 1000 kids in villages like [1]. Let me see what works best with kids.
[1] http://maps.google.com/maps?q=12.4914,77.5870
Subbu
On 26.11.2008, at 07:39, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
Over the next few weeks, I will get an opportunity to engage about 1000 kids in villages like [1]. Let me see what works best with kids.
Great!
- Bert -
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Bert Freudenberg -
Caroline Meeks -
K. K. Subramaniam -
Karl Ramberg -
Walter Bender -
Yoshiki Ohshima