User:Mstone/Commentaries/Sugar 2
Introduction
mtd> It strikes me that Eben's bulletin board designs just mentioned on
IAEP seem to involve sharing things, and patches are things, and
perhaps this is the answer to my patch-sharing itch. I should
probably just spawn a tangent thread on the mailing list.
m_stone> well, I found eben's answer quite non-satisfactory, first, because I
think that bulletin boards are quite different from activities and
second, because he didn't give any sense of _order_. narratives are
_sequences_ of events. (and narratives which _will_ take place, with
user input, are often tree or DAG-structured.) they are not simply
sets of events.
bemasc> I suggest a concrete example. I think neither I nor Eben has
comprehended your concept of narrative correctly.
m_stone> think of literary narratives. the point is that they have order. for
example, the narrative-as-graph is like a choose-your-own-adventure
book. [and yes, I'm actually thinking of hypertext and RPG dialogue
code here...]
mtd> narrative-as-equence? I understand the analogy but think that
literary criticism has much to say about linear, one-way
communication as "storytelling". I am going to have to cite the xkcd
about literary criticism if I don't. There, I did. And I like your
RPG-style thinking. But now I'll really stop, as, a bit like bemasc,
I know nothing about education or psych.
m_stone> did you understand walter's reply?
bemasc> this discussion is not oriented in a way that works well for me. I
think of Sugar as ... a virtual machine for untrusted code. I don't
know anything about education or psychology, and I have little
interest in speculating about either.
m_stone> look, you've both undergone lots of education, same as me. we're all
on equal footing here. I'm just pointing out the simple fact that a
fairly large chunk of the education you underwent consisted of
discrete experiences embedded in rhetoric.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_modes)
mtd> rhetoric++. Ther'es a lot to be said for a clear, precise, compact
explanation. Sometimes you need the answer to help you think about
what you thought the answer was.
m_stone> Bryan's remarks about the amount of effort and frustration stemming
from the increased demand for lesson plans suggested to me that Sugar
was making it hard for teachers to string together the experiences
they wanted to share with their classes and their peers. Bryan's
desire for Offline-Moodle clearly stems from the fact that he thinks
that hypertext (and Moodle, which generates hypertext) is pretty good
for stringing together experiences and he thinks that it's within his
budget.
mtd> ah, and lesson-plan-asnarrative-sequence, I get it. the best
perormance improvement is going from a non-working stateto a working
state. I suspect "sugar making it hard" was "sugar making it possible
in a different way than just writing on a blackboard" in some cases.
Lessons
bemasc> ok, lesson plans. that's something I know how to think about. I still
don't really get it though. I don't see a big gulf between a teacher
saying "now take out a paper and write a six-stanza poem with the
rhyme scheme we just discussed" (an actual assignment from 11th grade
or so) and "now open up Write and ..."
m_stone> suppose you want the kids to work on it at home... it's true that one
solution is to provide a write document containing instructions, but,
imho, that's not a very good solution for a couple of reasons. in
particular, because it seems to completely constrain you to working
in Write. (or to giving instructions on how to flip between write and
other stuff when needed)
m_stone> another example I have in my head involves pippy examples. suppose I
write up an awesome new Python trick and I want to explain it to you.
I want my explanation to show you a buildup to the trick, a working
example, and a collection of links to other tricks and tutorials.
also, I want to prepare my explanation ahead of time, transfer it to
you, and let you experience it without talking to you. how do I do
that?
mtd> 1) write is much less limiting than pre-printed paper with
instructions and a blank space on the back for writing the poem; and
2) literate programming gets you a long way.
m_stone> well, one common technique used in many good CS textbooks is to write
a series of examples which build up to the ultimate example. and
people who do multimedia projects commonly say 'go make your collage
over here, then glue it into place on the worksheet...'
bemasc> so you're creating a category that includes textbooks and recorded
lectures.
m_stone> so what I think I'd want to try here would be a system that let me
string together resumable activity instances and 'holes' for new
instances to be put in. (maybe other things too later on, but those
are the essential pieces. cscott tells me this is nothing more than
ODF... however, I think that the UI is the important part). then I
can just give you my explanation and you can pick whichever piece of
it you like, resume it, and play with it.similarly, if there's
something I want you to do with it (that you're going to give back to
me), then I'll have made space for you. for example, maybe I want you
to solve a puzzle or to take some photos. so maybe I put a blank
record instance there for you?
bemasc> why not just say "Now open Record"; "Now take some pictures with
Record"? my textbooks are not interactive, and I managed to make it
this far? They say "now solve the following problem" and so I take
out my computer and write a program to solve the problem
m_stone> I just think it's a better experience if you directly present people
with the structure of what you want them to experience. it's like the
difference between going on a hiking trip on a well-established trail
vs. in the back-country... you can study the landscape from both, but
the former is much more accessible. it requires less unnecessary
decisionmaking, comprehension, and judgement.
bemasc> I should say, I don't think what you describe is a bad idea, but it
seems of minimal actual utility. I've seen many tutorials for various
computer things that contain a picture of the icon that the author
wants you to click
Usability
m_stone> does your opinion change if the people you're teaching can't read?
bemasc> no, except that for people who can't read, none of this will work
mtd> I think people are going to have to read to get lots of benefits out
of narrative.
m_stone> put differently -- why are screencasts a valuable instructional tool
when almost all screencasts arise from written instructions?
bemasc> I don't know; I've never used a screencast
mtd> s/read/use language/
m_stone> as the study of semiotics demonstrates, that difference matters. I'm
inquiring about the utility of a fairly small visual language for
'here are a collection of things you should try doing'. (probably in
some fairly specific order)
mtd> hmm. I don't disagree there could be power in that, but I think the
difficulty of creating even a small symbolic language that
presupposes no existing symbolic language should not be
underestimated.
bemasc> if you're simply proposing a way to allow one Activity to expose a
widget that launches another activity, then I have nothing to argue
about. I think that's a fine idea. I just don't think it represents a
major leap in functionality, or enables any new behaviors that
weren't easy already. it removes a single step of "find this icon on
the home view" and removes zero clicks.
mtd> I think the lesson plan UI is just going to help teachers build (or
just perceive) more easily the plans for using the XO in the
classroom. Fostering that perception is quite useful. I think it's
actually a big leap in usability - it's moved the number of switches
away from the activities involved to zero. From one per activity
involved. To a computer user it's of course a "chasm" we've all
crossed long ago. but perhaps not for first-time users (obviously I'm
not able to imagine that situation myself, and I am unfamiliar with
reasearch in that area, so i'm pulling this out of my ass)
bemasc> for users who are truly uncomfortable with the interface, I see how
having to switch to the home view and launch an instance could be a
barrier
m_stone> it also avoids the need to invoke object choosers everywhere
(P_DOCUMENT). if you have several activities linked together inside a
single narrative container, then they can all interact happily w/out
crossing any security boundaries.
mtd> yes, for pre-existing documents...actually that's a lot of clicks
you've done away with. I have noticed - completely anecdotally - the
high cognitive load non-developers seem to experience keeping track
of open / planned-to-open applications. (whereas I think most
developers run several WMs on the wetware)
nteon> where in the current interface do you invision "now take some
pictures with record" fit in? from your original email I had been
thinking more about allowing kids to pull activities they had done
into narratives, but I think that could fold into this broader
concept you're talking about, although it is still somewhat nebulous
to me. also, how would you link them together in the first place,
through the journal?
m_stone> I'm not sure yet.
mtd> I did indeed think you were distributing an activity that allowed
launching existing (and potential) instances of activities together.
m_stone> that's one potential implementation but I don't have strong feelings
about either the implementation or the graphics; instead, I'm
thinking about the interaction design -- screens, input, waits, and
so on
mtd> the UI is definitely the innovation/interesting thing here
m_stone> my other concern is how it should be displayed in the journal.
Cost/Benefit Ratio
mtd> as bemasc and others have pointedout, the workflow/usage pattern is
poosible now
m_stone> 'possible' != 'efficient, smooth, polished, pleasant, ...'
m_stone> my current complaint about the journal is that the journal doesn't
have any way of showing you things you _might_ do in the future. (or
that someone wants you to do)
nteon> I think it would really help the list thread to get your ideas down
digitially, even if it is scanned in scribbles (like cscott's
journal). I myself am having a hard time imaging things other than
ebens bullitin board or a ppt style tool
bemasc> what you're describing sound to me like EPGY and other "distance
learning" programs. more specifically, I would call this a "self-
guided interactive lesson"
m_stone> okay.... how does that conceptualization affect your judgement of its
relevancy to encoding educational experiences for consumption by or
through XOs?
bemasc> I think this is very valuable but I maintain that it's already very
much possible and that the technical barriers are negligible compared
to the social barriers of finding people to write and translate these
lessons. An HTML content bundle is better than close enough for me.
m_stone> do you also assert that it's any of 'efficient, smooth, polished,
pleasant, ...' ? also, how do I make one of those on an XO?
nteon> what about students wishing to string together a thread of activities
telling a story of their experiences or of something they've learned?
bemasc> they should write up a lesson. certainly if it's not easy to create
content bundles on an XO... well, it should be.
m_stone> (there are other problems with content bundles too, such as the
copying-into-journal problem, the invisibility-of-bundle-in-journal
problem, the what-the-hell-does-Bitfrost-say-about-these? problem,
...) but I take your point. as for the 'well, it should be'.... I'll
reply: 'well, it certainly isn't yet, and no one is working on the
problem either'. this is, in some sense, is the cause of my email --
I think that more people would work on this use case if the sugar
vision said that this use case was important.
m_stone> in conclusion, what I'm saying is that it is currently all but
impossible to write and share slick lessons on an XO, or to keep
track of one's progress through a curriculum of lessons in the
journal.
bemasc> making content bundles work better sounds very valuable. We certainly
don't provide nice content creation tools. I heartily agree that this
is an area in which improvements are worth pursuing.
m_stone> lovely. now if only you weren't in engaged in pursuit of further
education... :)
bemasc> right.
