Talk:Frogger Design

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General Guidelines

• find some ideas on how create tutorials here Tutorial_guidelines

reactions to version 0.1

XXXX did the tutorial today. It took about 50 minutes start to finish without me helping. Overall it went well--she is looking forward to finishing it up. I took some notes on some of the language in it, but then YYYY sent me a .pdf of the full Part I tutorial, which is different (and overall seems better written), so I will not comment on some of the "small stuff" that might differ between these versions.

Here are some overall comments (items in quotes are straight from her mouth):

• (After reading the words 'programming' and 'logic' in the introduction): "Maybe they should use less scientific words, or explain what they mean or something." I somewhat agree here--a simple explanation will suffice. Then if you keep using these words throughout the tutorial, they will understand by the end.
• (In the online version, under building frogger tutorial): "Watch the demo--OK, what demo?" Maybe you intended to have a link here?
• Depiction is not a word kids this age typically know and use. XXXX kept reading it as "deception", even after I corrected her, just because that is a far more interesting word.
• (when drawing her frog and using the circle tool) "Those are NOT circles!!" Maybe the trial version that I have is not high resolution?
• knew exactly how to use all of the commands and icons (said it is from using Microsoft Paint), but she did comment after #9 In Creating Agents: "After they say to click done, they should explain how to edit it". She had decided right away that she didn't like her frog and went to edit it and knew how to edit it, but thought that it may not be obvious to everyone.
• When she went to create the street, the small window asking for the name of the agent opened behind the larger window, but the tutorial didn't say this and she thought she was doing something wrong and got frustrated.
• She needed to roll the mouse around on the mousepad to create the lanes in the Street Agent. She figured this out, but kind of by accident (it's not in the tutorial).
• If-Then conditionality: "what is conditionality--oh, never mind it doesn't matter". The word confused her at first, then she ignored it. If the definition included the word 'condition' then it might be clearer. This is where it could also be helpful to bring in the word 'logic' and tell the students that they are starting the meat of their programming.
• Programming: In #18 where it says to 'change the number in the box from 1 to 0.2.' She said (while typing) "zero-point-two-point. No, no point on the end. Some kids who don't know decimals might not know that." And then again commented that the tutorial says 0.2 but the box shows .2 and some kids might not get that they are the same.
• Figure 1.2 has typos.
• When she first moved the frog up with the up arrow: "Whoa-cool".
• I left at this point for a little while, and she programmed the rest of the agents without a problem. But when I came back she said it was getting a little boring "Just do this, do that". Granted this was after about 50 mintues had gone by, and she was feeling under the weather. But maybe you could put in opportunities to try things out (like the up arrow).

I guess it's not too boring--XXXX just called out from the other room: "Mom, I finished my homework, can I do some more AgentSheets?"