Meetings and their results (cont.)


April 5:  We met in the MML and tried out the different authoring tools.  We chose Director because it seems the most flexible.  It is the only one with which we may be able to allow students to draw lines to enclose bugs, as we had planned.  The animals we will use look like this:

We are undecided about animation.  We are concerned that distraction will take away from the educational usefulness of the program.  On the other hand, the kids won't use it if it isn't interesting.


April 10:  It seems that it will be difficult for us to allow users to draw lines.  We are now looking more at allowing them to choose the corner points of their shape.  The major difficulty is that we only want them to be able to draw 45 degree angles.  If they can draw any angle that snaps on the grid, our calculations become much more complicated, and they will no longer know how to find the area of all possible shapes.  For example:  This triangle
would require trigonomotry to calculate its height.  The students don't have the math necessary for this type of calculation.


April 12:  Laurence and Kate have started working on the tutorials in Director.  We made them each as a separate screen shot but then realized that it was silly to do it that way.  Now we are converting the tutorials to a more reasonable format, with the grid and buttons that stay through the whole tutorial.  We think we will have the divisions of area/perimeter and then how to calculate each for squares, triangles, and irregular shapes.
The game is getting started.  Dave and Will are working on it together.


April 15:  The tutorials are all in Director.  Laurence will work on sound.  She is going to record herself reading the texts in the tutorials and eventually in the game as well.  She is also going to do any sound effects we want.  We are torn about sound effects.  Should we have sound?  A soundtrack?  What purpose does that serve?  We are wondering about how fun this game will be.


April 18:  Group meeting.  It was agreed that I would work on documentation (Kate), Laurence will do sound, together we will finish the tutorials and work on a "how to play the game" tutorial, Will and Dave will do the game.  They are now thinking that they will have squares and triangles that you drag on to a grid to cover bugs.  This is a different format, but they think it will work better and be easier to use.  Something like this:


April 25:  We have been working on our own.  The tutorials are totally finished with sound and the how to play the game tutorial.  The game is coming along.  We have what looks like a work space where you can drag shapes on, and Dave has written the code to allow the computer to check area and perimeter.  That is a big step.  We are now starting on levels.  Major concerns are:  How to divide levels, how to make levels progressively harder, how to keep the game interesting even after multiple uses.  I will begin to work on the rewards section.  We are still doing the same thing we decided at the beginning, namely to have property on a grid and allow students to drag different structures onto the grid, building a little world of their own as they go through the levels.  Some ideas for things to build are houses, a baseball field, a swimming pool, etc.


April 29: We present a prototype in class on Tuesday, May 2.  We have a couple of levels ready and are going to the school on May 1 to see what the kids think.  The error checking is still a problem.  We are also a little worried that the game will be too easy for the kids.  We can go into volume calculation if we need to make it more difficult.  The rewards are done, except for a few bugs.  The pictures of things you can choose to build look like this:


May 1:  Went to the school today.  Very informative.  The kids are not nearly as comfortable with area and perimeter as we had thought.  Have to make the levels start at a lower level and advance more slowly.  We also need to think about a bottom net to catch those who are at the lowest level.  We may need to have more structure in the lowest levels.  We were trying to avoid giving the students strict guidelines because we feel that less structure and more of a workspace will be more interesting for re-use and will allow creativity.  However, some kind of structure at the lowest levels seems necessary.
Kids had serious trouble with using numbers larger than 1,000.  With the units of each square being 10, the area thus 100, it is very easy for shapes to get larger than 1,000 units in area.  We have decided to change the units to 2 on the grid and 3 on diagonals.  This will make then numbers lots smaller and normally, easier to manage.  It means we have to change all the tutorials and re-record all the texts.  That's a pain.
The tutorial and rewards are still separate from the game.  We will have to put them together and make links between the game and the tutorial.  Ideally, the type of question being asked would link you to the area of the tutorial that would help you.  For instance, if the computer were asking you to figure out the area of your shape, if you pushed on the help button, the computer would jump you directly to the tutorials on area.  We are presenting on Thursday, May 4, rather than tomorrow.


May 4:  Presented in class today.  Feedback was mostly positive.  We need to put the tutorial and the game together.  One big question is what to do when students fail to answer correctly repeatedly.  Should we just send them to the tutorial, give them a new question?  Right now, three incorrect answers gives you a new question.  Again, we want students to have to ask for help in order to get it.  We want as little imposed structure as possible.  Will came up with a good idea for a relatively flexible way of having an introduction to the tasks of the game.  We put a shape up on the grid missing a few pieces and tell the student to complete the shape.  That lets them learn how to drag shapes and erase without forcing them into one fixed task.
The level structure is object-oriented so it should be easy to make many levels.  We will get together tomorrow as a group to work on writing the questions for the levels.  Roger wants a better intro screen, which we do need.  He mentioned making it present the tasks of the game.  I think that is a good idea.  The white box we have being the eraser is not entirely intuitive.  We will either have to label it or find some other solution.  One big help will be to make dragged shapes appear over and cover up shapes that are already on the grid.  Right now a new shape will erase an old one, but while being dragged around, it doesn't appear over the existing shapes.  Kids had some visualization problems with the reflected triangles.  Having them cover the previous shapes should help with that.
Other feedback was more about formatting, which is easy to change.  Telling students whether they are right or wrong should be close to the place where the question is posed so they will notice it.  We have to be sure to erase previous questions before posing new ones, so that it is clear what is being asked.  The bugs are not working for now, but they should be later today.  Program is due on Tuesday, May 9.


May 6:  Will and Dave have more or less finished the game.  There are just a couple of functions that we want the game to be able to test that it can't test yet, but they should be easy.  Will and I spent a couple of hours writing levels 1-7 and we may write a few more before we decide to call it quits.  Should we include a couple on volume?  Since they are so easy to write, I don't see why not.  One problem with the game is that as the shapes get larger, the calculations of perimeter get more tedious.  But perhaps if the very idea of calculating perimeter is a new one, then it would be more interesting.  At any rate, we are nearly done.  Laurence will finish re-recording the tutorials and recording the game questions for tomorrow.  Dave will add the few functions we are missing, like doubling or halving area/perimeter.  Will will work on these functions also and some more levels.  I will make a welcome screen.  All we have left is to put the tutorial and the rewards sections into the game and make sure everything works before packaging.  Then a bit of documentation for the users, and we'll be done.


May 7:  Dave imported the tutorial and rewards into the game and fixed up all the links so that they work properly.  Laurence is still working on sound for the game, mostly reading the questions.  Tomorrow we have to figure out how to connect the questions to the appropriate sound files.  I am working on documentation for the teachers.  All we have left is sound and a few corrections of terminology.  Since different people worked on the different levels and the tutorial, we do not always call things by the same name.  It will be easier for the kids if the squares and triangles you can drag on to the grid are always tiles or blocks or shapes or whatever, but not a mixture of the different names.  Once that is done, we just have to make a projector.  It turned out to be really easy to import cast members from Director 7 to Director 8.  Hopefully making the projector will be just as painless.


May 8:  We are done with the game.  I redid some of the tutorial to make the terminology consistant throughout and edited the text in the levels.  The guys made buttons so that you can see the perimeter and areas labeled if you want to.  Laurence (re) did lots of sound files.  That was annoying but was only a result of lack of coordination earlier on.  Will made some projectors.  We will press our CDs tomorrow.  I am done with documentation and a   user's manual.  All seems well.  We turn in the project tomorrow.

 Back to main page