[kde-edu]: Step is moved for review to be included in kde-edu for 4.1

Carsten Niehaus cniehaus at gmx.de
Thu Apr 3 19:55:03 CEST 2008


Moin Vladimir and list!

Today, I tested Step quite a lot and have a bit of feedback. 

First, I demo'ed it to some of my students (7th grade (~13y) and 10th grade 
(~16y)) and let them play with it on their own. Most of them *really* liked 
it! Several at once asked where they can download it. The discussion with 
them and with physics teachers resulted in these three bugreports:

        http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160332   

        http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160334    

        http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160335

There were almost no negative comments. I will try to list them here:

1. Missing documentation (both handbook and this nice GUI-help-widget-thing in 
the bottom right corner)

2. Missing german translation
 → This will of course be fixed as soon as Step is in kdeedu, I just wanted to 
mention it here as it was almost the only real complaint ;-)

3. Some students have issues finding options. For example, some asked me "How 
can I change the colour of this item". They (of course) do not associate 
#FF0000 with "Blue".

4. We closed those widgets on the right and didn't find a way to readd them... 
In the end I removed ~/.kde4/share/config/steprc but that is of course a 
crappy way...

5.1. More examples. Let me repeat this: More examples :-) Serious, the 
students loved to play with Step and with 10 more examples they would have 
stress tested it 30 more minutes ;-)
5.2. More examples. Let me repeat this: More examples :-) Serious, the 
teachers told me they find it a bit hard to construct examples. They 
understand how to do it and would manage it but with more examples it would 
be possible to (instead of constructing a completly new .step-file) start 
with an example and modify it for your own needs.

6. Sometimes the label-widgets make it impossible to select items. For example 
because a particle happens to be 'over' the label. I think that labels should 
be at the bottom most "layer"

7. The selections-squares (you known, those little handles to for example 
change the speed or direction) are a little to small (or my 
hand-eye-coordination sucks, I don't know). But +1 pixel could already help 
here I think...

This post sounds negative, but it is not. Those are the issues teachers and 
studends found, I simply didn't list the positive comments!
So, summa summarum: Step rocks and is *definetly* usable in school and will be 
even more so when we finished some of the listed 'issues'. 

Carsten
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 194 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-edu/attachments/20080403/029a8ee4/attachment.pgp 


More information about the kde-edu mailing list