Collaboration with KDE Education Project

Updated Wiki: Status Report

robertocunha — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:31:05 GMT

Status Report

Schedule Overview

Key Points

As a first step the team did meetings and brainstorms to decide what to improve in all applications (Kbruch, Kpercentage, Kalzium and Ksudoku).

Black box testing were also planned for the KDE on Windows.

Kbruch: Improvements to make the application more readable and engaging. The improvements are almost full implemented. For more information about the changes, please see: KBruch - Wireframes.pdf

Also, we implemented a new educational feature, that allows the user learn about fractions sums by manipulating images. Here is a screen shot:

Kpercentage: Percentage and Fractions (the Kbruch's subject) are closely related, so we merged Kpercentage to Kbruch. This merge is an old item on the KBruch's ToDo list. Now, percentage is one of Kbruch's modalities of tasks.

Kalzium: Improvements to enable the user see more than one property at the same time (for example, electronegativity and elements families). There are more detailed informations at http://www.ltia.fc.unesp.br/ead/kalzium/

Ksudoku: Make symbol themes more usable and understandable and make the 3D game play more usable allowing easier control of the camera.

Development Overview

Since begin of the project the developers got involved with coding aspects in order to understand better the environment. What’s already made or in process:

Creation of the development environment.
Know how to programming using QT and KDELibs.
Development in Kbruch. (Things we planned and didn’t changed during discussions with the community and after Akademy)

Updated Wiki: Status Report

robertocunha — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:23:19 GMT

Status Report

Schedule Overview

Key Points

As a first step the team did meetings and brainstorms to decide what to improve in all applications (Kbruch, Kpercentage, Kalzium and Ksudoku).

Black box testing were also planned for the KDE on Windows.

Kbruch: Improvements to make the application more readable and engaging. The improvements are almost full implemented. For more information about the changes, please see the link at the botton of this page (KBruch - wireframes). Also, we implemented a new educational feature, that allows the user learn about fractions sums by manipulating images. There is a screen shot at the botton of this page (KBruchlearningtool).

Kpercentage: Percentage and Fractions (the Kbruch's subject) are closely related, so we merged Kpercentage to Kbruch. This merge is an old item on the KBruch's ToDo list. Now, percentage is one of Kbruch's modalities of tasks.

Kalzium: Improvements to enable the user see more than one property at the same time (for example, electronegativity and elements families). There are more detailed informations at http://www.ltia.fc.unesp.br/ead/kalzium/ .

Ksudoku: Make symbol themes more usable and understandable and make the 3D game play more usable allowing easier control of the camera.

Development Overview

Since begin of the project the developers got involved with coding aspects in order to understand better the environment. What’s already made or in process:

Creation of the development environment.
Know how to programming using QT and KDELibs.
Development in Kbruch. (Things we planned and didn’t changed during discussions with the community and after Akademy)

Updated Wiki: Status Report

robertocunha — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:17:17 GMT

Status Report

Schedule Overview

Key Points

As a first step the team did meetings and brainstorms to decide what to improve in all applications (Kbruch, Kpercentage, Kalzium and Ksudoku).

Black box testing were also planned for the KDE on Windows.

Kbruch: Improvements to make the application more readable and engaging. The improvements are full implemented and the process documentation is available on the link at the botton of this page. Also, we implemented a new educational feature, that allows the user learn about fractions sums by manipulating images. There is a screen shot at the botton of this page.

Kpercentage: Percentage and Fractions (the Kbruch's subject) are closely related, so we merged Kpercentage to Kbruch. Now, percentage is one of Kbruch's modalities of tasks.

Kalzium: Improvements to enable the user see more than one property at the same time (for example, electronegativity and elements families). There are more detailed informations at http://www.ltia.fc.unesp.br/ead/kalzium/ .

Ksudoku: Make symbol themes more usable and understandable and make the 3D game play more usable allowing easier control of the camera.

Development Overview

Since begin of the project the developers got involved with coding aspects in order to understand better the environment. What’s already made or in process:

Creation of the development environment.
Know how to programming using QT and KDELibs.
Development in Kbruch. (Things we planned and didn’t changed during discussions with the community and after Akademy)

Source code checked in, #24822

tiagoporangaba — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:50:14 GMT

kbruch wireframes

Updated Wiki: Status Report

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:31:05 GMT

Status Report

Schedule Overview

Key Points

As a first step the team did meetings and brainstorms to decide what to improve in all applications (Kbruch, Kpercentage, Kalzium and Ksudoku).

Black box testing were also planned for the KDE on Windows.

Kbruch: Few improvements to make the application more readable and engaging. Example: Larger fonts and the possibility to only use keyboard to play. Also, one new educational feature that could be Test cases or Discs. Test cases allows users to create a set of tests and Discs to analyze the fractions and help the user to understand differences between fractions.

Examples:

Kpercentage: Few improvements to make the game more usable, like changing labels.

Kalzium: Improvements to enable direct manipulation of some information of the periodic table. Example: Ease access to eletronegativity information. Just changing a radio button on the main window.

Ksudoku: Make symbol themes more usable and understandable and make the 3D game play more usable allowing easier control of the camera.

Development Overview

Since begin of the project the developers got involved with coding aspects in order to understand better the environment. What’s already made or in process:

Creation of the development environment.
Know how to programming using QT and KDELibs.
Development in Kbruch. (Things we planned and didn’t changed during discussions with the community and after Akademy)

Updated Wiki: Status Report

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:27:06 GMT

Status Report

Schedule Overview

Updated Wiki: Status Report

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:25:46 GMT

Status Report

Schedule Overview

Updated Wiki: Status Report

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:25:09 GMT

Status Report

Schedule Overview

picture:ScheduleOverview.png

Updated Wiki: Attending KDE Akademy 2008

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:24:02 GMT

KDE Akademy 2008

We attended to Akademy. The annual event of the KDE community. Our intention was to meet the community because it could allow us a better collaboration. We met people from KDE Usability, KDE Games, KDE Art and so on.

Interactions and brief of results proportioned by aKademy conference:

Meeting with KDE Usability team searching for advices and for alignment about our proposed improvements
Meeting with the current Ksudoku maintainer
Attending Usability and HCI Workshop Day
Understanding about how people involved in the project are organized to work with KDE (Collecting best practices for to interact with community)

Basically aKademy participation produced a lot of changes on our planning:

Now we’ll code the Discs features discussed before, because now we are sure that is more important to KDE Edu features to help learning. And we are going to help Ksudoku to port important features from it’s old versions. Like the possibility to print games.
Something interest that we discovered during Akademy (analyzing the code of KBruch) was an old TODO list of the software that suggested something related to the Discs feature just like we already thought.

Links about our participation on the Web:

Building software together, Mauricio Piacentini (KDE Games Team)
http://piacentini.livejournal.com/8978.html

KDE Education Project on Porta 25 Brazil
http://porta25.technetbrasil.com.br/porta25/Default.aspx?tabid=36&EntryID=414
http://porta25.technetbrasil.com.br/porta25/Default.aspx?tabid=36&EntryID=425
http://porta25.technetbrasil.com.br/porta25/Default.aspx?tabid=36&EntryID=427

KDE Education Project on BR-Linux
http://br-linux.org/2008/projeto-de-colaboracao-entre-unesp-e-kde

Updated Wiki: Attending KDE Akademy 2008

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:22:33 GMT

KDE Akademy 2008

Meeting with KDE Usability team searching for advices and for alignment about our proposed improvements
Meeting with the current Ksudoku maintainer
Attending Usability and HCI Workshop Day
Understanding about how people involved in the project are organized to work with KDE (Collecting best practices for to interact with community)

Basically aKademy participation produced a lot of changes on our planning:

Now we’ll code the Discs features discussed before, because now we are sure that is more important to KDE Edu features to help learning. And we are going to help Ksudoku to port important features from it’s old versions. Like the possibility to print games.
Something interest that we discovered during Akademy (analyzing the code of KBruch) was an old TODO list of the software that suggested something related to the Discs feature just like we already thought.

Links about our participation on the Web:

http://piacentini.livejournal.com/8978.htmlBuilding software together, Mauricio Piacentini (KDE Games Team)/url
http://porta25.technetbrasil.com.br/porta25/Default.aspx?tabid=36&EntryID=414KDE Education Project on Porta 25 Brazil - Post #1/url
http://porta25.technetbrasil.com.br/porta25/Default.aspx?tabid=36&EntryID=425KDE Education Project on Porta 25 Brazil - Post #2/url
http://porta25.technetbrasil.com.br/porta25/Default.aspx?tabid=36&EntryID=427KDE Education Project on Porta 25 Brazil - Post #3/url
ur: http://br-linux.org/2008/projeto-de-colaboracao-entre-unesp-e-kdeKDE Education Project on BR-Linux/url

Updated Wiki: Home

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:18:48 GMT

Introduction to KDE Education

Free Educational Software based on the KDE technologies: students, parents, children, teachers, adults.

Key Points:

Primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users.
While until now only available on Unix, BSD and Linux, still in beta but already usable, the KDE 4 series bring our applications on Windows

Our Collaboration

Usability and educational improvements on four software applications:

Kbruch
Kpercentage
Kalzium
Ksudoku

Also, testing KDE for Windows aiming to accellerate the education software applications support on Windows platforms.

Briefing of Software Applications

KBruch

KBruch is a small program to practice calculating with fractions. Therefore 4 different exercises are offered. Factorization is important while finding the main denominator of 2 fractions. Also, KBruch provides a handbook describing the different exercises and the general usage.

KPercentage

KPercentage is a small math application that will help students to improve their skills in calculating percentages.

Kalzium

Kalzium is an application which will show you some information about the periodic system of the elements. Therefore you could use it as an information database.

Ksudoku

KSudoku is a logic-based symbol placement puzzle. The player has to fill a grid so that each column, row as well as each square block on the game field contains only one instance of each symbol.

KDE on Windows

The KDE on Windows Project is aimed at native porting of the KDE applications to MS Windows.

Pages

Status Report
Attending KDE Akademy 2008

Updated Wiki: Home

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:18:17 GMT

Introduction to KDE Education

Free Educational Software based on the KDE technologies: students, parents, children, teachers, adults.

Key Points:

Primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users.
While until now only available on Unix, BSD and Linux, still in beta but already usable, the KDE 4 series bring our applications on Windows

Our Collaboration

Usability and educational improvements on four software applications:

Kbruch
Kpercentage
Kalzium
Ksudoku

Also, testing KDE for Windows aiming to accellerate the education software applications support on Windows platforms.

Briefing of Software Applications

KBruch

KPercentage

KPercentage is a small math application that will help students to improve their skills in calculating percentages.

Kalzium

Kalzium is an application which will show you some information about the periodic system of the elements. Therefore you could use it as an information database.

Ksudoku

KSudoku is a logic-based symbol placement puzzle. The player has to fill a grid so that each column, row as well as each square block on the game field contains only one instance of each symbol.

KDE on Windows

The KDE on Windows Project is aimed at native porting of the KDE applications to MS Windows.

Pages

[Attending KDE Akademy 2008]

Updated Wiki: Home

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:14:54 GMT

Introduction to KDE Education

Free Educational Software based on the KDE technologies: students, parents, children, teachers, adults.

Key Points:

Primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users.
While until now only available on Unix, BSD and Linux, still in beta but already usable, the KDE 4 series bring our applications on Windows

Our Collaboration

Usability and educational improvements on four software applications:

Kbruch
Kpercentage
Kalzium
Ksudoku

Also, testing KDE for Windows aiming to accellerate the education software applications support on Windows platforms.

Briefing of Software Applications

KBruch

KPercentage

KPercentage is a small math application that will help students to improve their skills in calculating percentages.

Kalzium

Kalzium is an application which will show you some information about the periodic system of the elements. Therefore you could use it as an information database.

Ksudoku

KSudoku is a logic-based symbol placement puzzle. The player has to fill a grid so that each column, row as well as each square block on the game field contains only one instance of each symbol.

KDE on Windows

The KDE on Windows Project is aimed at native porting of the KDE applications to MS Windows.

Updated Wiki: Home

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:08:23 GMT

Introduction to KDE Education

Free Educational Software based on the KDE technologies: students, parents, children, teachers, adults.

Key Points:

Primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users.
While until now only available on Unix, BSD and Linux, still in beta but already usable, the KDE 4 series bring our applications on Windows

Our Collaboration

Usability and educational improvements on four software applications:

Kbruch
Kpercentage
Kalzium
Ksudoku

Also, testing KDE for Windows aiming to accellerate the education software applications support on Windows platforms.

Briefing of Software Applications

KBruch

KPercentage

KPercentage is a small math application that will help students to improve their skills in calculating percentages.

Kalzium

Kalzium is an application which will show you some information about the periodic system of the elements. Therefore you could use it as an information database.

Ksudoku

KSudoku is a logic-based symbol placement puzzle. The player has to fill a grid so that each column, row as well as each square block on the game field contains only one instance of each symbol.

KDE on Windows

Cannot resolve link: [image:Picture5.png]

The KDE on Windows Project is aimed at native porting of the KDE applications to MS Windows.

Updated Wiki: Home

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:06:51 GMT

Introduction to KDE Education

Free Educational Software based on the KDE technologies: students, parents, children, teachers, adults.

Key Points:

Primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users.
While until now only available on Unix, BSD and Linux, still in beta but already usable, the KDE 4 series bring our applications on Windows

Our Collaboration

Usability and educational improvements on four software applications:

Kbruch
Kpercentage
Kalzium
Ksudoku

Also, testing KDE for Windows aiming to accellerate the education software applications support on Windows platforms.

Briefing of Software Applications

KBruch

KPercentage

Cannot resolve link: [image:Picture2.png]

KPercentage is a small math application that will help students to improve their skills in calculating percentages.

Kalzium

Cannot resolve link: [image:Picture3.png]

Kalzium is an application which will show you some information about the periodic system of the elements. Therefore you could use it as an information database.

Ksudoku

Cannot resolve link: [image:Picture4.png]

KSudoku is a logic-based symbol placement puzzle. The player has to fill a grid so that each column, row as well as each square block on the game field contains only one instance of each symbol.

KDE on Windows

Cannot resolve link: [image:Picture5.png]

The KDE on Windows Project is aimed at native porting of the KDE applications to MS Windows.

Cannot resolve link: [image:Picture3.png]

Updated Wiki: Home

tiagoporangaba — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:02:20 GMT

Introduction to KDE Education

Free Educational Software based on the KDE technologies: students, parents, children, teachers, adults.

Key Points:

Primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users.

While until now only available on Unix, BSD and Linux, still in beta but already usable, the KDE 4 series bring our applications on Windows

Our Collaboration

Usability and educational improvements on four software applications:

Kbruch
Kpercentage
Kalzium
Ksudoku

Also, testing KDE for Windows aiming to accellerate the education software applications support on Windows platforms.

Briefing of Software Applications

KBruch

Updated Wiki: Home

robertocunha — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:28:10 GMT

---

UPDATED WIKI: Home

robertocunha — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:50:38 GMT

ThinksApps Project

Development of three educational software applications, using the newest Windows technologies to improve their interface accordingly the educational process involved.

The apps

Fractions and percentage

The first application is actually the fusion of two types of application that commonly appears separated: for learning fractions and percentage calculations. There is no reason to maintain percentage and fraction activities in separate applications, so we intend show to students relations between expressions like 150% and 3/2 and 1+1/2 concurrently in a single study session. Beyond the numbers, visual aids are elements of a direct manipulation interface.

Periodic Table

There are dozens of periodic tables in the market, and all of them fight with a crucial problem: how to enable access to all that information without a labyrinth of menus and sub menus and how to highlight relations between them. Here are some preliminary studies:

In the figure above, we see the relation between two properties - electronegativity and atomic numbers - displayed simultaneously, by clicking two radio buttons.

And now we see electronegativity behavior in a single family. Users can highlight any family by clicking their names (1A in this example), and then choose electronegativity by clicking the respective radio button.

Sudoku

Analysing the usage of Sudoku game version in the market is clearly possible to observe problems about usability of the software application. Therefore, the usability of KSudoku can be improved with some studies about the software application. For example: When the user wants to populate some square of Sudoku with a given symbol (number or letter), he have to move an unnecessarily big distance between given symbol and the square with the cursor point of mouse. The figure below demonstrates it.

One possible solution to address this problem is to enable for user, using just one click of mouse, select the square desired and after that choose one symbol using mouse wheel. The figure below demonstrates it.

Another improvement which can be made on sudoku is about the educational benefits of this game. It is possible to elaborate a study which can evaluate the sudoku potential on specific areas of scholar curriculum, for example geometry (polyomino and mathematical floor plans). It is also possible to evaluate what advantages for one teach is worthy about the possibility of to include a tutorial or hint system which demonstrates the relationship between these areas (geometry) and the puzzle solving process.

UPDATED RELEASE: 0.1

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:32:33 GMT

Alpha Version

UPDATED RELEASE: 0.1

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:30:58 GMT

Alpha Version