education team meeting July, 2
particpants: Randy, Tim, Rita
We talked about recent discussions from the software team meetings. We started with the idea of enabling "scale-to-fit" when upening an Etoys project, so that everything can be seen on the screen. That should be standard and probably be called "standard mode". What could be the name for wider screen mode? Do we want that? A problem could arise if someone starts editing in a wider mode and then decides later to share the project. For shared projects is has to be standard mode in order to be displayed properly on all screens. Randy proposes to force standard mode to avoid conflicts.
If we use scaling every time, the really useful option in the scaling menu is "full screen". In former Etoys versions there was one button to toggle full-screen on and off. It would be great to have that back, so to not have to go through the menu. When working with scaling, full-screen really makes a difference visually.
Tim told us about his works on the project server to have a place, where everyone can easily upload projects to the showcase. Randy would like to hold projects back and get them approved before they go on the website. It's necessary to detect offensive or inappropriate content and to make sure, that for instance the math and science is correct for the showcase projects. Whenever a project is published, emails will automatically be send to reviewers.
We agreed to make it possible for everyone to publish projects to the server, which could only be seen by certain persons known to the publisher (friends). So uploads are immediately accessible, but not publicly for everyone. The same with comments: only friends can comment, comments can only be seen by friends. To upload a project one has to set up an account. we have to make it easy for teachers to set up accounts for whole classes.
Randy asked about how to have differente projects included in another project and how to put that on the server, like in the gallery. The projects for the Etoys courseware should be loadable from the server. Tht lead to another discussion from a software meeting: about what to integrate in the new Etoys version. We want to "face lift" the welcojme screen, especially make the new courseware accessible right from the start of etoys. Therefore we are asking for ideas from everyone!
Rita