More about "Carben HandiEgo" |
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Gordon White, Australia
I lead a team of teachers who began
the first student-owned laptop program in a government school in Australia.
We're in our third year and have one class in Year 10 (approx 16 year olds)
who've been in the program for two years. Another class is Year 9 students in
their second year, and a Year 7 class (11-12 year olds) who've just begun. They
are just average level students who parents agreed with them that our program
could revolutionise (their) education - open-ended study, IT literacy focussed,
teachers and students exploring knowledge together, etc. The documentation I've
produced is quite extensive.
I created Carben HandiEgo originally
for our laptop students to show them how easy it is to use, in creating non-linear
assignments, and to allow staff to receive assignments done in a less formal
and more interesting format than "500 word essay".
I guess it took me about18 hours to
produce. (I'm not fast!) All the card creation was done in ClarisWorks and was
then pasted into SimpleCard. A game map is available, if you enquire. See if
you can create a map showing all 30 cards.The shortest trip from beginning to
end is just 9 cards. How many did it take you? Can you find the shortest route?
Carben was just a vehicle to show students
this sort of option. We take them on to HyperCard and Media Link, which we use
soon after. I require students to create a stack with at least 10 cards on the
Design Process which is necessarily a non-linear process. We have also used
Simple Card to create large stacks where students produce sections of the final
and completed stack. F'rinstance, in World Geography I had 3 students producing
the deserts section, another 3 producing the mountains section, and so on. 2
students' task is to do the standard setting of navigation icons, screen layout
guidelines, and the compilation and integration of all the cards - a BIG job.
- Some of the pictures are
mine but most are clip art. I had to learn how SimpleCard uses paint and pict
files quite differently when I was learning and the tutorial I wrote does
not teach the best way to do it, but it does give an easy intro'.
- I didn't offer the option
of returning from the last page to the beginning because I knew that the students
would be going on to dissect Carben and they'd see every page anyway. (See
below).
- It's unlocked so you CAN
mess with it. Please do, and send me a copy.
- The odd links on some
cards (as you found) were meant as a demo of lateral thinking to show the
students that there are many ways to present options other than simply a boolean
type of yes/no or true/false answer. Hidden, missing, or unexpected results
add interest. Well, that was my theory, anyway. Hence the "Brasilia 2/3" missing
links and the "Portugese 1/2" taking you back to the correct path. The incorrect
"Andorra" link was also given as a test of "information validity", after the
event. i.e. don't assume that what you're told is true!
- Yes, the Mothercards support
file is just a series of screen dumps from Niklas' manual. I need students
to be able to follow me from the hard copy as we worked through a sample "talk-thru".
They found mothercards the hardest.
- The "game map" was given
to the students as a completion sheet to make them visit every card and discover
every option on the 30 cards. The "game plan" was given to them afterwards
for them to check their analysis.
- In one version of Carben,
I loaded the extra fonts directly into SimpleCard (using Option in the Font/DA
Mover), since SimpleCard itself is so small. I have lots of versions in various
places. The extra fonts needed for correct display are: Nancy Blue and Zapf
Dingbats. The "Apple" and "Q" keys are actually inserted as graphics (screenshots)
from "Mac Key Caps" font, which you don't need.
As I said, I created Carben Handiego
for a specific purpose in a closed environment, so it's got lots of little foibles
built in. I'm more than happy to adapt it, or for you to adapt it, for a wider
market though.
