Activity hosting application: Time

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

  Hi, Jason,

>      My point is that to get kids understand the sense of time, the
>     programmer doesn't have to build a single "the game"; like what you
>     have on the wiki page, in a game, a kids walks up to the blackboard
>     and write something.  There, if the activity has simple yet flexible
>     interaction, they can make more "games".  So, the good focus for a
>     programmer would be to provide such a interface.
> 
> but how one would go about providing that interface?

  How would one like you, right?  Think and experiment, I would say.

  One idea is to make an "active essay" on it.  There are bunch of
"active essays" on the net (google "active essay").  An explanation in
text written in one place with interactive elements on the side.  On
computer, that is a powerful technique of explain something.

>      I wouldn't count on it that much (you know how China deals with
>     timezones, and how summer is like in high-latitute places, right?).
> 
> We were looking for a way to change the position of the sun based on the longitude and latitude and time of year(xearth
> seemed promising).  I'm actually not sure how china deals with time zones, but as long as the laptop's system time is
> correct, I don't think that should be a problem.

  It is up to you, of course, but I would try to find a simpler
solution.  Historically, the position of the sun was used in the
definition time; however, as more variables put into the concept, it
now is more "artificial".  Verbal explanation is unavoidable for
artificial concepts.

>      Ah, but stuff like "60 seconds is 1 minute", "60 minutes is 1 hour",
>     "24 hours is a day", "but the face only has 12 numbers", etc. are not
>     that "discoverable".
> 
> Hopefully that would be something they would notice with moving the clock hands and seeing the digital clock change to
> 59 seconds/minutes before 00.

  I thought you were suggesting that we need some "explanation"?

 Letting people notice something is not usually easy.  Kids and adult
can be easily superstitious when seeing some phenomena without
explanation.  (We say that modern science was invented only 400 years
ago in the human history of hundreds of thousands of years.  Carefully
observing something requires a lot of preparation and training.)

>      When I attended a conference in Chicago, a presenter from UIUC gave
>     a talk.  In the talk, she showed a blank map of Illinois and started
>     with a remark: "Welcome to Chicago!  But do you know that, outside
>     Chicago, there is a larger area called Illinois?"  For an outsider
>     like me, Illinois is one thing so I thought you might know her.^^;
> 
> I see your point, but seeing as cooperation in the olpc project started with the new year, I don't have any connections
> outside of the IMSA chapter.

  There wasn't really a point here; it was rather just a joke (shall I
explain what is funny about the joke? ^^;) Sorry for making random
guess.

  Again, the above is just my suggestions.  but don't be shy about
doing different stuff.  My boss often tells me that "Most of ideas are
bad.  The trick is to abandon bad ideas quickly."  (Not that your
ideas are bad, but better ones may be floating around.)

-- Yoshiki