Sorry I hadn't replied for a week, been really busy. I guess you guys don't have a program to stop time, do you?
Ok, I've been using it in class and I have to say that... kids love it!
Normally a class is full of individuals, and this program has the virtue of:
- Letting everyone be part of the same team (it's a bit of a "all of us against the teacher" concept).
- It's been really helpful at getting the kids' attention, which is not always easy!
- Kids tend to get a little bit carried away and can cellebrate guesses pretty much like a crowd at a soccer match!
I guess the novelty will wear out, but so far my experience has been better than I expected.
The program has already reached a level which is well above my expectations.
Based on my own thoughts and some the comments by the kids in class, these are some of the things I'd like to see for the next version. (I know some of these will be impossible to implement, but here they go anyway.)
- Kids are curious by nature. One question I keep getting is: What happens when the bar gets to the top? So, I thought that it would be great if we could add a feature that lets you add an event when the bar reaches a certain amount. For example, an image pops up on the screen when the red bar reaches 20, or 25 or... whatever. or an image pops up when the green bar reaches... Perhaps you can add more than one picture: picture at 20, 25, etc.
This would give the program awesome flexibility, using different pix for different schools, etc. This is probably my favourite feature request.
- An integrated stopwatch - or better, a countdown. I guess I could use another program for this, but it would be nice if it were included. I often set up a puzzle and give the kids xx seconds to find the answer.
- More bars? perhaps ability to choose number / colours of them?
This is actually quite an interesting idea which provides versatility. Maybe each bar can represent a different student, or be used for different types of questions.
- Ability to run Several instances of the program?
- Log results. Click a button to copy to clickboard or something. Or maybe when you start the program you get a question: "what file would you like to log results to?". This is interesting because I can show results achieved by schools from different schools, or simply motivate children to do better than the week before, or achieve their best result ever, and so on.
- One Click button to reset bars? Re-starting the program or clicking manually can take a while.
And here are some ideas that I'm not sure whether are needed or not. Probably not really needed for version 2.
- horizontal version of the program?
- Sound effects?
