Tabs tutorial & Ordinary Humans -- Long

[Judy Perry]

Hi Eric,

> Let me tell you very friendly that I do'nt agree your position.
> Beginners are surely as clever as you and me put together ;-)
> Only they don't already know... And have to learn.

--I take your comments in the friendly spirit in which they were
offered... but I still disagree.  They only HAVE to learn if you are in a
position of power (e.g., they are taking your class, you are the teacher
and what you say goes).  A real life example from my master's program in
instructional design and technology:

Our group consisted of 23 students (yours truly included).  One taught
Director at his university.  One or two others had a slight geek
background.  The bulk of the remainder were public school teachers and
the like.  Of the last group, one only sorta, kinda, figured out what a
URL was (that is, if you sent her one, she knew what to do with it and if
you asked her for one, she could identify it in her browser window and
send it to you; in the beginning, she couldn't even do that) after two
years.  Didn't know what a browser was.  Didn't know what kind of computer
she used (NOT uncommon!  I did a little survey of 75 or so future teachers
at a job fair that queried them on what they would like to be able to do
with a computer, what kind of computer they had, etc.  Similar results).

Okay, so we were forced to use Director.  Director, which sorta-kinda has
a verbose, Hypertalk/Transcript-like mode.

For our final m.s. project, we could use whatever we liked.

AFAIK, there was only one or two Director-based projects.  With the
exception of me using Rev, the rest of them used FrontPage(!) to create
an instructional module for their public school class. If
normal people perceive a software product to be overly geeky or
confusing, and IF they have a choice, they WILL use something else.

Dreamcard *could be* the tool of choice for public school teachers to use
to create interactive courseware.  But, unfortunately, the state of
computer literacy/preparedness for public school teachers in the U.S. is
truly pitiful.

I tested my m.s. project out on a buch of Reading master's candidate who,
again, were largely women and largely public school teachers seeking a
master's degree in reading.

Fully 1/3 or more self-identified as 'technophobes' and 'stupid about
computers' and the like.  Only one or two indicated any confidence about
using a computer to create things using *PowerPoint*.  More than half had
serious modality problems with respect to Rev's new,  improved cursors
that allow you to switch between editing/browsing modes.  More than a few
had modality problems in that they clicked outside Rev's areas, fell back
into the operating system, and considered *that* a roadblock.

The most techie thing that they had done during the course of their m.s.
program was to do the occasional PowerPoint presentation.  That's the edu
mindset here in the U.S.  The literature further shows that surveys of
even college professors' software usage tends not to go beyond using a
word processor, a spreadsheet (maybe!), email and a web browser.  I can
dig it up if you are interested.

> I think that it 's always better for them to take the right way without
> waiting.
> Here, using the menuPick message (1 line handler versus 12 lines: Rev
> is sometimes verbose, sometimes so simple...) is the right way.
> Adding some good explanations about parameters would complete the job.

I think that this *could* be done later, once you've got this group
hooked.  I've got a master's candidate in music who's taking my class
right now.  After three weeks of going over it with him, having an example
stack and PDF, he STILL can't quite get his head wrapped around the
concept of a variable such that he can actually create and use one.

Life in the trenches...

Judy