Activitiesyamaplos
My Reviews
Record
I find Record is a favorite activity of children when they first try out the XOs, and it is impressive for grownups also.
Photos seem better in this version.
This version has "low, high, best" settings in Video. In the XO only the "low" seems to work, the others are jerky. Audio recordings have gaps.
I wish there were a way to download Record files directly to the SD card so that they do not clog the memory in the XO.
Rated 4 out of 5 stars October 21, 2009
Record
I believe that Record and Write, together, are the elements that can make the use of Sugar become a mainstream tool for education, a"killer app" for Sugar-powered hardware for learning, especially the XO.
Endless opportunities for curricular classroom activities open with simple take-a-picture-and-caption-it assignments, or just for fun and personal growth. Right off the bat Language, Communications, Science, Geography would benefit, and with a bit of creativity many other standard school subjects also. Personal explorations and creativity activities such as blogging ang journaling take a brand new dimension, especially if the output were easy to transfer for storage or publication.
However, so far the process is rather complicated and somewhat far from intuitive, requiring a good grasp of UI metaphors like the Clipboard, or at least the Journal, and issues like clogging the memory of XOs, because erasing and transferring out files is also somewhat convoluted.
On the XO, Record itself seemed more usable in legacy version 59. Audio and Video did not have some issues found in current version 64, notably gaps in Audio and apparently non-functional new High and Best settings in Video. Photo seems to give better quality of images, though I have not tested in detail. For a while there seemed to be an issue when uploading directly to Youtube and such sites, but it appears to be solved for now.
All in all it is fascinating that the XO has this feature, but usability needs some work still, especially for the benefit of kids and teachers who are not very computer-savvy, so that it actually can be incorporated for normal classroom work, and / or painless personal creativity. I have not tested Record in non-XO-1 hardware, but I assume changes in the newer version are meant for hardware with different performance criteria, and it is unlucky they seem to lose compatibility with XO-1.
Rated 4 out of 5 stars October 21, 2009
