Re: Retraining robots

First off ,there is a confusion here about mouse movement -- it has zero
effect during retraining. So all the kids need to be told is don't click
any buttons (on the mouse or keyboard) until they are ready to take
over. I wonder if given those instructions whether the interface needs
to be made more clever or not.

In this particular case you could tell the kids to retrain the robot to
do additional things afterwards so they just sit back and watch until
the robot stops and then they have already "taken over".

Regarding problem 1 (that it isn't so clear you are retraining vs.
training) I don't see it as an issue for this activity. Is it?

Best,

-ken

P.S. I was sceptical of this idea of a task involving retraining someone
else's robot like this but it seems like it has potential in this case.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yishay Mor" <[email protected]>
To: "Ken Kahn" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Gordon Simpson" <[email protected]>; "Weblabs Requests"
<[email protected]>; "Celia Hoyles" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 11:27 AM
Subject: Re: [WebLabs-requests] Retraining robots


> Inline.
>
> Ken Kahn wrote:
>
> > Hi all.
> >
> > I'm not sure that retraining is very important. I think the best
style
> > (both cognitively and practically) is to keep your robots "small".
> > Lots of simple robots is easier to think about and easier to
> > manipulate and edit than a few complex robots. If a robot is trained
> > to do only a handful of steps then training over again rather than
> > retraining is straightforward. And the repetition may be helpful in
> > understanding the robot better. Kids don't seem to mind the
repetition
> > as much as adults.
>
> You're right about this. We're not thinking of having kids go through
> long debugging sessions using retraining. However, we did find it
useful
> to use retraining as part of a structured task. Kids are given a robot
> that divides (a copy of) n by d, and sends out the result. Their task
is
> to change this robot so that it generates the reciprocals. They do it
by
> retraining. Using this approach, the TT programming is aligned with
the
> mathematical idea under investigation. See the task template at:
>
http://www.weblabs.org.uk/wlplone/Members/ioe/my_reports/Report.2004-03-03.3222/index_html
>
> We also pilot a new methodology in this template, which we call
> task-in-a-box. Let's talk about this on Friday.
>
> > Regarding problem 1, there are some differences and there is an
issue.
> > Many people name robots after training them - in that case only
> > trained robots have names (either generated or edited). Beginning
> > rather recently the drop feedback now makes it clear whether the
drop
> > is back in the thought bubble (because it was removed to edit more
> > easily) or the drop is to the robot to retrain. In the first case
the
> > thought bubble wiggles rather than the whole robot. Untrained robots
> > don't make this distinction. Also for the most part people grab an
> > untrained robot when they need one so there isn't much risk of
confusion.
>
> IMHO, these distinctions are too subtle for most mortals to notice.
>
> >  Regarding 2 I think this would be useful but needs to careful
design.
> > I think reusing the time travel controls would be confusing. Not
> > convinced that this should be a high priority enhancement.
>
> It all depends on how extensively we want to use retraining. I find
the
> time travel metaphor very intuitive in this case. Instead of moving
the
> whole world back in time, you're only sending this one robot back to
the
> point when it was trained. Alternativly, or as an intermediate
solution,
> when I go into retraining any mouse movement will invoke time-travel,
> and when the robot completes its run time travel is invoked. If I want
> to retrain, I click the record button. If I accidentally touched the
> mouse, I hit play.
>
> - Yishay
>
> **********************************************************************
> Yishay Mor
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