From: Jakob Schulze
Submit: Post Field Note
VisitDate: 10/14/96
Date: 15 Oct 1996
Time: 21:41:41
Remote Name: ss1mac-05.ucsc.edu
Norma, female about 6 years & Jakob (25)
Norma grabbed me at the beginning of the section and told me she wanted to play a game. The computer she sat at had no CD drive and the harddrive offered the good old Solitaire. She seemed eager to learn how to play Solitaire, so I explained to her what to do. She began to play, using the mouse properly and everything, but mainly took advantage of the fact, that a black shadow appears whenever you move a card near to a place where you can drop it. In the long run she wasn't very succesful, so we went over the numbers and signs on the cards again, discussed the different suites and red and black. But neither that nor me guiding her hand, nor me just being there to answer questions seemed to help her understand was she was doing. She fell more and more silent and sometimes admired the colorful game next to us.
this game seemed to be clearly out of her "zone of proximal development" I was convinced, she could master it, but she made only very little progress. So we both didn't have a real good afternoon. I learned to be more careful about what task to choose and maybe not to go on torturing a kid next time the situation is not moving forward.
So if someone has an idea about what I could have done or not done, or whatever, let me know.