[IAEP] OLPC Australia press release
http://www.olpc.org.au/news/27May09.shtml See quote about school attendance. Here's an example where Sugar can bridge the gap between the disadvantaged indigenous communities of Australia and the more well-off children there; XOs with Sugar for the former (goal of 400,000), SoaS for the latter. Regrettably, Sugar is not mentioned, although the richness of 30 Activities are. Of interest: the teacher training programme ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] idea for consolidated Sugar feedback + a newname for our users
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 06:15:03PM -0700, Kathy Pusztavari wrote: Bigs and Littles? -Kathy _ From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Caroline Meeks Another thought is Kid and Grown-Up. If we called our users Kids it would emphasis that we are always thinking about our age range when we work on Sugar. We are building a tool especially for kids and the grownups (teachers, parents etc.) who help them learn. Subject of this list claims that it is an educational project. I dare say that it is more important to emphasize the learning part that the age. So I dislike Kids or Littles, as that moves focus way from the main purpose of the project. Also, I can imagine Sugar growing to support other variants of Learners than Kids, but I find the thought of Sugar evolving into a not-only-for-learning for Kids disturbing. - Jonas - -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREDAAYFAkodBMkACgkQn7DbMsAkQLjDtwCfRaUe1uvSIHXCjcEmh32u0bJ8 zYoAnjxyVxzwi8y6RVNdnCMod+oy0zvV =aPaL -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] OLPC Australia press release
Here's a report that does mention Sugar: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/304648/olpc_boosts_outback_education_laptop_deployment?fp=4fpid=1968336438 This one doesn't, but again, check the quote about school attendance: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/27/2581855.htm?section=australia On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.olpc.org.au/news/27May09.shtml See quote about school attendance. Here's an example where Sugar can bridge the gap between the disadvantaged indigenous communities of Australia and the more well-off children there; XOs with Sugar for the former (goal of 400,000), SoaS for the latter. Regrettably, Sugar is not mentioned, although the richness of 30 Activities are. Of interest: the teacher training programme ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Fwd: journal criticism (was Re: Re: Re: [RELEASE] TurtleArt-51)
[forgot to add IAEP and sugar-devel] -- Forwarded message -- From: Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org Date: Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:11 Subject: journal criticism (was Re: Re: Re: [IAEP] [RELEASE] TurtleArt-51) To: fors...@ozonline.com.au Cc: Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com Hi all, see my replies inline below. To everybody who would like to join this conversation: please change the subject line accordingly or this thread will become hard to follow. On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 04:54, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Hi Tomeu Walter I am happy to expand this to the list. I have raised the journal once or twice before but mainly kept quiet not wanting to be trollish. http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-August/001475.html more but i cant easily find The journal and sharing are probably the two central things that distinguish sugar as as a purpose built learning platform. The team have a huge investment of time and energy and are rightly proud of their achievement. That presents a problem for constructive discussion around the journal, the last thing I want to do is be trollish and destructive. For me, the workings behind the journal are hidden and there is a lack of tools to make it do different things when the default operation is not what you want. Also temporal and tagging is fine as a primary method of storage but hierarchical storage is not offered as an alternate method. in addition to today's filename issue, other problems that I can remember: altering the filenames and extensions of email attachments Could you please expand on this use case? offline web pages do not navigate because the directory structure is lost This is scheduled to be addressed in 0.86 by downloading the page as a zip file and storing that in the journal. can't inspect or alter mime to force something to open This could be fixed in the journal easily, with no need to refactor or throw out anything. We need more people to help us with developing Sugar further. journal spam In 0.84 landed several modifications that should improve this somehow, have you seen if that helped? (I haven't found a way to select a block so every spam item has to be individually deleted Would be awesome to be able to operate on multiple items at once, but unfortunately it hasn't been implemented yet. resume by default will probably cause students to lose work) Versioning in the journal is scheduled for 0.86, which should address this one. accidental overwriting of files through autosave Same as in the previous one, if I understand it correctly. Thanks for the feedback. Adding Tomeu, but we should probably expand the discussion to the list. I cannot argue with you that the fact that the Journal hid information from the user is a problem--really I would characterize it as a bug. But the goal of the Journal wasn't to simplify (and certainly not to hide information from the user) as much as it was to provide a representation of the file system that is first and foremost temporal rather than hierarchical with an emphasis on annotating, tagging, and searching rather than browsing. Secondary goals are automatic recording of actions and objects and the ability to extract from the Journal highlights. These latter goals could as well be accomplished using a hierarchical representation, but still would require a database backend of some sort. -walter On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:18 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Thanks, I now have V51 on my XO Short rant follows: This is another example why I do not like the Journal. The Journal does not preserve filenames or directory structures. The download showed in the Journal as File turtle_art-51.xo from http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/downloads/file/26052/turtle_art-51.xo.; As soon as I downloaded to Windows it was obvious that this was not the file that downloaded. I'm failing to understand the problem. Could you please explain further? The Journal hides too much of the workings from the user and so disempowers the user. The user is denied a deep understanding of what they are doing and the opportunity to use the system in ways that were not thought of by the designers. They are Users, not Creators or Authors. The hiding of the file system was well intended, files and directories are probably just a passing phase in computing and they cause some confusion to beginners, but they are the system which underlies the Journal and the way we interface with the www The price for low entry is too high if it disempowers the user, enforces artificial walls and ceiling. I think we have a problem of miscommunication here, in part I guess because our understanding of the problem has changed with time and also because it's hard to keep up with everybody's opinions. How I see this issue is that in the spirit of low floor, no ceiling we should keep moving forward in
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] idea for consolidated Sugar feedback + a newname for our users
[age-related replacements for users] -1 Why limit ourselves? [Learner as a replacement for users] +0 I can't see any developer using this term easily[1]. Call the people who use a Sugar activity to learn/do/communicate either: People[a] who use[b] a Sugar activity to learn[c]/communicate/etc. a. People b. Users c. Learn/communicate/etc. -ers. Note how hard it is to simplifly that sentence but keep the activity noun, and eliminating that loses something. Martin 1. Smacks of a small community trying to re-invent the universe of discourse of two huge communities (educators, computer science). I think that's what we're trying to do, but should we do _that_ part of it _now_? pgpYoQKf0tIih.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] OLPC Australia press release
Congratulations everyone! I'm very proud be a part of this. It's wonderful to see disadvantaged children in my own Country benefit from our work. Martin Sevior On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Here's a report that does mention Sugar: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/304648/olpc_boosts_outback_education_laptop_deployment?fp=4fpid=1968336438 This one doesn't, but again, check the quote about school attendance: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/27/2581855.htm?section=australia On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.olpc.org.au/news/27May09.shtml See quote about school attendance. Here's an example where Sugar can bridge the gap between the disadvantaged indigenous communities of Australia and the more well-off children there; XOs with Sugar for the former (goal of 400,000), SoaS for the latter. Regrettably, Sugar is not mentioned, although the richness of 30 Activities are. Of interest: the teacher training programme ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Fwd: [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read!
Sorry, This thread fell off the public mailing list. My fingers are a little too big for the keyboard on my new lenovo s10. I keep hitting enter instead of shift:( david -- Forwarded message -- From: David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:43 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read! To: Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com Cc: Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com, Sebastian Dziallas s...@sugarlabs.org, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de, Greg Dekoenigsberg g...@redhat.com We are running into 2 classical  community supported project conundrums. 1.  If you call a release stable, more people will use it - encouraging more testers.  Yet, by calling it stable it raises expectations. 2.  Who determines when something is ready? The answer to 2 is easier.  _All_ platform level decisions are driven by developers. Those developers must agree on a release cycle which is supported by a release manager. It might seem counter intuitive, but in the long run the quality of the release cycle is more important than the quality of a given release.  If we focus on the cycle we get a steadily improving product and community. I would suggest that you have an irc meeting which includes at least: Simon - experienced release manager. Sebastian - lead SoaS developer. Caroline - SoaS project lead. Greg - Old grey bearded man. Sorry Sean, you and I are not invited:)  The release cycle is a technical decision made by technical contributors.  You, Walter, and I need to step back and trust the developers to make the correct technical decisions.  Otherwise we get a tail wagging the dog situation. These individuals need to set a release schedule and appoint a release manager a with the authority to enforce the scheudal. The challenge SoaS faces is that it is a down stream project based on sugar - fedora - soas . Quite honestly, I really don't see all that much difference in the log run on which release date is chosen. The import bit is that we set _a_ date and stick to it so all contributors and downstreams can depend and synchronize around that date. david On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi, A couple of questions. Sebastian and Sean, please each define what the terms Beta Release Candidate and Version 1 mean to you. I wonder if we have different definitions. Perhaps if we understood what those were we could find the right compromise. Sebastian, I absolutely agree we want kids trying SoaS this summer. Please explain your reasoning that releasing V1 in the Summer will result in more summer testing then Beta-2 and maybe we can again find a way to meet everyone's concerns. Thanks, Caroline On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: I'm sorry we're not as connected as we should be (I'm the first to admit I have a learning curve concerning dependencies/upstream etc.) but in fact... my impression *was* that SoaS v1 would be v0.86 over F12! Put simply, for SoaS to be classroom-ready, teachers need a minimum-fuss solution... we just can't count on them spending time troubleshooting. If you remember the discussions about the numbering system... the idea behind SoaS beta and v1 was to simplify numbering (and generate buzz) by disassociating the Sugar version 0.xx / Fedora version 1x. Teachers won't care if it's Sugar v0.84/F11 or v0.86/F12, but they will care if it works or not on what they have, and can help them in the classroom by offering a choice of Activities. Many teachers have Macs... some Intel, many PPC I'm afraid... if the lack of a machine is a blocker, I'll buy and ship you a Mac Mini (I've bought half a dozen XOs and as many netbooks for testing at this point, and I am trying to negotiate loaners too). Concerning exotic hardware (and some netbooks have very exotic hardware), I don't see the difficulty in contacting OEMs, telling them we have the best K-8 learning platform available, and could they please help us make their machine run Sugar correctly. I am sure every OEM is watching Dell's strategic education netbook launch very closely. The probability of success of SoaS in the classroom will be raised if we can at least point teachers in the direction of a school server. I just bought a ShuttlePC and Martin Langhoff will be installing an XS server on it, I want to find out how adaptible it could be to SoaS machines. I plan to have it ready for LinuxTag. It's difficult as we grow to keep abreast of what everyone is doing... I don't remember a request for RC feature requests (I didn't think we were that far along), but I'm sure it happened at some point from what you said. We could announce backup/school server support for a v2 and that wouldn't shock anyone, but if SoaS isn't very reliable
[IAEP] Fwd: [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read!
Sorry, This thread fell off the public mailing list. My fingers are a little too big for the keyboard on my new lenovo s10. I keep hitting enter instead of shift:( david -- Forwarded message -- From: David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:43 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read! To: Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com Cc: Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com, Sebastian Dziallas s...@sugarlabs.org, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de, Greg Dekoenigsberg g...@redhat.com We are running into 2 classical  community supported project conundrums. 1.  If you call a release stable, more people will use it - encouraging more testers.  Yet, by calling it stable it raises expectations. 2.  Who determines when something is ready? The answer to 2 is easier.  _All_ platform level decisions are driven by developers. Those developers must agree on a release cycle which is supported by a release manager. It might seem counter intuitive, but in the long run the quality of the release cycle is more important than the quality of a given release.  If we focus on the cycle we get a steadily improving product and community. I would suggest that you have an irc meeting which includes at least: Simon - experienced release manager. Sebastian - lead SoaS developer. Caroline - SoaS project lead. Greg - Old grey bearded man. Sorry Sean, you and I are not invited:)  The release cycle is a technical decision made by technical contributors.  You, Walter, and I need to step back and trust the developers to make the correct technical decisions.  Otherwise we get a tail wagging the dog situation. These individuals need to set a release schedule and appoint a release manager a with the authority to enforce the scheudal. The challenge SoaS faces is that it is a down stream project based on sugar - fedora - soas . Quite honestly, I really don't see all that much difference in the log run on which release date is chosen. The import bit is that we set _a_ date and stick to it so all contributors and downstreams can depend and synchronize around that date. david On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi, A couple of questions. Sebastian and Sean, please each define what the terms Beta Release Candidate and Version 1 mean to you. I wonder if we have different definitions. Perhaps if we understood what those were we could find the right compromise. Sebastian, I absolutely agree we want kids trying SoaS this summer. Please explain your reasoning that releasing V1 in the Summer will result in more summer testing then Beta-2 and maybe we can again find a way to meet everyone's concerns. Thanks, Caroline On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: I'm sorry we're not as connected as we should be (I'm the first to admit I have a learning curve concerning dependencies/upstream etc.) but in fact... my impression *was* that SoaS v1 would be v0.86 over F12! Put simply, for SoaS to be classroom-ready, teachers need a minimum-fuss solution... we just can't count on them spending time troubleshooting. If you remember the discussions about the numbering system... the idea behind SoaS beta and v1 was to simplify numbering (and generate buzz) by disassociating the Sugar version 0.xx / Fedora version 1x. Teachers won't care if it's Sugar v0.84/F11 or v0.86/F12, but they will care if it works or not on what they have, and can help them in the classroom by offering a choice of Activities. Many teachers have Macs... some Intel, many PPC I'm afraid... if the lack of a machine is a blocker, I'll buy and ship you a Mac Mini (I've bought half a dozen XOs and as many netbooks for testing at this point, and I am trying to negotiate loaners too). Concerning exotic hardware (and some netbooks have very exotic hardware), I don't see the difficulty in contacting OEMs, telling them we have the best K-8 learning platform available, and could they please help us make their machine run Sugar correctly. I am sure every OEM is watching Dell's strategic education netbook launch very closely. The probability of success of SoaS in the classroom will be raised if we can at least point teachers in the direction of a school server. I just bought a ShuttlePC and Martin Langhoff will be installing an XS server on it, I want to find out how adaptible it could be to SoaS machines. I plan to have it ready for LinuxTag. It's difficult as we grow to keep abreast of what everyone is doing... I don't remember a request for RC feature requests (I didn't think we were that far along), but I'm sure it happened at some point from what you said. We could announce backup/school server support for a v2 and that wouldn't shock anyone, but if SoaS isn't very reliable
Re: [IAEP] Fwd: [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read!
Hi, I think one possible place where we are having a miss communication is about what is Sugar on a Stick or SoaS. I think to Sean and I it is a solution that can be used in schools. It includes the code for the stick, a core set of activities that are known to work, stick backup, restore and software update, easy and relatively foolproof ability to create sticks, information on how to implement, clear documentation on what hardware is likely to work and the variety of ways of interacting with hardware including boot-helpers on CD and Diskette and Virtual Machines. In addition we will start really interacting with Learners and Teachers and that is where we will really learn, test and improve our total solution. Thus if you look at the SoaS code snapshot its pretty stable but if you look at the full solution its still under very rapid development and we expect the Teacher and School IT person's user experience to change dramatically between June and Sept and probably again by Q1 2010. So is there a naming solution that accurately communicates to other Open Source Developers the stability of the SoaS.iso code base but also accurately communicates to nondevelopers the rapid progress and improvements and additional features that the total solution is undergoing over the next 6 months? Thanks, Caroline On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:24 AM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: Sorry, This thread fell off the public mailing list. My fingers are a little too big for the keyboard on my new lenovo s10. I keep hitting enter instead of shift:( david -- Forwarded message -- From: David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:43 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read! To: Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com Cc: Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com, Sebastian Dziallas s...@sugarlabs.org, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de, Greg Dekoenigsberg g...@redhat.com We are running into 2 classical community supported project conundrums. 1. If you call a release stable, more people will use it - encouraging more testers. Yet, by calling it stable it raises expectations. 2. Who determines when something is ready? The answer to 2 is easier. _All_ platform level decisions are driven by developers. Those developers must agree on a release cycle which is supported by a release manager. It might seem counter intuitive, but in the long run the quality of the release cycle is more important than the quality of a given release. If we focus on the cycle we get a steadily improving product and community. I would suggest that you have an irc meeting which includes at least: Simon - experienced release manager. Sebastian - lead SoaS developer. Caroline - SoaS project lead. Greg - Old grey bearded man. Sorry Sean, you and I are not invited:) The release cycle is a technical decision made by technical contributors. You, Walter, and I need to step back and trust the developers to make the correct technical decisions. Otherwise we get a tail wagging the dog situation. These individuals need to set a release schedule and appoint a release manager a with the authority to enforce the scheudal. The challenge SoaS faces is that it is a down stream project based on sugar - fedora - soas . Quite honestly, I really don't see all that much difference in the log run on which release date is chosen. The import bit is that we set _a_ date and stick to it so all contributors and downstreams can depend and synchronize around that date. david On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi, A couple of questions. Sebastian and Sean, please each define what the terms Beta Release Candidate and Version 1 mean to you. I wonder if we have different definitions. Perhaps if we understood what those were we could find the right compromise. Sebastian, I absolutely agree we want kids trying SoaS this summer. Please explain your reasoning that releasing V1 in the Summer will result in more summer testing then Beta-2 and maybe we can again find a way to meet everyone's concerns. Thanks, Caroline On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: I'm sorry we're not as connected as we should be (I'm the first to admit I have a learning curve concerning dependencies/upstream etc.) but in fact... my impression *was* that SoaS v1 would be v0.86 over F12! Put simply, for SoaS to be classroom-ready, teachers need a minimum-fuss solution... we just can't count on them spending time troubleshooting. If you remember the discussions about the numbering system... the idea behind SoaS beta and v1 was to simplify numbering (and generate buzz) by disassociating the Sugar version 0.xx / Fedora version 1x.
[IAEP] Help wanted remixing the Help Activity
Hi, We'd like to update the Help Activity and have the ability to have different versions for OLPC-XOs and Sugar on a Stick, etc. Why is this important? - Shipping SoaS with the Sugar Manual included will help the user experience - Having a ? icon in the ring will help people want help to get oriented - The Help Activity gives us a place to tell Users that Sugar is a Community Project run by volunteers and we welcome them, their questions and their help Is there anyone who will adopt this task? Thanks Caroline -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] journal criticism (was Re: Re: Re: [RELEASE] TurtleArt-51)
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 16:09, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: [snip] File turtle_art-51.xo from http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/downloads/file/26052/turtle_art-51.xo.; As soon as I downloaded to Windows it was obvious that this was not the file that downloaded. I'm failing to understand the problem. Could you please explain further? Due to some server error, the server is serving turtle_art-48.xo when the turtle_art-51.xo link is clicked. Because Windows preserves the filename, you can see that you have downloaded turtle_art-48.xo whereas Sugar uses some other process to name the downloaded file and its very hard to understand why you have v48 rather than v51 installed. This sounds like a simple bug, could you file a ticket, please? Actually, it was a bad symlink unrelated to the Journal. No need for a ticket. But it suggests that somewhere in the download process we should reveal the actual filename of the file being downloaded.\ Yeah, that's why I asked to file a bug: because Browse is supposed to title the journal entry with the file name sent by the server. Regards, Tomeu -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacher scenarios, let's lower barrier to installation
Scenario 1: Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS, loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and colleagues send me. Scenario 2: A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project. I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the teachers section with interest, I return to the homepage and click on Try Sugar with a child today, arriving on the page that advises how to install for each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's desktop. ** Questions: 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different for these two scenarii? * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-( * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the other one talks about a sandbox... * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a more recent one. 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... automatic if connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in that case 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations daunting for many ordinary users 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or installed if new versions, or merely borrowed during the session? 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous version of an Activity? ** any info appreciated. The Marketing Team can help write installation tips copy if necessary. thanks Sean ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacherscenarios, let's lower barrier to installation
Sadly I've done number 1 when I first got my XO. It didn't take long for someone to tell me that you had to browse and download using the machine RUNNING sugar and that you had to go to Journal and run the install program. Once I figured that out it was relatively easy. Also seemed to work for my SoaS machines (at least downloading and installing Turtle Typing). -Kathy -Original Message- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Sean DALY Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 7:35 AM To: iaep; Sugar Labs Marketing Subject: [IAEP] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacherscenarios, let's lower barrier to installation Scenario 1: Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS, loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and colleagues send me. Scenario 2: A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project. I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the teachers section with interest, I return to the homepage and click on Try Sugar with a child today, arriving on the page that advises how to install for each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's desktop. ** Questions: 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different for these two scenarii? * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-( * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the other one talks about a sandbox... * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a more recent one. 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... automatic if connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in that case 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations daunting for many ordinary users 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or installed if new versions, or merely borrowed during the session? 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous version of an Activity? ** any info appreciated. The Marketing Team can help write installation tips copy if necessary. thanks Sean ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacher scenarios, let's lower barrier to installation
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Scenario 1: Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS, loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and colleagues send me. Scenario 2: A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project. I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the teachers section with interest, I return to the homepage and click on Try Sugar with a child today, arriving on the page that advises how to install for each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's desktop. ** Questions: 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different for these two scenarii? * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-( * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the other one talks about a sandbox... * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a more recent one. 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... automatic if connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in that case 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations daunting for many ordinary users 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or installed if new versions, or merely borrowed during the session? 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous version of an Activity? ** any info appreciated. I think the easiest thing to do is to (1) copy the .xo files onto a USB; (2) insert the USB into a system running Sugar; (3) open the USB in the Journal (tab at bottom of the page); and (4) click on the .xo file--it should autoinstall from there. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacher scenarios, let's lower barrier to installation
Indeed that worked with SoaS on a netbook, the Activity arrived at the top of the favorites ring. I'll try with VirtualBox tomorrow (travelling). Who can update activities.sugarlabs.org with concise installation instructions? I can provide copy if that's helpful. thanks Sean On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Scenario 1: Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS, loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and colleagues send me. Scenario 2: A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project. I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the teachers section with interest, I return to the homepage and click on Try Sugar with a child today, arriving on the page that advises how to install for each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's desktop. ** Questions: 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different for these two scenarii? * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-( * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the other one talks about a sandbox... * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a more recent one. 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... automatic if connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in that case 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations daunting for many ordinary users 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or installed if new versions, or merely borrowed during the session? 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous version of an Activity? ** any info appreciated. I think the easiest thing to do is to (1) copy the .xo files onto a USB; (2) insert the USB into a system running Sugar; (3) open the USB in the Journal (tab at bottom of the page); and (4) click on the .xo file--it should autoinstall from there. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] OLPC Australia press release
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.olpc.org.au/news/27May09.shtml See quote about school attendance. Here's an example where Sugar can bridge the gap between the disadvantaged indigenous communities of Australia and the more well-off children there; XOs with Sugar for the former (goal of 400,000), SoaS for the latter. Regrettably, Sugar is not mentioned, although the richness of 30 Activities are. On the flip side. Some months ago Sugar's inability to compete with Windows was widely considered the limiting factor for OLPC deployment. (at least in the press) Since that time, OLPC has stabilized the hardware part of the equation and Sugar Labs has improved the software end of the equation to the point that Sugar is no longer regarded as the weak link:) That is progress. david Of interest: the teacher training programme ___ Marketing mailing list market...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacher scenarios, let's lower barrier to installation
On 27 May 2009, at 15:35, Sean DALY wrote: Scenario 1: Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS, loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and colleagues send me. Scenario 2: A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project. I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the teachers section with interest, I return to the homepage and click on Try Sugar with a child today, arriving on the page that advises how to install for each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's desktop. ** Questions: 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different for these two scenarii? * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-( * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the other one talks about a sandbox... * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a more recent one. 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... automatic if connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in that case Currently, installation of new Activities (via a GUI) is only via Browse on the system in question. 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations daunting for many ordinary users If you are at the Sugar Terminal and have a .xo bundle accessible some place (perhaps you used the Terminal to scp/curl/wget/ftp the file from somewhere, or you are running Sugar in a Virtual Machine and are sharing some disk space with the host operating system where you've already downloaded an .xo bundle), the command you are after is: sugar-install-bundle the_activity.xo This will install and place the Activity icon in the home favourite view (though unlike downloading via Browse, there will be no record of this new bundle in your Journal). 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or installed if new versions, or merely borrowed during the session? No unfortunately not. I had high hopes of this when I first read of the idea in the early Sugar days, a great way to virally spread/ distribute an Activity organically via peer to peer collaboration. But the feature has never been implemented (only sane to do in a world with Rainbow or some similar security blanket). It's worth noting that currently you only see shared Activities in the neighbourhood for Activities you already have installed. 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous version of an Activity? If you have the previous Activity version as a bundle in your Journal still, I think so... (but will need to retest as it's been a while since I last tried this and things may have changed). Regards, --Gary ** any info appreciated. The Marketing Team can help write installation tips copy if necessary. thanks Sean ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Journal criticism
Tomeu, I've said this before, but maybe I can repeat it once more: 1). I like the idea of the Journal. I would not want to change the Journal proper to support putting items in hierarchies. 2). Having said that, I don't always like the Journal Activity. The biggest problem I have with it is it insists on making things that are NOT in the Journal kind of look like they are. That's a big mistake. I would prefer that SD cards and USB thumb drives that may have files and folders have a totally different user interface from the Journal interface. The interface could be made with a Pygtk tree view. You could copy a file into the Journal, as a Journal entry, or copy a Journal entry into a directory as a file. The file would be named with the title meta tag plus a suffix based on MIME type. Maybe some kind of Journal entries couldn't be copied this way, so copying would not be supported for them. 3). Maybe there would be an option to use the SD card as expansion for the Journal. If you had a 2 gig SD card you could specify that you wanted it treated this way, and from then on your Journal would be 2 GB larger. This option would destroy whatever data was on the SD card to begin with. If you didn't do this, the SD card would have the same interface as a thumb drive. 4). For the Journal proper, I agree that a temporal view has value. However, in addition to that I'd like to sort by the Title meta tag. This would be a natural for etexts, because you could look for a book more easily if they were all in alphabetical order. If you had a large library on your XO the temporal sequence would be annoying. 5). When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files are BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying that a particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular Activity by default. You should be able to change that default at any time, but once changed you'd be able to open any entry with that default with one click. Right now the only way to make a Zip file Journal entry open with the right Activity with one click is to make the Activity open the Journal entry with the Object Chooser, then save it back out as a new Journal entry. Then the user deletes the original Journal entry. We need something easier than that. James Simmons ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 19:34, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Tomeu, I've said this before, but maybe I can repeat it once more: 1). I like the idea of the Journal. I would not want to change the Journal proper to support putting items in hierarchies. 2). Having said that, I don't always like the Journal Activity. The biggest problem I have with it is it insists on making things that are NOT in the Journal kind of look like they are. That's a big mistake. I would prefer that SD cards and USB thumb drives that may have files and folders have a totally different user interface from the Journal interface. The interface could be made with a Pygtk tree view. You could copy a file into the Journal, as a Journal entry, or copy a Journal entry into a directory as a file. The file would be named with the title meta tag plus a suffix based on MIME type. Maybe some kind of Journal entries couldn't be copied this way, so copying would not be supported for them. I agree, and thought I was clear in my last email about this. In 0.84 has been work to make this possible, though isn't user visible at this moment. 3). Maybe there would be an option to use the SD card as expansion for the Journal. If you had a 2 gig SD card you could specify that you wanted it treated this way, and from then on your Journal would be 2 GB larger. This option would destroy whatever data was on the SD card to begin with. If you didn't do this, the SD card would have the same interface as a thumb drive. This is part of the original vision but is another task up for grabs. 4). For the Journal proper, I agree that a temporal view has value. However, in addition to that I'd like to sort by the Title meta tag. This would be a natural for etexts, because you could look for a book more easily if they were all in alphabetical order. If you had a large library on your XO the temporal sequence would be annoying. Yup, we have mockups that add this functionality. n_tasks_up_for_grabs++ 5). When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files are BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying that a particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular Activity by default. You should be able to change that default at any time, but once changed you'd be able to open any entry with that default with one click. Right now the only way to make a Zip file Journal entry open with the right Activity with one click is to make the Activity open the Journal entry with the Object Chooser, then save it back out as a new Journal entry. Then the user deletes the original Journal entry. We need something easier than that. Maybe open by default in the last activity it was open with? Regards, Tomeu James Simmons ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-05-27
===Sugar Digest === 1. Between yesterday's announcement of a major new deployment in Australia (Sugar running on the OLPC XO-1) to a flurry of smaller-scale, grassroots Sugar on a Stick deployments to the pick-up of Sugar by most of the upstream Linux distributions to the growing volume of discussion about pedagogy on the mailing lists and in the chatrooms, it is readily apparent that Sugar and the Sugar community are growing in both size and stability. Thank you. 2. Hablamos español. The Sugar Digest is being translated into Spanish. ===Help Wanted=== 3. But there is more to do. We especially need your Sugar stories to communicate both our successes and areas where we need to do better. Please add your blog to our planet [http://planter.sugarlabs.org] and your videos to our Dailymotion channel [http://www.dailymotion.com/sugarlabs]. Other ways to get involved are described in the wiki. 4. David Van Assche suggested that it would be nice if we had an activitiy matrix that showed the stages of projects. Gary Martin pointed out that the Activity Team has been making contact with past authors, slowly, slowly we're moving along even if it means adopting extra activities ourselves. It would be great to accelerate this process as there is growing demand for Sugar activities. Please contact the Activity Team if you are interested in adopting an orphaned activity. 5. Marten Vihn has begun setting up some mirrors for Sugar Labs [[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Mirrors]]. 6. We are looking for help in the continued development of Sugarbot (See [http://code.google.com/p/sugarbot/wiki/HowDoesSugarbotWork]). Contact Bernie Innocenti if you are interested in getting involved. ===In the community=== 7. Inspired by the Paris Sugar Camp, Marten would like to make place for OLPC/Sugar at OpenCommunityCamp [http://opencommunitycamp.org]. The Camp will be held from 26 July through 2 August in the Netherlands (near Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam). ===Tech Talk=== 8. Sebastian Dziallas has created a new [http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/2/Soas2-200905241902.iso Sugar-on-a-Stick snapshot] for you. It incorporates the latest packages from the upcoming F11 release as well as some additional activities. 9. Simon Schampijer is planning to iterate over the Sugar 0.86 Roadmap [[Development_Team/Release/Roadmap/0.86#Proposal_Goals]] at this week's developers meeting (Thursday at 16:00 UTC). 10. Sayamindu Dasgupta has been revisiting the topic of replacing Matchbox with Metacity, a more standard window manager. He has created an ISO image] in which Sugar uses an unmodified Metacity [http://people.sugarlabs.org/sayamindu/isos/Soas2-200905212052_sayamindu_metacity.iso]. The image also has the Gimp, xterm and gcalctool so that you can test how Metacity treats those applications normally, while Sugar activities still use the entire screen. 11. Michael Stone reports a small victory: he worked out instructions that enabled him to run the Ubuntu Jaunty Sugar packages in a debootstrap chroot on my home machine Development_Team/Chroot]]. Michael's recommendation for a weekend project for someone: * make the instructions work on more platforms * figure out how to cache the downloads, e.g. with approx * bake his logic into a downloadable script or makefile ===Sugar Labs === 12. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[Image:2009-May-16-22-som.jpg]]). -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism
I'm new to Sugar, so I may be horribly wrong. But to me, the Journal seems more of an annoyance than anything else. A lot of the work I see done is towards bringing back some of the properties that regular filesystems have What advantage does it have as opposed to a regular filesystem with support for versioning and metadata? A filesystem would be more compatible with existing software (which could just ignore the metadata), at least. 2009/5/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 19:34, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Tomeu, I've said this before, but maybe I can repeat it once more: 1). I like the idea of the Journal. I would not want to change the Journal proper to support putting items in hierarchies. 2). Having said that, I don't always like the Journal Activity. The biggest problem I have with it is it insists on making things that are NOT in the Journal kind of look like they are. That's a big mistake. I would prefer that SD cards and USB thumb drives that may have files and folders have a totally different user interface from the Journal interface. The interface could be made with a Pygtk tree view. You could copy a file into the Journal, as a Journal entry, or copy a Journal entry into a directory as a file. The file would be named with the title meta tag plus a suffix based on MIME type. Maybe some kind of Journal entries couldn't be copied this way, so copying would not be supported for them. I agree, and thought I was clear in my last email about this. In 0.84 has been work to make this possible, though isn't user visible at this moment. 3). Maybe there would be an option to use the SD card as expansion for the Journal. If you had a 2 gig SD card you could specify that you wanted it treated this way, and from then on your Journal would be 2 GB larger. This option would destroy whatever data was on the SD card to begin with. If you didn't do this, the SD card would have the same interface as a thumb drive. This is part of the original vision but is another task up for grabs. 4). For the Journal proper, I agree that a temporal view has value. However, in addition to that I'd like to sort by the Title meta tag. This would be a natural for etexts, because you could look for a book more easily if they were all in alphabetical order. If you had a large library on your XO the temporal sequence would be annoying. Yup, we have mockups that add this functionality. n_tasks_up_for_grabs++ 5). When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files are BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying that a particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular Activity by default. You should be able to change that default at any time, but once changed you'd be able to open any entry with that default with one click. Right now the only way to make a Zip file Journal entry open with the right Activity with one click is to make the Activity open the Journal entry with the Object Chooser, then save it back out as a new Journal entry. Then the user deletes the original Journal entry. We need something easier than that. Maybe open by default in the last activity it was open with? Regards, Tomeu James Simmons ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 20:20, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.com wrote: I'm new to Sugar, so I may be horribly wrong. But to me, the Journal seems more of an annoyance than anything else. A lot of the work I see done is towards bringing back some of the properties that regular filesystems have What advantage does it have as opposed to a regular filesystem with support for versioning and metadata? A filesystem would be more compatible with existing software (which could just ignore the metadata), at least. I can very easily understand that for someone who is used to a regular filesystem, the journal may seem as an annoyance when an attempt to use it in the same way is done. The same can be said of any other diversion in Sugar from how Windows/OSX behave. Though, interestingly, many people have successfully switched from files-in-folders-in-folders email clients to GMail. Maybe it is because the journal is not as mature as gmail? If I think that something like the journal is worth having, it is: - because I can easily observe how non-technical users are unable to find the files that they stored in folders some time ago, or forget to save an important document, or modify a file that Firefox saved to /tmp and it got deleted after a reboot, etc, - because people working with children using Sugar have said it's useful. I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing that brings new value compared to existing desktops. Note that I'm not going to the extreme of saying that we shouldn't consider the feasibility of a design before pushing for it. Regards, Tomeu 2009/5/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 19:34, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Tomeu, I've said this before, but maybe I can repeat it once more: 1). I like the idea of the Journal. I would not want to change the Journal proper to support putting items in hierarchies. 2). Having said that, I don't always like the Journal Activity. The biggest problem I have with it is it insists on making things that are NOT in the Journal kind of look like they are. That's a big mistake. I would prefer that SD cards and USB thumb drives that may have files and folders have a totally different user interface from the Journal interface. The interface could be made with a Pygtk tree view. You could copy a file into the Journal, as a Journal entry, or copy a Journal entry into a directory as a file. The file would be named with the title meta tag plus a suffix based on MIME type. Maybe some kind of Journal entries couldn't be copied this way, so copying would not be supported for them. I agree, and thought I was clear in my last email about this. In 0.84 has been work to make this possible, though isn't user visible at this moment. 3). Maybe there would be an option to use the SD card as expansion for the Journal. If you had a 2 gig SD card you could specify that you wanted it treated this way, and from then on your Journal would be 2 GB larger. This option would destroy whatever data was on the SD card to begin with. If you didn't do this, the SD card would have the same interface as a thumb drive. This is part of the original vision but is another task up for grabs. 4). For the Journal proper, I agree that a temporal view has value. However, in addition to that I'd like to sort by the Title meta tag. This would be a natural for etexts, because you could look for a book more easily if they were all in alphabetical order. If you had a large library on your XO the temporal sequence would be annoying. Yup, we have mockups that add this functionality. n_tasks_up_for_grabs++ 5). When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files are BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying that a particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular Activity by default. You should be able to change that default at any time, but once changed you'd be able to open any entry with that default with one click. Right now the only way to make a Zip file Journal entry open with the right Activity with one click is to make the Activity open the Journal entry with the Object Chooser, then save it back out as a new Journal entry. Then the user deletes the original Journal entry. We need something easier than that. Maybe open by default in the last activity it was open with? Regards, Tomeu James Simmons ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 20:39, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 20:20, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.com wrote: I'm new to Sugar, so I may be horribly wrong. But to me, the Journal seems more of an annoyance than anything else. A lot of the work I see done is towards bringing back some of the properties that regular filesystems have What advantage does it have as opposed to a regular filesystem with support for versioning and metadata? A filesystem would be more compatible with existing software (which could just ignore the metadata), at least. I can very easily understand that for someone who is used to a regular filesystem, the journal may seem as an annoyance when an attempt to use it in the same way is done. The same can be said of any other diversion in Sugar from how Windows/OSX behave. Though, interestingly, many people have successfully switched from files-in-folders-in-folders email clients to GMail. Maybe it is because the journal is not as mature as gmail? If I think that something like the journal is worth having, it is: - because I can easily observe how non-technical users are unable to find the files that they stored in folders some time ago, or forget to save an important document, or modify a file that Firefox saved to /tmp and it got deleted after a reboot, etc, - because people working with children using Sugar have said it's useful. I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing that brings new value compared to existing desktops. Note that I'm not going to the extreme of saying that we shouldn't consider the feasibility of a design before pushing for it. And btw, the Sugar people aren't alone in this, as GNOME will ship with a very similar journal concept in their 3.0 version. You can find info in the net and read their own justifications for it. Would be awesome if the Sugar Journal and the GNOME one could share its backend. Could someone check out the current state of the GNOME one and compare with our needs? Thanks, Tomeu Regards, Tomeu 2009/5/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 19:34, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Tomeu, I've said this before, but maybe I can repeat it once more: 1). I like the idea of the Journal. I would not want to change the Journal proper to support putting items in hierarchies. 2). Having said that, I don't always like the Journal Activity. The biggest problem I have with it is it insists on making things that are NOT in the Journal kind of look like they are. That's a big mistake. I would prefer that SD cards and USB thumb drives that may have files and folders have a totally different user interface from the Journal interface. The interface could be made with a Pygtk tree view. You could copy a file into the Journal, as a Journal entry, or copy a Journal entry into a directory as a file. The file would be named with the title meta tag plus a suffix based on MIME type. Maybe some kind of Journal entries couldn't be copied this way, so copying would not be supported for them. I agree, and thought I was clear in my last email about this. In 0.84 has been work to make this possible, though isn't user visible at this moment. 3). Maybe there would be an option to use the SD card as expansion for the Journal. If you had a 2 gig SD card you could specify that you wanted it treated this way, and from then on your Journal would be 2 GB larger. This option would destroy whatever data was on the SD card to begin with. If you didn't do this, the SD card would have the same interface as a thumb drive. This is part of the original vision but is another task up for grabs. 4). For the Journal proper, I agree that a temporal view has value. However, in addition to that I'd like to sort by the Title meta tag. This would be a natural for etexts, because you could look for a book more easily if they were all in alphabetical order. If you had a large library on your XO the temporal sequence would be annoying. Yup, we have mockups that add this functionality. n_tasks_up_for_grabs++ 5). When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files are BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying that a particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular Activity by default. You should be able to change that default at any time, but once changed you'd be able to open any entry with that default with one click. Right now the only way to make a Zip file Journal entry open with the right Activity with one click is to make the Activity open the Journal entry with the Object Chooser, then save it back out as a new Journal entry.
Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism
Right, that does make it a bit more clear. I feel however that there should be a way to mount the Journal as a regular filesystem without losing too much information (put stuff in folders according to labels, put activities in their own folder, etc.) 2009/5/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 20:20, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.com wrote: I'm new to Sugar, so I may be horribly wrong. But to me, the Journal seems more of an annoyance than anything else. A lot of the work I see done is towards bringing back some of the properties that regular filesystems have What advantage does it have as opposed to a regular filesystem with support for versioning and metadata? A filesystem would be more compatible with existing software (which could just ignore the metadata), at least. I can very easily understand that for someone who is used to a regular filesystem, the journal may seem as an annoyance when an attempt to use it in the same way is done. The same can be said of any other diversion in Sugar from how Windows/OSX behave. Though, interestingly, many people have successfully switched from files-in-folders-in-folders email clients to GMail. Maybe it is because the journal is not as mature as gmail? If I think that something like the journal is worth having, it is: - because I can easily observe how non-technical users are unable to find the files that they stored in folders some time ago, or forget to save an important document, or modify a file that Firefox saved to /tmp and it got deleted after a reboot, etc, - because people working with children using Sugar have said it's useful. I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing that brings new value compared to existing desktops. Note that I'm not going to the extreme of saying that we shouldn't consider the feasibility of a design before pushing for it. Regards, Tomeu 2009/5/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 19:34, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Tomeu, I've said this before, but maybe I can repeat it once more: 1). I like the idea of the Journal. I would not want to change the Journal proper to support putting items in hierarchies. 2). Having said that, I don't always like the Journal Activity. The biggest problem I have with it is it insists on making things that are NOT in the Journal kind of look like they are. That's a big mistake. I would prefer that SD cards and USB thumb drives that may have files and folders have a totally different user interface from the Journal interface. The interface could be made with a Pygtk tree view. You could copy a file into the Journal, as a Journal entry, or copy a Journal entry into a directory as a file. The file would be named with the title meta tag plus a suffix based on MIME type. Maybe some kind of Journal entries couldn't be copied this way, so copying would not be supported for them. I agree, and thought I was clear in my last email about this. In 0.84 has been work to make this possible, though isn't user visible at this moment. 3). Maybe there would be an option to use the SD card as expansion for the Journal. If you had a 2 gig SD card you could specify that you wanted it treated this way, and from then on your Journal would be 2 GB larger. This option would destroy whatever data was on the SD card to begin with. If you didn't do this, the SD card would have the same interface as a thumb drive. This is part of the original vision but is another task up for grabs. 4). For the Journal proper, I agree that a temporal view has value. However, in addition to that I'd like to sort by the Title meta tag. This would be a natural for etexts, because you could look for a book more easily if they were all in alphabetical order. If you had a large library on your XO the temporal sequence would be annoying. Yup, we have mockups that add this functionality. n_tasks_up_for_grabs++ 5). When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files are BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying that a particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular Activity by default. You should be able to change that default at any time, but once changed you'd be able to open any entry with that default with one click. Right now the only way to make a Zip file Journal entry open with the right Activity with one click is to make the Activity open the Journal entry with the Object Chooser, then save it back out as a new Journal entry. Then the user deletes the original Journal entry. We need something easier than that. Maybe open by default in the last activity it was open with?
Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism
Tomeu Vizoso wrote: 4). For the Journal proper, I agree that a temporal view has value. However, in addition to that I'd like to sort by the Title meta tag. This would be a natural for etexts, because you could look for a book more easily if they were all in alphabetical order. If you had a large library on your XO the temporal sequence would be annoying. Yup, we have mockups that add this functionality. n_tasks_up_for_grabs++ At the moment I feel more comfortable working on Activities, and there are still a lot of things I want to do with the two Activities I have. When I have more experience I might think about working on Sugar proper, but that could be a long way off. Right now the only way to make a Zip file Journal entry open with the right Activity with one click is to make the Activity open the Journal entry with the Object Chooser, then save it back out as a new Journal entry. Then the user deletes the original Journal entry. We need something easier than that. Maybe open by default in the last activity it was open with? Sounds good to me. Maybe display the icon of said Activity in the Journal entry to indicate how it will be opened? Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism
Lucian, Other than the criticisms I mentioned in my email, I like the Journal. Even after years of working with PCs I still find myself occasionally saving something to the hard drive, then wondering where I saved it. My parents probably won't ever really master working with hierarchical file systems, and it's probably a difficult concept for children to master. Even Microsoft recognizes the need to have standard folders like My Documents, My Pictures, etc. Hierarchical file systems made a lot of sense in the DOS world with 8 character file and directory names. However, if you have a Journal that can have long titles, free form notes, screenshots of what the Activity looked like when it closed, icons indicating what Journal entry belongs to what Activity, other icons indicating that a Journal entry was the result of a shared Activity, etc. then you don't really need to group things into folders. The Journal gives you better ways to organize your work. It may grow on you. Give it a chance. James Simmons Lucian Branescu wrote: I'm new to Sugar, so I may be horribly wrong. But to me, the Journal seems more of an annoyance than anything else. A lot of the work I see done is towards bringing back some of the properties that regular filesystems have What advantage does it have as opposed to a regular filesystem with support for versioning and metadata? A filesystem would be more compatible with existing software (which could just ignore the metadata), at least. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacher scenarios, let's lower barrier to installation
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 04:35:10PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote: Scenario 1: [soas] Scenario 2: [soas in virtualbox] [...] The Marketing Team can help write installation tips copy if necessary. I think it's obvious to most here but perhaps not to our audience: these scenarios are cases of the general how do I move a file from machine A to machine B question. The fact that there is one physical machine with two OSes (running at once in the second example) could be a big distraction. Perhaps this clarification could be useful in the copy. thanks Sean Martin pgpaIlXSg7zsm.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
