date:20100108

Wade,

You said:
 if only we could put every Sugar developer
at a deployment for a week.

I am a teacher and doctoral student managing a deployment of 150 XOs/SOAS
and would love to have this happen!

Gerald

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org
 wrote:
  All mentioned above could be(already) done in existed env. But the major
  idea of collab.sl.o proposal is bringing life to existed scheme by
  stimulating users to share their needs(due to having convenient
  ASLO for needs site).

 Hi Aleksey,

 We definitely need to improve our lines of communication with users
 (deployments, teachers, students and casual).  As a programmer I
 appreciate a good technical solution to this problem.

 I think it's more a personal problem than a tech problem though.  E.g.
 we need better relationships between developers and users, more than
 we need a better form to fill in.  And that's really a job for the
 project leadership, mostly by introducing people and encouraging them
 to follow up.  Tomeu's recent visit to Laboratorio Tecnológico del
 Uruguay is a great example; if only we could put every Sugar developer
 at a deployment for a week.  I joined the sur list and use Google
 Translate to feel at least a little bit plugged in :)   Still, I
 occasionally send emails to deployments asking things like Are you
 guys using Typing Turtle? and What kinds of activities could you
 use? but rarely hear back.  I guess it's a problem when most of the
 developers speak one language, and most of the users speak one of many
 others.

  I'm personally for lightweight collab.sl.o(to meet only mentioned above
  issues) and reusing existed development related resources like
  wiki/launchpad/mls for development process.

 What do you think about making this idea into an activity, instead of
 a website?  We could take my Report a Problem control panel and turn
 it into a Feedback activity.  I already have the log collector
 server set up on SL infrastructure - we could turn the feedback into a
 RSS feed for developers who could detect trends.  I'm not sure about
 the voting stuff - we hardly get any reviews on ASLO as it is, my
 Typing Turtle score is down to 3 stars because of one middle school
 kid :)

 (BTW, there seems to not be much user representation in the discussion
 about 0.88 features, which may provide some motivation for this topic)

 -Wade
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Mockup for collab.sugarlabs.org

2010-01-08 Thread Walther Neuper

Hi Wade,

thanks for your initiative !

We would like to adjust (contribute?) to your efforts, since we just 
begin to try the same in a mini-environment: (student-)developers at our 
university + teacher students + teachers at Austrian schools.

Walther
PS: preliminary homepage www.ist.tugraz.at/projects/isac/rp

Wade Brainerd wrote:
 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote:
   
 All mentioned above could be(already) done in existed env. But the major
 idea of collab.sl.o proposal is bringing life to existed scheme by
 stimulating users to share their needs(due to having convenient
 ASLO for needs site).
 

 Hi Aleksey,

 We definitely need to improve our lines of communication with users
 (deployments, teachers, students and casual).  As a programmer I
 appreciate a good technical solution to this problem.

 I think it's more a personal problem than a tech problem though. [...] 
-- 

Walther Neuper  Mailto: neu...@ist.tugraz.at
Institute for Software Technology  Tel: +43-(0)316/873-5728
University of Technology   Fax: +43-(0)316/873-5706
Graz, Austria Home: www.ist.tugraz.at/neuper


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

I am interested in this discussion.
I am managing a deployment of 140 XOs/SOAS (mostly XOs) and this issue comes
up a lot with the students. A couple of classrooms are just finishing a
project with EToys and Resume was a big problem for us.
In EToys, you seem to have to rename the project in the Journal. So, every
Journal entry says, by default, EToys Project. So, time is lost trying to
find the right one (until the students get the naming thing).

The idea of having some Journal icon in the toolbar seems good. I would also
appreciate any feedback about EToys.

Thanks.
Gerald

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 2:56 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.dewrote:

 On 01/07/2010 05:19 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:
  Simon Schampijer wrote:
  When they resume a previous activity, and they wanted to start a new
  one, I have seen learners erasing the previous content and keep on
  working in that activity.
 
  This is the purpose of resume-by-default. The idea arose in response to
  feedback from Uruguay, where students routinely filled their disk.  The
  situation became so severe that, infamously, children in Uruguay began to
  memorize the shell commands required to erase the Journal by force.

 I meant that: You click on the turtle in the home screen. Last week you
 did lesson 1. The kids want to do lesson 2 with has nothing to do with
 lesson 1. They erase all the blocks they had and begin doing lesson 2.
 Hence they lost lesson 1.

  If you are working on systems with larger than 1 GB disks, or students
 who
  do not use the machines full-time, then you will of course be far less
  likely to encounter this problem.  This is not to say that I know what
 the
  right solution is; I'm not at all sure.

 Of course, I see the point of limited space, and I am aware of why we
 choose to have resume by default. The problem I see is unclaerity. Just
 look at the home screen. Do you know what will happen when you click on
 one of those icons? What are the expectations. Maybe there are better
 ways of displaying the options you have in the home view to the user. I
 guess that is what I am looking for :)

 Thanks,
 Simon
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Mockup for collab.sugarlabs.org

Wade,

You said:
 if only we could put every Sugar developer
at a deployment for a week.

I am a teacher and doctoral student managing a deployment of 150 XOs/SOAS
and would love to have this happen!

Gerald

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:37 AM, Walther Neuper neu...@ist.tugraz.at wrote:

 Hi Wade,

 thanks for your initiative !

 We would like to adjust (contribute?) to your efforts, since we just
 begin to try the same in a mini-environment: (student-)developers at our
 university + teacher students + teachers at Austrian schools.

 Walther
 PS: preliminary homepage www.ist.tugraz.at/projects/isac/rp

 Wade Brainerd wrote:
  On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org
 wrote:
 
  All mentioned above could be(already) done in existed env. But the major
  idea of collab.sl.o proposal is bringing life to existed scheme by
  stimulating users to share their needs(due to having convenient
  ASLO for needs site).
 
 
  Hi Aleksey,
 
  We definitely need to improve our lines of communication with users
  (deployments, teachers, students and casual).  As a programmer I
  appreciate a good technical solution to this problem.
 
  I think it's more a personal problem than a tech problem though. [...]
 --
 
 Walther Neuper  Mailto: neu...@ist.tugraz.at
 Institute for Software Technology  Tel: +43-(0)316/873-5728
 University of Technology   Fax: +43-(0)316/873-5706
 Graz, Austria Home: www.ist.tugraz.at/neuper
 

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

On 08.01.2010, at 08:56, Simon Schampijer wrote:
 
 On 01/07/2010 05:19 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:
 Simon Schampijer wrote:
 When they resume a previous activity, and they wanted to start a new
 one, I have seen learners erasing the previous content and keep on
 working in that activity.
 
 This is the purpose of resume-by-default. The idea arose in response to
 feedback from Uruguay, where students routinely filled their disk.  The
 situation became so severe that, infamously, children in Uruguay began to
 memorize the shell commands required to erase the Journal by force.
 
 I meant that: You click on the turtle in the home screen. Last week you 
 did lesson 1. The kids want to do lesson 2 with has nothing to do with 
 lesson 1. They erase all the blocks they had and begin doing lesson 2. 
 Hence they lost lesson 1.

How about the erase all button also starts a new Journal entry?

How about if every activity would have such a button?

 If you are working on systems with larger than 1 GB disks, or students who
 do not use the machines full-time, then you will of course be far less
 likely to encounter this problem.  This is not to say that I know what the
 right solution is; I'm not at all sure.
 
 Of course, I see the point of limited space, and I am aware of why we 
 choose to have resume by default. The problem I see is unclaerity. Just 
 look at the home screen. Do you know what will happen when you click on 
 one of those icons? What are the expectations. Maybe there are better 
 ways of displaying the options you have in the home view to the user. I 
 guess that is what I am looking for :)

I see resume-by-default as an experiment. It tried to solve the problem of 
cluttering in the Journal, and succeeded in that. It gave a different set of 
problems though, like making it much easier to lose work.

Maybe the Journal clutter can be solved in a different way. E.g., by grouping 
all entries for an activity with the same title, and resuming the most recent. 
Each entry takes up so much screen space in the Journal, it could as well have 
a line with the dates of older entries with the same name.

Or maybe the best would indeed be to let the user decide if she wants to resume 
or start a fresh instance. E.g. how about adding a mini journal to the home 
screen? When selecting an activity icon it would show the most recent Journal 
entries and an icon to start a new instance. Fitt's law would suggest to either 
pop it up close to the activity item, or put it in a predictable place at the 
screen edge. The former would be almost trivial to implement - simply bring up 
the palette on click and have it fully expanded right away. The double-hovering 
is just too undiscoverable and time-consuming. Click-choose-click would be much 
faster.

In any case I do agree there is a problem with resume-by-default and some 
simple adjustments could improve usability quite a bit :)

- Bert -

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

On 08.01.2010, at 11:39, Gerald Ardito wrote:
 I am interested in this discussion.
 I am managing a deployment of 140 XOs/SOAS (mostly XOs) and this issue comes 
 up a lot with the students. A couple of classrooms are just finishing a 
 project with EToys and Resume was a big problem for us.
 In EToys, you seem to have to rename the project in the Journal.

The project name is always displayed in the Etoys tool bar and can be edited 
there.

 So, every Journal entry says, by default, EToys Project. So, time is lost 
 trying to find the right one (until the students get the naming thing).

This would be a lot easier if the thumbnails were shown in the Journal's list 
view. There is so much space in each entry that it could fit easily. Even nicer 
would be a grid view of all thumbs.

 The idea of having some Journal icon in the toolbar seems good. I would also 
 appreciate any feedback about EToys.


What additional Journal icon would you like to see in the Etoys toolbar?

- Bert -

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 17:19, Benjamin M. Schwartz
bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
 Simon Schampijer wrote:
 When they resume a previous activity, and they wanted to start a new
 one, I have seen learners erasing the previous content and keep on
 working in that activity.

 This is the purpose of resume-by-default. The idea arose in response to
 feedback from Uruguay, where students routinely filled their disk.  The
 situation became so severe that, infamously, children in Uruguay began to
 memorize the shell commands required to erase the Journal by force.

When at Uruguay, I was told that even after deleting the journal the
disk was full and they had to reflash. I guess this is because of temp
file leaks that have been fixed in later releases.

Also, resume-by-default would help with user-generated content, but
the biggest files on the journal will be downloads (except videos
taken in Record).

Regards,

Tomeu

Regards,

Tomeu

 If you are working on systems with larger than 1 GB disks, or students who
 do not use the machines full-time, then you will of course be far less
 likely to encounter this problem.  This is not to say that I know what the
 right solution is; I'm not at all sure.

 --Ben


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Mockup for collab.sugarlabs.org

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 05:28, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote:
 All mentioned above could be(already) done in existed env. But the major
 idea of collab.sl.o proposal is bringing life to existed scheme by
 stimulating users to share their needs(due to having convenient
 ASLO for needs site).

 Hi Aleksey,

 We definitely need to improve our lines of communication with users
 (deployments, teachers, students and casual).  As a programmer I
 appreciate a good technical solution to this problem.

 I think it's more a personal problem than a tech problem though.  E.g.
 we need better relationships between developers and users, more than
 we need a better form to fill in.

This is certainly my opinion as well. The language problem is there,
but though I'm a native spanish speaker I rarely get a reply when
contacting someone from a deployment. Though if most people at SLs
spoke spanish, then we could work stronger in this area.

Any infrastructure we set up for feedback needs to take into account
that most of our users are not comfortable using english, and that's a
bit hard of a problem.

Regards,

Tomeu

 And that's really a job for the
 project leadership, mostly by introducing people and encouraging them
 to follow up.  Tomeu's recent visit to Laboratorio Tecnológico del
 Uruguay is a great example; if only we could put every Sugar developer
 at a deployment for a week.  I joined the sur list and use Google
 Translate to feel at least a little bit plugged in :)   Still, I
 occasionally send emails to deployments asking things like Are you
 guys using Typing Turtle? and What kinds of activities could you
 use? but rarely hear back.  I guess it's a problem when most of the
 developers speak one language, and most of the users speak one of many
 others.

 I'm personally for lightweight collab.sl.o(to meet only mentioned above
 issues) and reusing existed development related resources like
 wiki/launchpad/mls for development process.

 What do you think about making this idea into an activity, instead of
 a website?  We could take my Report a Problem control panel and turn
 it into a Feedback activity.  I already have the log collector
 server set up on SL infrastructure - we could turn the feedback into a
 RSS feed for developers who could detect trends.  I'm not sure about
 the voting stuff - we hardly get any reviews on ASLO as it is, my
 Typing Turtle score is down to 3 stars because of one middle school
 kid :)

 (BTW, there seems to not be much user representation in the discussion
 about 0.88 features, which may provide some motivation for this topic)

 -Wade
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Mockup for collab.sugarlabs.org

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 11:30, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote:
 Wade,

 You said:
  if only we could put every Sugar developer
 at a deployment for a week.

 I am a teacher and doctoral student managing a deployment of 150 XOs/SOAS
 and would love to have this happen!

Is your deployment in New York?

Regards,

Tomeu

 Gerald

 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org
 wrote:
  All mentioned above could be(already) done in existed env. But the major
  idea of collab.sl.o proposal is bringing life to existed scheme by
  stimulating users to share their needs(due to having convenient
  ASLO for needs site).

 Hi Aleksey,

 We definitely need to improve our lines of communication with users
 (deployments, teachers, students and casual).  As a programmer I
 appreciate a good technical solution to this problem.

 I think it's more a personal problem than a tech problem though.  E.g.
 we need better relationships between developers and users, more than
 we need a better form to fill in.  And that's really a job for the
 project leadership, mostly by introducing people and encouraging them
 to follow up.  Tomeu's recent visit to Laboratorio Tecnológico del
 Uruguay is a great example; if only we could put every Sugar developer
 at a deployment for a week.  I joined the sur list and use Google
 Translate to feel at least a little bit plugged in :)   Still, I
 occasionally send emails to deployments asking things like Are you
 guys using Typing Turtle? and What kinds of activities could you
 use? but rarely hear back.  I guess it's a problem when most of the
 developers speak one language, and most of the users speak one of many
 others.

  I'm personally for lightweight collab.sl.o(to meet only mentioned above
  issues) and reusing existed development related resources like
  wiki/launchpad/mls for development process.

 What do you think about making this idea into an activity, instead of
 a website?  We could take my Report a Problem control panel and turn
 it into a Feedback activity.  I already have the log collector
 server set up on SL infrastructure - we could turn the feedback into a
 RSS feed for developers who could detect trends.  I'm not sure about
 the voting stuff - we hardly get any reviews on ASLO as it is, my
 Typing Turtle score is down to 3 stars because of one middle school
 kid :)

 (BTW, there seems to not be much user representation in the discussion
 about 0.88 features, which may provide some motivation for this topic)

 -Wade
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Mockup for collab.sugarlabs.org

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 11:37, Walther Neuper neu...@ist.tugraz.at wrote:
 Hi Wade,

 thanks for your initiative !

 We would like to adjust (contribute?) to your efforts, since we just
 begin to try the same in a mini-environment: (student-)developers at our
 university + teacher students + teachers at Austrian schools.

That sounds great! Please keep us posted. If I can help in any way, we
could meet either in Graz or in Prague.

Regards,

Tomeu

 Walther
 PS: preliminary homepage www.ist.tugraz.at/projects/isac/rp

 Wade Brainerd wrote:
 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote:

 All mentioned above could be(already) done in existed env. But the major
 idea of collab.sl.o proposal is bringing life to existed scheme by
 stimulating users to share their needs(due to having convenient
 ASLO for needs site).


 Hi Aleksey,

 We definitely need to improve our lines of communication with users
 (deployments, teachers, students and casual).  As a programmer I
 appreciate a good technical solution to this problem.

 I think it's more a personal problem than a tech problem though. [...]
 --
 
 Walther Neuper                          Mailto: neu...@ist.tugraz.at
 Institute for Software Technology          Tel: +43-(0)316/873-5728
 University of Technology                   Fax: +43-(0)316/873-5706
 Graz, Austria                             Home: www.ist.tugraz.at/neuper
 

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 6:44 AM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote:

   On 08.01.2010, at 11:39, Gerald Ardito wrote:

 I am interested in this discussion.
 I am managing a deployment of 140 XOs/SOAS (mostly XOs) and this issue
 comes up a lot with the students. A couple of classrooms are just finishing
 a project with EToys and Resume was a big problem for us.
 In EToys, you seem to have to rename the project in the Journal.


 The project name is always displayed in the Etoys tool bar and can be
 edited there.

 So, every Journal entry says, by default, EToys Project. So, time is lost
 trying to find the right one (until the students get the naming thing).

 This is true, however, this name, on the XOs in Sugar .82 does not show up
 in the Journal, unless you manually rename the file. Not a lot of work, of
 course, but an extra step. This name, as you say, does appear in the tool
 bar as you work on a project.
  This would be a lot easier if the thumbnails were shown in the Journal's
 list view. There is so much space in each entry that it could fit easily.
 Even nicer would be a grid view of all thumbs.

 The idea of having some Journal icon in the toolbar seems good. I would
 also appreciate any feedback about EToys.


 What additional Journal icon would you like to see in the Etoys toolbar?

 Insert pictures, drawings, and other Journal items.

Thanks.
Gerald

  - Bert -


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

2010-01-08 Thread Edward Cherlin

Excellent post. We need lots more like it to give us real-world
information on children's learning issues.

I am documenting these problems in [[The Undiscoverable]], and working
on a guide for teachers to introduce and reinforce whatever children
have trouble with. It has been on hold during my move from California
to Indiana, but I can resume work now.

Have you tried giving explicit lessons on Start New and Resume as part
of larger lessons? Something like this, perhaps:

Class, we worked on [activity, function] yesterday, and we wanted to
know how to [other function]. Let's see if we can discover how to do
that in [activity]. First, right-click on [activity name] and select
New to start a new session. Then click the [tabe name] tab, and look
at the controls. Do any of them look as though they do what we want?
What happens when you try them?...

At the end of the session, have students exit and give the session a
meaningful name related to the idea you were teaching.

Later:

Do you remember what we did with [new idea from yesterday]? [Responses
from class] Now go to your Journals and click the [name] session to
resume it.

Do this as often as necessary in different activities until you are
sure that the students remember it. Let me know how this works.

I used to do this as the very first lesson in teaching adults word
processing and text editing.

1. Start program. (Most apps give you an empty document by default. If
not, create one.)
2. Save empty file in specified directory with any name.
3. Type something.
4. Save again.
5. Close file, or create new document.
6. Re-open file.
7. Exit program.
8. Find file, and click to resume.


On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 03:09, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote:
 Hi,

 I have observed certain difficulties with the 'resume' and 'start a new'
 activity concept. At the moment we have the following situation:

 *** Current Situation:
 In the Home View you can resume an activity and start a new one. The
 option to start a new activity is in the palette of the activity icon. A
 list of last entries from this activity type is present in the palette
 as well. When you click on the icon with the left mouse button, the last
 activity is resumed by default. Clicking with the right mouse button on
 the icon does reveal the activity palette. The activity is revealed
 after a delay when hovering over the icon, too. Since version 0.86 when
 you hold the alt-key pressed and click on the activity icon you can
 start a new activity. This is visually guided by the uncolored activity
 icon.

 In the Journal you can resume activities. There is no option to start a
 new activity from within the Journal.


 *** Background:
 I teach a Sugar class of 15 students (5th and 6th grade) in a German
 primary school [1]. The classes are on a weekly one hour basis. They had
 10-15 hours of Sugar by now. We use Sugar 0.84 on Fedora 11. I explained
 the concept of the Journal, repeated several times how to start a new
 activity and how to resume one. I explained them that revealing of the
 palette is quicker when using the right mouse button.


 *** Disclaimer:
 The information below is not meant to be hard data. There are
 differences in backgrounds (cultural etc), ages and quite importantly: a
 difference between a first time user, a regular user and a daily user.
 Some might as well question if I have chosen the right methodical way to
 explain things, and be sure sometimes I do question myself, however the
 data gathered might be a good basis for discussing this issue and maybe
 others will provide some data, too.


 *** Observations:
 Most of the kids click on the activity icon when they want to start a
 new activity. Since there is a delay to reveal the palette, the learner
 does not see the other information in the palette.

 When they resume a previous activity, and they wanted to start a new
 one, I have seen learners erasing the previous content and keep on
 working in that activity.

 Nearly all the kids do not use the right click to reveal the palette.
 They wait for it to appear.


 *** Survey:
 Last class I asked the learners in a small survey the following questions:

 A: How do you do a new drawing in TurtleArt?
 R:
 Some: Nothing, or did misunderstood the question.
 Some: I click on TurtleArt.
 One said: One clicks with the right mouse on TurtleArt and clicks with
 the left one on New.
 One said: Go on TurtleArt, wait, click New.

 A: How do you edit a previous drawing in TurtleArt?
 R:
 Many: Go to the Journal and resume there.
 One: Go to Journal or right click and choose the one one want to resume.
 One: Go on TurtleArt and choose the name one wants to resume.
 Some: Nothing / did not understand the question

 A: Is there a difference between the right mouse click and the left
 mouse click?
 R:
 One: it is quicker to use the right mouse button.
 Some: you get a new field/list.
 Many: Nothing / did not understand the question


 *** Comments:
 The concept of using the

Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

2010-01-08 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 05:39, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote:
I am interested in this discussion.
I am managing a deployment of 140 XOs/SOAS (mostly XOs) and this issue comes
up a lot with the students. A couple of classrooms are just finishing a
project with EToys and Resume was a big problem for us.
In EToys, you seem to have to rename the project in the Journal. So, every
Journal entry says, by default, EToys Project. So, time is lost trying to
find the right one (until the students get the naming thing).

In my draft guide to Discovery, I am suggesting that teachers
explicitly tell students how to name sessions for the first few days,
with decreasing guidance as students get the idea.

We are going to save our work now. Click the stop sign, everybody. Do
you see that the name Etoys Project is highlighted? That means you
can just start typing your own name for your session. Type the name
[name] in place of EToys Project. Now click OK.

Save your work, everyone. Does anybody remember how? Click the Stop
icon and give the session a name?, some student asks. Right.

Now save your session. What should we call it? Accept a suggestion
and write it on the board.

Now save your session, and remember-- To name it!! they all shout.

The idea of having some Journal icon in the toolbar seems good. I would also
appreciate any feedback about EToys.

The Tutorials are excellent. Perhaps we could mock up Sugar in Etoys
and use the same techniques to teach Sugar controls.

Thanks.
Gerald

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 2:56 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de
wrote:

On 01/07/2010 05:19 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:
Simon Schampijer wrote:
When they resume a previous activity, and they wanted to start a new
one, I have seen learners erasing the previous content and keep on
working in that activity.

This is the purpose of resume-by-default. The idea arose in response to
feedback from Uruguay, where students routinely filled their disk. The
situation became so severe that, infamously, children in Uruguay began
to
memorize the shell commands required to erase the Journal by force.

I meant that: You click on the turtle in the home screen. Last week you
did lesson 1. The kids want to do lesson 2 with has nothing to do with
lesson 1. They erase all the blocks they had and begin doing lesson 2.
Hence they lost lesson 1.

If you are working on systems with larger than 1 GB disks, or students
who
do not use the machines full-time, then you will of course be far less
likely to encounter this problem. This is not to say that I know what
the
right solution is; I'm not at all sure.

Of course, I see the point of limited space, and I am aware of why we
choose to have resume by default. The problem I see is unclaerity. Just
look at the home screen. Do you know what will happen when you click on
one of those icons? What are the expectations. Maybe there are better
ways of displaying the options you have in the home view to the user. I
guess that is what I am looking for :)

Thanks,
Simon
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

On 08.01.2010, at 14:40, Gerald Ardito wrote:
 What additional Journal icon would you like to see in the Etoys toolbar?
 
 Insert pictures, drawings, and other Journal items.

That button already exists in the Etoys toolbar. Since 3.0.2141 in fact, 
released in September 2008. So unless you use an XO OS older than 8.2 you 
should see it. It looks like an open from Journal icon. In the most recent 
version, it was replaced with the regular insert object from journal icon.

Or am I misunderstanding?

- Bert -


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

On 08.01.2010, at 15:41, Edward Cherlin wrote:
 
 On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 05:39, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote:
 I am interested in this discussion.
 I am managing a deployment of 140 XOs/SOAS (mostly XOs) and this issue comes
 up a lot with the students. A couple of classrooms are just finishing a
 project with EToys and Resume was a big problem for us.
 In EToys, you seem to have to rename the project in the Journal. So, every
 Journal entry says, by default, EToys Project. So, time is lost trying to
 find the right one (until the students get the naming thing).
 
 In my draft guide to Discovery, I am suggesting that teachers
 explicitly tell students how to name sessions for the first few days,
 with decreasing guidance as students get the idea.
 
 We are going to save our work now. Click the stop sign, everybody. Do
 you see that the name Etoys Project is highlighted? That means you
 can just start typing your own name for your session. Type the name
 [name] in place of EToys Project. Now click OK.
 
 Save your work, everyone. Does anybody remember how? Click the Stop
 icon and give the session a name?, some student asks. Right.
 
 Now save your session. What should we call it? Accept a suggestion
 and write it on the board.
 
 Now save your session, and remember-- To name it!! they all shout.

This works fine for other activities. For Etoys, we never got around to 
implement the prompt-for-title-on-stopping-an-unnamed-instance-dialog. And more 
recent discussion suggested that dialog is too annoying anyway. It may get 
removed in a future Sugar version. So currently that ticket has a rather low 
priority - feel free to comment:

http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-198

In Etoys, to name a project you just change its title in the toolbar, at any 
time. 

- Bert -


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[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

2010-01-08 Thread Michael Stone

Simon,

 Most of the kids click on the activity icon when they want to start a 
 new activity. 

Would you care to try patches to show both start new and resume icons on
the home view (and maybe in the journal too)?

Yours,

Michael
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Mockup for collab.sugarlabs.org

2010-01-08 Thread Wade Brainerd

n Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:30 AM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote:
 Wade,

 You said:
  if only we could put every Sugar developer
 at a deployment for a week.

 I am a teacher and doctoral student managing a deployment of 150 XOs/SOAS
 and would love to have this happen!

Hi Gerald,

Can I find more information about your deployment somewhere?

Best,
-Wade
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Mockup for collab.sugarlabs.org

2010-01-08 Thread Wade Brainerd

Walther,

It's great to hear that people are doing the combined developer -
teacher - student approach.  It was just a rhetorical idea so it's
awesome to see it occurring in practice :)

ReckonPrimer looks quite cool btw.  I especially like how the
development has been tied to pedagogical efforts.  Do you think it
will be stable enough to post on activities.sugarlabs.org soon?

Best regards,
Wade

2010/1/8 Walther Neuper neu...@ist.tugraz.at:
 Hi Wade,

 thanks for your initiative !

 We would like to adjust (contribute?) to your efforts, since we just begin
 to try the same in a mini-environment: (student-)developers at our
 university + teacher students + teachers at Austrian schools.

 Walther
 PS: preliminary homepage www.ist.tugraz.at/projects/isac/rp

 Wade Brainerd wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org
 wrote:


 All mentioned above could be(already) done in existed env. But the major
 idea of collab.sl.o proposal is bringing life to existed scheme by
 stimulating users to share their needs(due to having convenient
 ASLO for needs site).


 Hi Aleksey,

 We definitely need to improve our lines of communication with users
 (deployments, teachers, students and casual).  As a programmer I
 appreciate a good technical solution to this problem.

 I think it's more a personal problem than a tech problem though. [...]

 --
 
 Walther Neuper                          Mailto: neu...@ist.tugraz.at
 Institute for Software Technology          Tel: +43-(0)316/873-5728
 University of Technology                   Fax: +43-(0)316/873-5706
 Graz, Austria                             Home: www.ist.tugraz.at/neuper
 


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[Sugar-devel] Change Access from SD card to USB boot on XO

2010-01-08 Thread John Tierney


Hi,

 

I am working with an Instructor Michael Mayville at Oakland Schools Technical 
Campus

who is part of their Business, Management, Marketing, and Technology Cluster.

Michael is working with his students on two XO laptops I have loaned them.

 

They have successfully gotten developer keys and have been able to make some

changes with the use of an SD Card. He would like to be able to do this work 
from

a USB key instead because of the easier access to the USB slots as oppossed to 

the SD card slot.

 

His question is how to change access to the XO Laptop from SD Card to USB Boot?

 

Thanks!

 

John Tierney


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Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar-devel Digest, Vol 15, Issue 17

2010-01-08 Thread vijit singh


 Hello Simon,


I would support what Bert mentioned in one of his mails-

*When selecting an activity icon it would show the most recent Journal
entries and an icon to start a new instance. Fitt's law would suggest to
either pop it up close to the activity item, or put it in a predictable
place at the screen edge. The former would be almost trivial to implement -
simply bring up the palette on click and have it fully expanded right away.
The double-hovering is just too undiscoverable and time-consuming.
Click-choose-click would be much faster.*
*
*
*
*

 -- Forwarded message --
 From: Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de
 To: sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
 Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:31:29 +0100
 Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity
 Hi Vijit,

 So, if I understand you correctly, 'start a new activity' should be the
 default behavior, when you left click on the activity icon - and this should
 be represented in the primary palette (top), too. Actually, there is a gconf
 option (/schemas/desktop/sugar/desktop/favorites_mode) that can be toggled
 to change the behavior, the layout of the palette is not changed though.
 Would be a good test to try it out.


I think what Bert mentioned in his mail would be a good option and this is
very close to what I wanted to say in my last mail.


 Any comment about the delay of the palette?


I think removing the delay thing completely and showing the complete palette
when the icon is clicked and let the user decide whether to start with a new
activity or a previous version of the activity( by showing the journal
entries of that activity)  would be a much better option.

However, from the coding point of view I am not sure about its feasibilty, I
mean afaik the basic characterstic working of palette is like that only i.e.
to display the whole palette only after a delay( when being hovered) and I
couldn't find any function in the palette module to change this
characterstic . So, it might just require a change in the palette module as
well. Still I am not sure about this because I haven't dealt much with
palette earlier and couldn't devote much time in searching for the correct
way to do so.

Regards,
VIJIT


 Thanks,
   Simon

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Change Access from SD card to USB boot on XO

2010-01-08 Thread Sascha Silbe


On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 01:08:04PM -0500, John Tierney wrote:

His question is how to change access to the XO Laptop from SD Card to 
USB Boot?
Unless you'd like it to boot from USB even though a bootable SD card 
(i.e. one containing olpc.fth IIRC) is plugged in, you don't need to do 
anything. OpenFirmware boots from USB quite fine (with the same 
requirements as for the SD card, so copying everything over should Just 
Work).


PS: Followup-To set to de...@lists.laptop.org as it's a firmware 
question - Sugar doesn't enter the picture at that stage.


CU Sascha

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http://www.infra-silbe.de/

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[Sugar-devel] EToys Saving Problem

Bert,

I have been working with students to create EToys projects.
Two of them were working yesterday on their projects, which I saw. Their
work was very good, and almost done. When they went to finish it today,
yesterday's work was not in the Journal, nor were there any other records in
the Journal of earlier sessions on this project.

So, I have some questions:
1. Under what conditions could this happen?
2. Is it possible that the project is on the XO, but not showing in the
Journal? If so, where might I find it.
3. Can you suggest any way to recover this work?

Thanks.
Gerald
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Re: [Sugar-devel] EToys Saving Problem

On 08.01.2010, at 22:14, Gerald Ardito wrote:
 Bert,
 
 I have been working with students to create EToys projects.
 Two of them were working yesterday on their projects, which I saw. Their work 
 was very good, and almost done. When they went to finish it today, 
 yesterday's work was not in the Journal, nor were there any other records in 
 the Journal of earlier sessions on this project.
 
 So, I have some questions:
 1. Under what conditions could this happen?

Don't know. Is there anything in the log?

 2. Is it possible that the project is on the XO, but not showing in the 
 Journal? If so, where might I find it.

It's unlikely, but try

 su
 find /home/olpc/isolation -name \*.pr

which would look for Etoys projects in the rainbow-jailed folders.

 3. Can you suggest any way to recover this work?


If you find a project file you can use copy-to-journal to add it to the 
Journal.

- Bert -

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Re: [Sugar-devel] EToys Saving Problem