Some feedback from your responses to: notes from the field - Mongolia
Thanks for all these suggestions. This is helpful. In many cases the local team here came up with similar solutions to cope with the existing tech problems. (like saving to a USB etc.) Reuben and Tyler have been great at suggesting 'fixes' to those problems. What I am trying to offer the developer community are the major issues that the XO faces when introduced into cultures, in this case, Mongolia. My hope is that you developers can work with what is actually needed to make people open to the XO and not just working with dream users who will be happy to get anything OLPC throws their way. As I am sure you all know there are other low cost computers on the market right now and if OLPC can't offer a machine that stops being seen as still under developement and hard to use I fear OLPC will become obsolete. so to use Deniz's comments as an example for things to think about. if one day the network is universal, and the mesh works etc. I can see why we wouldn't need it. This day isn't here. The mesh does NOT work. Gov'ts can't even afford to put in servers where laptops are being deployed. There is the dream but not reality of connectivity to deal with. So the fact that teachers know how to use USBs is actually the best thing that could happen to OLPC right now. sugar might not have been intended to work with other OS's, and should be thought of as an educational tool meant for children instead of a general all-purpose laptop computer. You cannot tell people how to use their computers or what to expect from them. If we donate a computational tool than I think it needs to be competent at that - otherwise you need to change the name of the organization to not include the word 'laptop'. All we can do is offer a tool (computer) and help folks think about integrating it into their communities and curriculums but you CANNOT change expectations by simply not meeting them. When people get a computer, for free or otherwise, they want it to work in a useful and straightforward way. This will leave them free to think about doing interesting work on it and not just get frustrated to the point of locking it away in a closet and forgetting about it (as I have seen far too many teachers do!) In Mongolia there are computers in places that haven't had training and the teachers and students are stuck. If we could make certain basic things easier - it would help us use the workshop time to seed some deeper educational project ideas and not just address functionality frustrations. elana On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 2:17 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can transfers files between systems, (in the absence of an XS server), using a light weight web server such as boa To install boa on the XO: su - yum install boa If you want more details on how to configure boa let me know and I will post the instructions. I use boa to pull log files off my XO. Similarly you get get files off a MS Windows system using IIS. Another email in this thread mentions the scripts for copying files to and form the Sugar Journal. /Robert H. On Oct 10, 2008, at 1:48 PM, Deniz Kural wrote: I see how my email wasn't so nice. Apologies for increasing the animosity level. I was merely trying show how USB transfer from: 1) Xo to Xo 2) Other platform to Xo could be useful. Marco, I'm glad to have provoked a laugh, I was indeed joking. I don't even know you. I agree with Martin -- I thought he didn't write anything offensive. I will follow your advice, Edward, Tomeu. So to stay on topic, 1) I understand that there is in fact an easy way to transfer files between XOs with a USB (which I believe is necessary per the conditions in Mongolia - people living in mobile yurts, even in the largest city and the capital etc. as explained). In the future, if one day the network is universal, and the mesh works etc. I can see why we wouldn't need it. 2) I understand that sugar might not have been intended to work with other OS's, and should be thought of as an educational tool meant for children instead of a general all-purpose laptop computer. But I also think, since this is a significant investment for many people, referring to my original example of a teacher typing up a reading (from a book let's say, or a handout) on a regular computer s/he already has back home, and being able to transfer files back and forth on an Xo so s/he can distribute it to his/her students. Thus, to fulfill its educational mission, Sugar cannot be a closed box. Deniz On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/10/10 Deniz Kural [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This whole why would you need a USB in mongolia? conversation shows how out of touch some people on this list are with the people the project is trying to reach. Deniz, this list if composed by people from all around the world, some of which have had contact with some cultures, others with other cultures. What we have in common is the desire
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Here are some notes from Cris Anderson, one of my interns this summer who is fluent in Mongolian. Because of his language and technical skills he heard a lot of these issues first hand. From Cris: Tech problems I have noticed: file artifacts in the journal--the process went something like this-insert a flash drive to the xo that has a lot of files on it from windows computer, they show up in journal, remove flash drive, erase many of the files on a windows machine, use the flash drive with windows, mac and linux computers for a couple weeks, put it back in the XO and old files that have been deleted are still cluttering up the journal in usb view mode. The team had a hard time remembering all the services that need turned on when setting up a server. configuring to always start all necessary server services at runtime would help. In 650 and 656 the team saw a few instances of the journal disappearing-reinstalling the journal activity fixed this. When using an activity customization key, the additional Scratch Media and Project files and folders were not unzipped/installed with the activity. the team and teachers depend on that media to be there for teaching purposes olpc-update froze up and didn't do anything when going from 656 to 703. A work-around still needs to be developed for the 1000 pilot XOs that don't type in Mongolian. Either manufacturing data needs adjusted to auto-configure to the English/Mongolian hybrid keyboard, or a keyboard config file hack needs to be done (though this would be subsequently over-written in later OS updates). A language pack update option would be a good Sugar Control Panel addition Tomeu, in terms of the questions you asked below I will respond shortly. Elana On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 7:18 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write, record, etoys) in the journal it is hard for them to locate it - especially if it is more than a few days old. What I would love to read from you is an analysis of which are the concrete difficulties that users are having when trying to find stuff in the journal, and then work with us in improving how the journal works so that users can more easily find their work. As you know, the Journal is one of the most immature parts in Sugar, thus this is a good moment to improve what is worth keeping and drop what is better to not have there. The feedback you are able to provide is critical to this improvement process. This is why everyone is desperate to save their projects on USB keys. Does this happen in all other deployment sites? Also it seems that everything doesn't always go there. For example sometimes the pictures from a session in record are there - sometimes they aren't - sometimes it's just one picture - sometimes none. I have seen this many times - again it's why everyone wants to save on a USB right away. Record creates several entries in the journal: one per video, one per photo, one per audio recording and one to tie them all together. Maybe this is confusing users? Thanks, Tomeu On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:07 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 3) Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes. Could you please elaborate on the difficulties that people have when using the journal? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 1:40 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: file artifacts in the journal--the process went something like this-insert a flash drive to the xo that has a lot of files on it from windows computer, they show up in journal, remove flash drive, erase many of the files on a windows machine, use the flash drive with windows, mac and linux computers for a couple weeks, put it back in the XO and old files that have been deleted are still cluttering up the journal in usb view mode. This is going to be fixed for 9.1. In 650 and 656 the team saw a few instances of the journal disappearing-reinstalling the journal activity fixed this. I think 8.2 should be much better from this respect. But a really solid solution will be available only with 9.1. Thanks, Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
You can transfers files between systems, (in the absence of an XS server), using a light weight web server such as boa To install boa on the XO: su - yum install boa If you want more details on how to configure boa let me know and I will post the instructions. I use boa to pull log files off my XO. Similarly you get get files off a MS Windows system using IIS. Another email in this thread mentions the scripts for copying files to and form the Sugar Journal. /Robert H. On Oct 10, 2008, at 1:48 PM, Deniz Kural wrote: I see how my email wasn't so nice. Apologies for increasing the animosity level. I was merely trying show how USB transfer from: 1) Xo to Xo 2) Other platform to Xo could be useful. Marco, I'm glad to have provoked a laugh, I was indeed joking. I don't even know you. I agree with Martin -- I thought he didn't write anything offensive. I will follow your advice, Edward, Tomeu. So to stay on topic, 1) I understand that there is in fact an easy way to transfer files between XOs with a USB (which I believe is necessary per the conditions in Mongolia - people living in mobile yurts, even in the largest city and the capital etc. as explained). In the future, if one day the network is universal, and the mesh works etc. I can see why we wouldn't need it. 2) I understand that sugar might not have been intended to work with other OS's, and should be thought of as an educational tool meant for children instead of a general all-purpose laptop computer. But I also think, since this is a significant investment for many people, referring to my original example of a teacher typing up a reading (from a book let's say, or a handout) on a regular computer s/he already has back home, and being able to transfer files back and forth on an Xo so s/he can distribute it to his/her students. Thus, to fulfill its educational mission, Sugar cannot be a closed box. Deniz On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/10/10 Deniz Kural [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This whole why would you need a USB in mongolia? conversation shows how out of touch some people on this list are with the people the project is trying to reach. Deniz, this list if composed by people from all around the world, some of which have had contact with some cultures, others with other cultures. What we have in common is the desire to build a software platform that others can use to learn themselves and to teach others. As we have the wish that our work is universally used, we'll need to teach each other how is life in every part of the world and how we can better work so it serves best everywhere. Mikus hasn't been afraid of showing his ignorance about how USB sticks are used in Mongolia and you have kindly replied with an useful explanation. I hope we can keep sharing experiences like this but with a bit less of animosity. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
Deniz Kural wrote: This whole why would you need a USB in mongolia? conversation shows how out of touch some people on this list are with the people the project is trying to reach. People live miles and miles away from one another (in Mongolia), and it is entirely normal to travel to your friends yurt or yer or house with a horse and want to plug in your USB stick -- especially if your mesh isn't connecting due to the distance and you don't have internet because a) no one in your family has a computer b) your house keeps moving around c) it'd be too costly. The original post said only an issue ... being able to save files to a USB key easily. I am not in Mongolia. Thank you for describing the situation there - now I don't have to use second sight to understand what that post referred to. In response to that original post, I wrote: - If the purpose is to later load the objects from the USB key to an XO, I believe the mechanism is supposed to be 'drag-and-drop'. In the source XO, have Journal show the XO datastore content, and drag the appropriate Journal entry to the USB-icon at the bottom edge of the Journal screen. In the destination XO, have Journal show the content of the USB key, and drag the appropriate entry to the XO-Journal-icon at the bottom left of the Journal screen. Also, Martin Dengler wrote: | 1. Plug USB stick into XO running build from the last six months | 2. Drag files from the Journal to the USB stick icon | 3. Drag files from the USB stick's file list to the Journal I believe that for the situation you describe, 'drag-and-drop' is how one should save files to a USB key. That should answer the concern originally posted. Deniz Kural wrote: Also, assuming people want to be able transfer files/objects/things between mac, *nix, windows etc and assuming the lack of a reliable network it makes perfect sense. I've already said: 'Here we come against initial expectations.' What you are describing here appears to be based on expecting the XO to serve as a laptop computer, whose files can be transferred to existing non-Sugar computers. My belief is that those who developed Sugar as an educational tool expected its focus to be on interacting with kids, not on interacting with other computer platforms. All I can do about this description is to repeat what I said in my response to the original post: - If the purpose is to transfer, via USB, an XO datastore item (e.g., file) to a non-Sugar system, I don't know whether that is currently supported by Sugar. Some Sugar users may have developed manual procedures or helper scripts to perform this task - I'm not able to provide citations to help you. My apologies for repeating myself, but what I wrote in my response to the original post was the best advice I knew to offer. Thank you Deniz for helping with my question: I'm trying to think of why a kid would want to save files to a USB key - but my advice remains the same. mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
2008/10/10 Deniz Kural [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This whole why would you need a USB in mongolia? conversation shows how out of touch some people on this list are with the people the project is trying to reach. Deniz, this list if composed by people from all around the world, some of which have had contact with some cultures, others with other cultures. What we have in common is the desire to build a software platform that others can use to learn themselves and to teach others. As we have the wish that our work is universally used, we'll need to teach each other how is life in every part of the world and how we can better work so it serves best everywhere. Mikus hasn't been afraid of showing his ignorance about how USB sticks are used in Mongolia and you have kindly replied with an useful explanation. I hope we can keep sharing experiences like this but with a bit less of animosity. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Elana Langer wrote from Mongolia: basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write, record, etoys) in the journal it is hard for them to locate it - especially if it is more than a few days old. This is why everyone is desperate to save their projects on USB keys. This could be made much easier if Sugar apps prompted the user for tags when shutting down an application. I know it is a goal to require as little text as possible. And I'm not sure what images could universally convey the message correctly... but basically: Would you like to tag the state of this activity? Y/N ...followed by a prompt for the user to enter tags. cheers, Garrett ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 7:18 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write, record, etoys) in the journal it is hard for them to locate it - especially if it is more than a few days old. What I would love to read from you is an analysis of which are the concrete difficulties that users are having when trying to find stuff in the journal, and then work with us in improving how the journal works so that users can more easily find their work. As you know, the Journal is one of the most immature parts in Sugar, thus this is a good moment to improve what is worth keeping and drop what is better to not have there. The feedback you are able to provide is critical to this improvement process. This is why everyone is desperate to save their projects on USB keys. Does this happen in all other deployment sites? Also it seems that everything doesn't always go there. For example sometimes the pictures from a session in record are there - sometimes they aren't - sometimes it's just one picture - sometimes none. I have seen this many times - again it's why everyone wants to save on a USB right away. Record creates several entries in the journal: one per video, one per photo, one per audio recording and one to tie them all together. Maybe this is confusing users? Thanks, Tomeu On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:07 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 3) Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes. Could you please elaborate on the difficulties that people have when using the journal? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: saving files (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 7:14 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey Tomeu- By file I mean the product of their work - in write a document, in record a picture, in etoys a project etc. They want to save what they do in a traditional way. How would you change Sugar so that these users can do what they want and save what they do in a traditional way? Please have patience while I make these questions even if they sound stupid to you. I'm trying to understand what can be done from the feedback you give and there's still some work to do to get to actionable items. Now when I mean 'they' I am referring mostly to teachers or teacher trainers. But i think we need to face the reality that because we want these computers to be used within as a tool to reform formal educational we need to consider that teachers are going to work on the computers too. I think we all agree with this. They also really want to guide the students - when it is hard for them to find their own work they panic. Also when they finish their work and want to share it with others or upload it from a computer that has connectivity they find it near impossible to move their work to a USB key. Which are the difficulties with moving data to an usb key? If they drag an entry from the main journal to the usb stick icon in the lower bar, the file doesn't get copied correctly? I don't have enough data from kids trying to do the same yet but hopefully I will see what they do in the next weeks. Awesome, look forward for more feedback from you. Thanks, Tomeu On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:04 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2) Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. It drives teachers and students crazy. They make something in an application, take some pictures or write something and then have to go through a really tough process to find it and save it on an external drive. Can you explain what do you mean by saving files? Which are the problems when trying to find a file? Do you have any suggestion to improve the process? Once the file is found, which are the problems that kids have when trying to copy it to an external drive? Any suggestion? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] saving files (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Tomeu et al. - Thanks - these are very good questions and are definitely on the right path (that path being, what exactly do we need to do about it?). It is not obvious to me from this thread whether the user goal is XO-to- XO file transfer or XO-to-other-computer file transfer. Do we know that? - Ed P.S. And I'm not overlooking the I want to save things on my USB stick because I think it's safer/more secure aspect. But that usage and the XO-to-XO usage only require information in any XO-readable format, whereas the XO-to-other-computer case has other issues. On Oct 10, 2008, at 9:17 AM, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 7:14 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey Tomeu- By file I mean the product of their work - in write a document, in record a picture, in etoys a project etc. They want to save what they do in a traditional way. How would you change Sugar so that these users can do what they want and save what they do in a traditional way? Please have patience while I make these questions even if they sound stupid to you. I'm trying to understand what can be done from the feedback you give and there's still some work to do to get to actionable items. Now when I mean 'they' I am referring mostly to teachers or teacher trainers. But i think we need to face the reality that because we want these computers to be used within as a tool to reform formal educational we need to consider that teachers are going to work on the computers too. I think we all agree with this. They also really want to guide the students - when it is hard for them to find their own work they panic. Also when they finish their work and want to share it with others or upload it from a computer that has connectivity they find it near impossible to move their work to a USB key. Which are the difficulties with moving data to an usb key? If they drag an entry from the main journal to the usb stick icon in the lower bar, the file doesn't get copied correctly? I don't have enough data from kids trying to do the same yet but hopefully I will see what they do in the next weeks. Awesome, look forward for more feedback from you. Thanks, Tomeu On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:04 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2) Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. It drives teachers and students crazy. They make something in an application, take some pictures or write something and then have to go through a really tough process to find it and save it on an external drive. Can you explain what do you mean by saving files? Which are the problems when trying to find a file? Do you have any suggestion to improve the process? Once the file is found, which are the problems that kids have when trying to copy it to an external drive? Any suggestion? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Sugar mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:45 AM, Garrett Goebel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Elana Langer wrote from Mongolia: basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write, record, etoys) in the journal it is hard for them to locate it - especially if it is more than a few days old. This is why everyone is desperate to save their projects on USB keys. This could be made much easier if Sugar apps prompted the user for tags when shutting down an application. Yes, I think we need to assume this model. I don't think this is going to break the basic paradigm of Sugar, since this prompt need only happen for *new* activities. Anything which has been previously kept in the Journal will continue to autosave. It's only the first time that you *really* need to give a meaningful title, and also then that you might decide it's not worth keeping at all. I know it is a goal to require as little text as possible. And I'm not sure what images could universally convey the message correctly... but basically: Would you like to tag the state of this activity? Y/N ...followed by a prompt for the user to enter tags. We can do a little better than that, actually, by making it all one prompt. It can have a name field, already filled out with the best darn attempt at a name we can manage, a tag field (and perhaps even a list of popular tags as well, to apply to it with a click or a drag/drop), and buttons for [Erase] (Or [Don't Keep]?) and [Keep]. - Eben cheers, Garrett ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slowness (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 7:22 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: in addition to boot and activity load time the time it takes to switch between applications is also a little frustrating - especially for kids who have worked on faster computers. This should have been improved in the 8.2 release, so would be good to give it a look as well. I am in Mongolia for the next few weeks. There are several schools in the city that have computers so if you want any testing done (like the reaction to the boot time with 8.2) just let me know. If you send me a list of dream field feedback or something I can try to make that all happen. Thanks, will keep asking questions. Tomeu On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Elana, you have brought a very needed point of view to this list. Let me try to start the process of translating your experience to actionable items. On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Computers are slow - So I was in a Ger in the west part of Mongolia and I thought I would show the computer to the family that was hosting me. The husband, wife and 8 year old child huddled around the computer and pressed the on button. Instead of being delighted by the computer they waited, and waited for the computer to load. I asked them in broken monoglian to be patient but once the computer loaded they wanted to open an application and again more waiting. The 8 year old lost interest as did the mom and only the man of the house stuck around to try things. This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. First, I would like to note that you are talking about perceived slowness, not the absolute time that takes to do anything. So to solve the issues you mentioned, we need to give a sense to the user that something is happening and, when possible, how much time it will take to finish, in case reducing the time it takes is too expensive resource-wise. Second, you talk about boot time and activity launch time. Is there any other action in the laptop that causes problems because of its slowness? And third, both booting and activity launching performance are known problems and some improvements already happened in the last stable release, 8.2.0. Do you think you could do some experiments with that release and see if things have improved and if so, how much? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
This could be made much easier if Sugar apps prompted the user for tags when shutting down an application. Yes, I think we need to assume this model. I don't think this is going to break the basic paradigm of Sugar, since this prompt need only happen for *new* activities. Anything which has been previously kept in the Journal will continue to autosave. Warning -- when you tell the system to shut down, from the XO-man menu, some existing Sugar apps are hanging instead, prompting the user about whether to save a useless Journal entry about themselves, or whether to just quit. I noticed this in a late 8.2.0. (A normal Linux shell shutdown now command will tell all processes to terminate (kill -TERM), wait about 30 seconds to give them all a chance to do it nicely, then will kill any remaining ones off nastily (kill -KILL) and shut down the system. I didn't wait around long enough to see whether Sugar's shutdown hung forever, or did that too. I strongly recommend that Sugar reimplement what long experience has showed was useful: do what the user told you to, don't let individual activities make the system hang forever by asking stupid questions.) John PS: Wasn't Sugar going to be a modeless, promptless GUI for pre-literate people? :-/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
We can do a little better than that, actually, by making it all one prompt. It can have a name field, already filled out with the best darn attempt at a name we can manage, a tag field (and perhaps even a list of popular tags as well, to apply to it with a click or a drag/drop), and buttons for [Erase] (Or [Don't Keep]?) and [Keep]. A little better solution would be if the words in the name would be treated as tags and if the save dialog would offer autocomplete for those tags. Tagging via the Journal could just set words to super tags so they would not be shown in the name but would be handled harder than soft tags in searching or in the proposed tag submenu thing. If the user would type in the tag via autocompletion then it should be treated as an explicit tag. I am not sure if you can understand it so here is another try from the opposite side: The problem with tagging is that it is painful to select something on the XO from a drop down menu (the list of available tags). (Note that developing Sugar on a Linux PC is cheating...) The whole notion of explicit tagging is also a nuisance and requiring tagging at save time is painful. So this proposal just tries to simplify the process from the user's perspective (and makes coding the Journal very very hard, but since somebody other than me will code it I do not care...). Autocompleting, not only tags but soft tags too, would result in that if the user is doing some project lately then the system would offer him the project's name since probably it would be used lately a lot. Also it could be used for filesystem paths as well but probably I should see that GNOME UI Hackfest video first. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 1:05 PM, NoiseEHC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We can do a little better than that, actually, by making it all one prompt. It can have a name field, already filled out with the best darn attempt at a name we can manage, a tag field (and perhaps even a list of popular tags as well, to apply to it with a click or a drag/drop), and buttons for [Erase] (Or [Don't Keep]?) and [Keep]. A little better solution would be if the words in the name would be treated as tags and if the save dialog would offer autocomplete for those tags. I think tag autocompletion is a definite must, to get this system off the ground. Tagging via the Journal could just set words to super tags so they would not be shown in the name but would be handled harder than soft tags in searching or in the proposed tag submenu thing. If the user would type in the tag via autocompletion then it should be treated as an explicit tag. I don't have a clear image in my head from this description, but I do see the direction you're heading, and it's interesting. I'm not sure exactly how the titles are handled right now, but the idea of auto-completing within the title field, in some form, might have promise. An interesting twist on this might be to look for related Journal entries based on the title typed thus far, in order to provide a list of most likely tags to choose from for the entry (tags which are also applied to other things with similar titles, mime-types, etc.). In this manner, once a base set of tags were in use in the Journal, tagging could become as simple as saying yes, these three things you suggest actually do apply to this thing I made, and then optionally and maybe this one other new tag, too. In a sense, this means that tagging is almost free, since the process of creating a good title will provide a solid set of tags to choose from. Tagging becomes an extension of naming, rather than a separate task. I am not sure if you can understand it so here is another try from the opposite side: The problem with tagging is that it is painful to select something on the XO from a drop down menu (the list of available tags). (Note that developing Right, this is why I think intelligent filtering of the list of suggested tags is also needed. Sugar on a Linux PC is cheating...) The whole notion of explicit tagging is also a nuisance and requiring tagging at save time is painful. So this proposal just tries to simplify the process from the user's perspective (and makes coding the Journal very very hard, but since somebody other than me will code it I do not care...). Autocompleting, not only tags but soft tags too, would result in that if the user is doing some project lately then the system would offer him the project's name since probably it would be used lately a lot. Also it could be used for filesystem paths as well but probably I should see that GNOME UI Hackfest video first. Hmm, I'm not sure that autocompletion on full titles is beneficial (that might not be what you're suggesting) because we want to discourage identical names, rather than encourage them. On the other hand, offering completion of words within the title based on tags is interesting. Would these soft tags (tags auto-completed in the title) also appear in the tag field? How would we make the system evident? Maybe it's still most clear if the title just serves as a seed for the recommended tags (some of which might be verbatim in the title) so that a few clicks can apply all those relevant. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
I see how my email wasn't so nice. Apologies for increasing the animosity level. I was merely trying show how USB transfer from: 1) Xo to Xo 2) Other platform to Xo could be useful. Marco, I'm glad to have provoked a laugh, I was indeed joking. I don't even know you. I agree with Martin -- I thought he didn't write anything offensive. I will follow your advice, Edward, Tomeu. So to stay on topic, 1) I understand that there is in fact an easy way to transfer files between XOs with a USB (which I believe is necessary per the conditions in Mongolia - people living in mobile yurts, even in the largest city and the capital etc. as explained). In the future, if one day the network is universal, and the mesh works etc. I can see why we wouldn't need it. 2) I understand that sugar might not have been intended to work with other OS's, and should be thought of as an educational tool meant for children instead of a general all-purpose laptop computer. But I also think, since this is a significant investment for many people, referring to my original example of a teacher typing up a reading (from a book let's say, or a handout) on a regular computer s/he already has back home, and being able to transfer files back and forth on an Xo so s/he can distribute it to his/her students. Thus, to fulfill its educational mission, Sugar cannot be a closed box. Deniz On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/10/10 Deniz Kural [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This whole why would you need a USB in mongolia? conversation shows how out of touch some people on this list are with the people the project is trying to reach. Deniz, this list if composed by people from all around the world, some of which have had contact with some cultures, others with other cultures. What we have in common is the desire to build a software platform that others can use to learn themselves and to teach others. As we have the wish that our work is universally used, we'll need to teach each other how is life in every part of the world and how we can better work so it serves best everywhere. Mikus hasn't been afraid of showing his ignorance about how USB sticks are used in Mongolia and you have kindly replied with an useful explanation. I hope we can keep sharing experiences like this but with a bit less of animosity. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
Deniz wrote: ... I also think, since this is a significant investment for many people, referring to my original example of a teacher typing up a reading (from a book let's say, or a handout) on a regular computer s/he already has back home, and being able to transfer files back and forth on an Xo so s/he can distribute it to his/her students. One of the regulars on this list mentioned 'copying'. That reminded me that the best current tools I know of for manually transferring files in and out of the XO datastore are copy-from-journal and copy-to-journal (scripts originally written by users). Note that copy-to-journal requires the mime-type of the file to be supplied. mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
mikus wrote: Deniz wrote: ... I also think, since this is a significant investment for many people, referring to my original example of a teacher typing up a reading (from a book let's say, or a handout) on a regular computer s/he already has back home, and being able to transfer files back and forth on an Xo so s/he can distribute it to his/her students. One of the regulars on this list mentioned 'copying'. That reminded me that the best current tools I know of for manually transferring files in and out of the XO datastore are copy-from-journal and copy-to-journal (scripts originally written by users). Note that copy-to-journal requires the mime-type of the file to be supplied. can you provide a pointer to these scripts? paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
mikus wrote: Talking about copy-from-journal and copy-to-journal: can you provide a pointer to these scripts? Try 'which'. On my XO they're in /usr/bin. doh! i guess i don't use my XO as much as i thought! when you said written by users i assumed you meant you had obtained them from someone's personal website somewhere -- there's certainly a lot of that kind of stuff out there. thanks for the (rather short) pointer. :-) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Oct 10, 2008, at 8:41 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: mikus wrote: Talking about copy-from-journal and copy-to-journal: can you provide a pointer to these scripts? Try 'which'. On my XO they're in /usr/bin. doh! i guess i don't use my XO as much as i thought! when you said written by users i assumed you meant you had obtained them from someone's personal website somewhere -- there's certainly a lot of that kind of stuff out there. thanks for the (rather short) pointer. :-) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel Try http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Copy_to_and_from_the_Journal The scripts pointed to there may need updating and enhancing to work nicely. Robert H. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
You can transfers files between systems, (in the absence of an XS server), using a light weight web server such as boa To install boa on the XO: su - yum install boa If you want more details on how to configure boa let me know and I will post the instructions. I use boa to pull log files off my XO. Similarly you get get files off a MS Windows system using IIS. Another email in this thread mentions the scripts for copying files to and form the Sugar Journal. /Robert H. On Oct 10, 2008, at 1:48 PM, Deniz Kural wrote: I see how my email wasn't so nice. Apologies for increasing the animosity level. I was merely trying show how USB transfer from: 1) Xo to Xo 2) Other platform to Xo could be useful. Marco, I'm glad to have provoked a laugh, I was indeed joking. I don't even know you. I agree with Martin -- I thought he didn't write anything offensive. I will follow your advice, Edward, Tomeu. So to stay on topic, 1) I understand that there is in fact an easy way to transfer files between XOs with a USB (which I believe is necessary per the conditions in Mongolia - people living in mobile yurts, even in the largest city and the capital etc. as explained). In the future, if one day the network is universal, and the mesh works etc. I can see why we wouldn't need it. 2) I understand that sugar might not have been intended to work with other OS's, and should be thought of as an educational tool meant for children instead of a general all-purpose laptop computer. But I also think, since this is a significant investment for many people, referring to my original example of a teacher typing up a reading (from a book let's say, or a handout) on a regular computer s/he already has back home, and being able to transfer files back and forth on an Xo so s/he can distribute it to his/her students. Thus, to fulfill its educational mission, Sugar cannot be a closed box. Deniz On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/10/10 Deniz Kural [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This whole why would you need a USB in mongolia? conversation shows how out of touch some people on this list are with the people the project is trying to reach. Deniz, this list if composed by people from all around the world, some of which have had contact with some cultures, others with other cultures. What we have in common is the desire to build a software platform that others can use to learn themselves and to teach others. As we have the wish that our work is universally used, we'll need to teach each other how is life in every part of the world and how we can better work so it serves best everywhere. Mikus hasn't been afraid of showing his ignorance about how USB sticks are used in Mongolia and you have kindly replied with an useful explanation. I hope we can keep sharing experiences like this but with a bit less of animosity. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Slowness (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Hi Elana, you have brought a very needed point of view to this list. Let me try to start the process of translating your experience to actionable items. On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Computers are slow - So I was in a Ger in the west part of Mongolia and I thought I would show the computer to the family that was hosting me. The husband, wife and 8 year old child huddled around the computer and pressed the on button. Instead of being delighted by the computer they waited, and waited for the computer to load. I asked them in broken monoglian to be patient but once the computer loaded they wanted to open an application and again more waiting. The 8 year old lost interest as did the mom and only the man of the house stuck around to try things. This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. First, I would like to note that you are talking about perceived slowness, not the absolute time that takes to do anything. So to solve the issues you mentioned, we need to give a sense to the user that something is happening and, when possible, how much time it will take to finish, in case reducing the time it takes is too expensive resource-wise. Second, you talk about boot time and activity launch time. Is there any other action in the laptop that causes problems because of its slowness? And third, both booting and activity launching performance are known problems and some improvements already happened in the last stable release, 8.2.0. Do you think you could do some experiments with that release and see if things have improved and if so, how much? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
saving files (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2) Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. It drives teachers and students crazy. They make something in an application, take some pictures or write something and then have to go through a really tough process to find it and save it on an external drive. Can you explain what do you mean by saving files? Which are the problems when trying to find a file? Do you have any suggestion to improve the process? Once the file is found, which are the problems that kids have when trying to copy it to an external drive? Any suggestion? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
sugar and the digital age (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Hi Elana, On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 9:48 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: d) Although I think building a tagging tool around kids natural ways of thinking is really exciting, most teachers/schools/gov'ts are really concerned that this OS isn't preparing kids for the digital age properly. Most people feel it is important the computer meet some simple expectations that are common and understandable practices on any OS - like having files that can be saved and accessed in a simple place for example. could you elaborate on what means for teachers/schools/govts to prepare kids for the digital age? It may be that we are not giving enough importance to that requirement (?). [All: this topic is very broad and maybe controversial, please try to keep the threads focused and spawn new ones when needed] Greg, as OLPC's product manager, are we missing anything on that aspect? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 3) Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes. Could you please elaborate on the difficulties that people have when using the journal? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: sugar and the digital age (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
there is a very common feeling amongst policy makers and teacher that the XO doesn't really prepare students for the field of IT. There was a pilot project done in Mongolia that was run by the Japanese gov't where they introduced Linux to 4 towns. The students went on to study at the Mongolian IT college and apparently failed all their courses. The outcome was that these students were not prepared for real IT. Personally I feel that this is bogus and that it is the notion of IT, education and learning that need to be examined at the university level as well - however - just as I have learned when trying to reform educational methodologies there is a need to meet the norm half way (at least) and work from within - it would be nice if the OS could be designed in a similar gentler manner. Teachers, parents, gov't officials and many others are concerned that the computer doesn't conform to their expectations of a computer. Bear in mind that there was a lot promised in this computer like collaboration and mesh and the crank (everyone asks about the damn crank) that are still in development and all get lumped into the understanding of the OS. Essentially, in the minds of these people, fluency on windows, being able to do power point presentations and surf the web is what being prepared means. - I think if we could make some things a little more straightforward like saving, storing and accessing files (in the way PC users and Mac users can sort their way out in the opposite OS pretty intuitively) it would help bridge the gap to traditional expectations. el. On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:16 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Elana, On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 9:48 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: d) Although I think building a tagging tool around kids natural ways of thinking is really exciting, most teachers/schools/gov'ts are really concerned that this OS isn't preparing kids for the digital age properly. Most people feel it is important the computer meet some simple expectations that are common and understandable practices on any OS - like having files that can be saved and accessed in a simple place for example. could you elaborate on what means for teachers/schools/govts to prepare kids for the digital age? It may be that we are not giving enough importance to that requirement (?). [All: this topic is very broad and maybe controversial, please try to keep the threads focused and spawn new ones when needed] Greg, as OLPC's product manager, are we missing anything on that aspect? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: saving files (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Hey Tomeu- By file I mean the product of their work - in write a document, in record a picture, in etoys a project etc. They want to save what they do in a traditional way. Now when I mean 'they' I am referring mostly to teachers or teacher trainers. But i think we need to face the reality that because we want these computers to be used within as a tool to reform formal educational we need to consider that teachers are going to work on the computers too. They also really want to guide the students - when it is hard for them to find their own work they panic. Also when they finish their work and want to share it with others or upload it from a computer that has connectivity they find it near impossible to move their work to a USB key. I don't have enough data from kids trying to do the same yet but hopefully I will see what they do in the next weeks. On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:04 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2) Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. It drives teachers and students crazy. They make something in an application, take some pictures or write something and then have to go through a really tough process to find it and save it on an external drive. Can you explain what do you mean by saving files? Which are the problems when trying to find a file? Do you have any suggestion to improve the process? Once the file is found, which are the problems that kids have when trying to copy it to an external drive? Any suggestion? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write, record, etoys) in the journal it is hard for them to locate it - especially if it is more than a few days old. This is why everyone is desperate to save their projects on USB keys. Also it seems that everything doesn't always go there. For example sometimes the pictures from a session in record are there - sometimes they aren't - sometimes it's just one picture - sometimes none. I have seen this many times - again it's why everyone wants to save on a USB right away. do you need more detail than that? On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:07 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 3) Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes. Could you please elaborate on the difficulties that people have when using the journal? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slowness (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
in addition to boot and activity load time the time it takes to switch between applications is also a little frustrating - especially for kids who have worked on faster computers. I am in Mongolia for the next few weeks. There are several schools in the city that have computers so if you want any testing done (like the reaction to the boot time with 8.2) just let me know. If you send me a list of dream field feedback or something I can try to make that all happen. On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Elana, you have brought a very needed point of view to this list. Let me try to start the process of translating your experience to actionable items. On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Computers are slow - So I was in a Ger in the west part of Mongolia and I thought I would show the computer to the family that was hosting me. The husband, wife and 8 year old child huddled around the computer and pressed the on button. Instead of being delighted by the computer they waited, and waited for the computer to load. I asked them in broken monoglian to be patient but once the computer loaded they wanted to open an application and again more waiting. The 8 year old lost interest as did the mom and only the man of the house stuck around to try things. This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. First, I would like to note that you are talking about perceived slowness, not the absolute time that takes to do anything. So to solve the issues you mentioned, we need to give a sense to the user that something is happening and, when possible, how much time it will take to finish, in case reducing the time it takes is too expensive resource-wise. Second, you talk about boot time and activity launch time. Is there any other action in the laptop that causes problems because of its slowness? And third, both booting and activity launching performance are known problems and some improvements already happened in the last stable release, 8.2.0. Do you think you could do some experiments with that release and see if things have improved and if so, how much? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slowness (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Hey Elana, One thing which you can do to improve activity switching performance is to run xcompmgr (X composite manager). This prevents the activities from burning CPU time redrawing themselves every time they are switched to by persistently caching the video memory used by each window. The result is notably improved activity switching performance. But it does so at the cost of memory, as each window open consumes about 2MiB more RAM. One notable problem with this approach is that doing so requires more memory and thus, if the user runs a lot (in testing 4 or 5) of applications the system will become quite slow. It would be helpful to know if the activity switching performance boost provided by wholesale use of X composite is outweighed by the potential out-of-memory situations. How many activities are kids typically using? Would they prefer a system which had much better window manager navigation performance at the cost of not being able to run as many activities? What version of our software (what build) is being used for the tests? Scott suggests that you are running 649. I have tested the following procedure to run xcompmgr on that build: To install xcompmgr in the Terminal: su yum install xcompmgr # indicate 'y' when asked To run, again in the terminal: xcompmgr You won't be able to close the terminal while running the tests. You should notice an improvement in switching performance and frame redraw. The residual latency in switching appears to be caused by activity autosaving, but my testing experience with 649 is not sufficent to pass judgement on this issue. Erik On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 01:22:21PM -0400, elana langer wrote: in addition to boot and activity load time the time it takes to switch between applications is also a little frustrating - especially for kids who have worked on faster computers. I am in Mongolia for the next few weeks. There are several schools in the city that have computers so if you want any testing done (like the reaction to the boot time with 8.2) just let me know. If you send me a list of dream field feedback or something I can try to make that all happen. On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Elana, you have brought a very needed point of view to this list. Let me try to start the process of translating your experience to actionable items. On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Computers are slow - So I was in a Ger in the west part of Mongolia and I thought I would show the computer to the family that was hosting me. The husband, wife and 8 year old child huddled around the computer and pressed the on button. Instead of being delighted by the computer they waited, and waited for the computer to load. I asked them in broken monoglian to be patient but once the computer loaded they wanted to open an application and again more waiting. The 8 year old lost interest as did the mom and only the man of the house stuck around to try things. This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. First, I would like to note that you are talking about perceived slowness, not the absolute time that takes to do anything. So to solve the issues you mentioned, we need to give a sense to the user that something is happening and, when possible, how much time it will take to finish, in case reducing the time it takes is too expensive resource-wise. Second, you talk about boot time and activity launch time. Is there any other action in the laptop that causes problems because of its slowness? And third, both booting and activity launching performance are known problems and some improvements already happened in the last stable release, 8.2.0. Do you think you could do some experiments with that release and see if things have improved and if so, how much? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On 9 Oct 2008, at 19:57, Mikus Grinbergs wrote: Elana Langer wrote from Mongolia: basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write, record, etoys) in the journal it is hard for them to locate it - especially if it is more than a few days old. This is why everyone is desperate to save their projects on USB keys. My perception of the above statement is that it is an indictment of the ability of Sugar (vs. traditional computing) to be a convincing tool for teachers (and for the students those teachers influence). When users are desperate to save their projects on USB keys (something that was not a principal intent of Sugar), there is something out of whack. Yes, this is an interesting custom getting started. I've been installing and running both release and development builds on an XO B4 since January. Managed to loose my Journal content just once, and that was a development build while I was jumping between old- data store and new data-store changes. I still had all the individual files but (my best guess), some other necessary custom magic index file for the DS had been damaged. With that said, I've not knowingly lost a Journal entry in all that time. I'm tempted to think that in these reported cases, the entries are all still in the Journal, and it's the difficulty in locating them again that is the primary issue. Given that assumption, making sure both teachers and students give their work meaningful titles may make a world of difference for them. One thing I like to do is use the title to help group entries logically together. Example: Turtle lesson plan question 1 Turtle lesson plan question 2 Turtle lesson plan question 3 Turtle lesson plan question 4 ... etc Turtle lesson plan question notes Turtle lesson plan screenshots I can then switch to Journal and type 'turtle lesson plan' for all of this to appear, or 'lesson 2' just for that lesson plan etc. You could also use the tag field, and/or the description field, but they are currently hidden away in the Journal and not quick enough to get to or find. --Gary ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
This whole why would you need a USB in mongolia? conversation shows how out of touch some people on this list are with the people the project is trying to reach. People live miles and miles away from one another (in Mongolia), and it is entirely normal to travel to your friends yurt or yer or house with a horse and want to plug in your USB stick -- especially if your mesh isn't connecting due to the distance and you don't have internet because a) no one in your family has a computer b) your house keeps moving around c) it'd be too costly. Also, assuming people want to be able transfer files/objects/things between mac, *nix, windows etc and assuming the lack of a reliable network it makes perfect sense. Even if all the computers you want to do transfers between have wifi, you can't expect a kid to set it up / get the mesh working / get homenetworking working... it is just easier to use a USB stick. Case: I am a teacher, I wrote some things on my old second hand desktop PC at home. I don't have internet at home, because I don't get paid enough as a teacher and my house doesn't have landlines and wimax isn't there yet. I want to give my students this thing I wrote, next morning in class so they can follow my lecture etc. more clearly or go do reading at home. Hence, student, or teacher, I need a USB stick. Deniz p.s. Mikus I hope this helps with your question: I'm trying to think of why a kid would want to save files to a USB key. and provides a counterpoint to: I think that objects (e.g., 'files') ought to be transported between systems via network connections, rather than via USB sneakernet. What do you do in Mongolia when people move around after herds, half the houses in the capital are yurts/yers, and there are no reliable network connections? Your ought is simply not possible. p.p.s Marco, you're a stuck-up asshole :) On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 7:21 PM, Bastien [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Mikus Grinbergs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tagging isn't as much of an issue as being able to save files to a USB key easily. I'm trying to think of why a kid would want to save files to a USB key. Normally, except for off-loading objects to a school repository (a process about which I know nothing), 'files' would be kept at the XO itself, and not on removable storage devices. Maybe we should not only think in terms of purposes, but also in terms of causes: what makes children want to save files to USB stick? What I've seen is that children wants to save to a USB stick because they are told so by teachers, and teachers wants to save to a USB stick because they often lost files and are afraid of losing more... (I've not seen a school server in action, so I cannot discuss whether saving to a USB looks safer for teachers/children than saving to a USB stick.) -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
Martin, Deniz, cool it, the pair of you. No more ad hominem attacks. You each owe the other an apology. And one to Marco, too. The list is not out of touch. There are many on the list who are ignorant of conditions on the ground and of other things through no fault of their own. Now shake hands and come out arguing about facts, needs, and possibilities. On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 08:10:57PM -0400, Deniz Kural wrote: [this list is out of touch] Hence, student, or teacher, I need a USB stick. 1. Plug USB stick into XO running build from the last six months 2. Drag files from the Journal to the USB stick icon 3. Drag files from the USB stick's file list to the Journal Deniz p.p.s Marco, you're a stuck-up asshole :) And you managed to call people that actually know what the hell they're talking about out of touch. Thanks for advancing the state of knowledge on the list all the way forward to, oh, 2007. ___ Sugar mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar -- Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC! http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us! http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 2:10 AM, Deniz Kural [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: p.p.s Marco, you're a stuck-up asshole :) Nice to meet you, Deniz. Do you care to elaborate? Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 08:10:57PM -0400, Deniz Kural wrote: [this list is out of touch] Hence, student, or teacher, I need a USB stick. 1. Plug USB stick into XO running build from the last six months 2. Drag files from the Journal to the USB stick icon 3. Drag files from the USB stick's file list to the Journal Deniz p.p.s Marco, you're a stuck-up asshole :) And you managed to call people that actually know what the hell they're talking about out of touch. Thanks for advancing the state of knowledge on the list all the way forward to, oh, 2007. pgpoXl5f43HPu.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 2:36 AM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Martin, Deniz, cool it, the pair of you. No more ad hominem attacks. You each owe the other an apology. And one to Marco, too. Thank you Edward, but no need for an apology. It's the funniest thing I heard in the last week, it made me laugh for a while if nothing else :) I need to turn it into a t-shirt... Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] sugar and the digital age (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
Am 09.10.2008 um 19:10 schrieb elana langer: there is a very common feeling amongst policy makers and teacher that the XO doesn't really prepare students for the field of IT. There was a pilot project done in Mongolia that was run by the Japanese gov't where they introduced Linux to 4 towns. The students went on to study at the Mongolian IT college and apparently failed all their courses. The outcome was that these students were not prepared for real IT. Personally I feel that this is bogus and that it is the notion of IT, education and learning that need to be examined at the university level as well - however - just as I have learned when trying to reform educational methodologies there is a need to meet the norm half way (at least) and work from within - it would be nice if the OS could be designed in a similar gentler manner. Teachers, parents, gov't officials and many others are concerned that the computer doesn't conform to their expectations of a computer. Bear in mind that there was a lot promised in this computer like collaboration and mesh and the crank (everyone asks about the damn crank) that are still in development and all get lumped into the understanding of the OS. Essentially, in the minds of these people, fluency on windows, being able to do power point presentations and surf the web is what being prepared means. - I think if we could make some things a little more straightforward like saving, storing and accessing files (in the way PC users and Mac users can sort their way out in the opposite OS pretty intuitively) it would help bridge the gap to traditional expectations. Well, the XO already goes way more than half-way towards the popular notions of how computers should work. Almost all the software stack is identical to what you find on an arbitrary desktop. Demanding that it should go even more towards what is currently hip in this very immature field of IT doesn't sound too compelling if the goal is to empower future generations to use computers as malleable tools for thought, rather than as enslaving magical devices for office work. I'm glad at least some aspects of the system question the current status quo. Kudos to the Sugar developers for not giving in to the crowd's pseudo-wisdom. - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 05:36:10PM -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: Martin, Deniz, cool it, the pair of you. No more ad hominem attacks. Relax. As to my ad-hominem attacks, how is it ad-hominem to say that someone who says something incorrect is out of touch (with the truth/progress/etc.)? Or say that it's annoying me if they call others out of touch? The former is a statement of fact relevant to the propositions at hand, and the latter could at worst be an irrelevant personal opinion, but in that case the correct response is to ignore it, which I note many on the list are doing. You each owe the other an apology. For disseminating up-to-date, correct information? No. For attempting sarcasm on the internet? Very sorry. Er, whoops, there I go again. And one to Marco, too. Eh? Marco's great. Why should I apologize to him for that? The list is not out of touch. I tried to keep it in touch with actions. I doubt many will be impressed by anything else, especially mere assertions (a lady who says she's a lady, and all that). There are many on the list who are ignorant of conditions on the ground and of other things through no fault of their own. Yes, but most of them don't go calling the list out of touch. Now shake hands and come out arguing about facts, needs, and possibilities. I argued about the facts. And I'm not good at meta-discussions, so perhaps I'm missing some other point of yours. Martin pgpiqrjL6Lofh.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] sugar and the digital age (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 03:13:27AM +0200, Bert Freudenberg wrote: Am 09.10.2008 um 19:10 schrieb elana langer: Essentially, in the minds of [teachers, parents, gov't officials], fluency on windows, being able to do power point presentations and surf the web is what being prepared means. Indeed. I think at least some consideration should be given to a filesystem view leaking through to the Journal. And, or even: but, those who believe that power point presentations are an important part of being prepared are often quite convinced by power point presentations or similar superficial attempts, so significant changes to core UI might not be necessary to reassure them. Even an activity to copy files might be able to assuage their fears about the journal, and those are easy enough to make (though see other discussions about how the about-to-be-deployed journal is quite decent at the basic to-and-from-USB file transfers). Kudos to the Sugar developers for not giving in to the crowd's pseudo-wisdom. Hear, hear* - Bert - Martin * From the choir :). pgpoOb95ntEDC.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slowness (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)
I've just confirmed activity switching performance is improved by using xcompmgr. Environment: XO C2 with build 763 (on a random laptop), with Firefox activity, Terminal activity and Journal activity all active, with Firefox displaying a reasonably complex web page, with a copy of /usr/bin/xcompmgr from a nearby Debian system. Method: without and with xcompmgr running, use Alt/Tab to switch between the three activities (Journal, Firefox, Terminal), taking note of the rate at which it can be completed over 30 seconds, keeping the Alt key depressed to avoid frame redraw. Results: without xcompmgr, ten (10) cycles. with xcompmgr, fifteen (15) cycles. There's probably a more robust method to test this, but the degree of the improvement was significant. I didn't measure the memory impact. -- James Cameronmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Nia Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, MArco. I still think talking to Erik like that isn't very nice either:) Nia, this kind of flames are customary in a technical mailing list and I don't really think Erik should take personal offence about them. If you go back in the archives you will see way more offensive things said about my and the other Sugar developers work. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Nia Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, MArco. I still think talking to Erik like that isn't very nice either:) Nia, this kind of flames are customary in a technical mailing list and I don't really think Erik should take personal offence about them. If you go back in the archives you will see way more offensive things said about my and the other Sugar developers work. Btw I went back and re-read my statement... There is actually nothing offensive or flaming in it Uninformed simply means that Erik assertions are not based on factual data (which I suggested him to acquire doing profiling work). Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
Hi Marco, That was a really nice welcome. I work with Elana and the learning team here at OLPC and one thing we are trying to do is increase communications between our group and the technical side of the house. It seems the best way to communicate this information from the field is to use the mailing list that reaches the people creating the technology. Perhaps I am out of the loop but all of the people who have chimed in here are active participants in this project and are just as devoted and dedicated as you and I. To suggest they are uninformed seems a little harsh. If you have better suggestions as to how we should communicate the issues we find in the field and work toward fixing them, please let me know. Thanks, Nia Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/07/08 12:08 PM To Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED], Reuben K. Caron [EMAIL PROTECTED], Julia Reynolds [EMAIL PROTECTED], Tyler Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], Nia Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED], devel@lists.laptop.org Subject Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How are we going to rectify the general slowness of our user interface? It may not be enough to work on the performance problem from within the existing framework. How will we know if this is the case? We will spend more time profiling and understanding the system and less in uninformed mailing list discussions. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
Thanks, MArco. I still think talking to Erik like that isn't very nice either:) Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/08/08 02:17 PM To Nia Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc devel@lists.laptop.org, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED], Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED], Julia Reynolds [EMAIL PROTECTED], Reuben K. Caron [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], Tyler Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 8:08 PM, Nia Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Marco, That was a really nice welcome. I work with Elana and the learning team here at OLPC and one thing we are trying to do is increase communications between our group and the technical side of the house. It seems the best way to communicate this information from the field is to use the mailing list that reaches the people creating the technology. Perhaps I am out of the loop but all of the people who have chimed in here are active participants in this project and are just as devoted and dedicated as you and I. To suggest they are uninformed seems a little harsh. If you have better suggestions as to how we should communicate the issues we find in the field and work toward fixing them, please let me know. Hello Nia, Huh! No, sorry, this is totally a misunderstanding. I was not referring to Elana feedback at all with that phrase. It was *exclusively* a technical remark to Erik approach to performance work. I appreciate Elana feedback and I highly value it. Keep it coming please :) My apologies for the misunderstanding, I hope this clarify. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
oh well, maybe it was just where we newbies entered the conversations - if that's the way you all work then fine. My main concern is that the info from the field gets to the right people. Best, Nia Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/08/08 02:33 PM To Nia Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc devel@lists.laptop.org, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED], Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED], Julia Reynolds [EMAIL PROTECTED], Reuben K. Caron [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], Tyler Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Nia Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, MArco. I still think talking to Erik like that isn't very nice either:) Nia, this kind of flames are customary in a technical mailing list and I don't really think Erik should take personal offence about them. If you go back in the archives you will see way more offensive things said about my and the other Sugar developers work. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:17 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: mikus wrote: - First off, every Activity has a 'Name Field' in its top menu. When running any Activity, the user should enter there a short Title to identify the resulting Journal entry from all others. - Then, upon leaving that Activity, the user should reflect on what was done, and update the corresponding Journal entry to make it easier to find later. This is particularly desirable if the Title is not meaningful enough by itself for later locating what the user is looking for: in a traditional system, when a user saves their work, they are pretty much forced to enter the (hopefully) useful name by which that work will be retrieved. if searching is the fundamental retrieval mechanism (which i think is fine), then my first reaction to mikus' advice is that activities and/or sugar should be more emphatic about asking for the descriptive information which be useful later. i.e., adding search tags shouldn't be an optional extra step, but a usual step which must be explicitly skipped by the user. Indeed. I had brought this issue up in the past thinking it might happen for 8.2, but it's definitely on the plate for 9.1. I have a few ideas about how we can make this system better, and encourage names and tags, without becoming a hassle. We also, down the road, have ideas about how to better expose the tagging system, and perhaps even make it fun, so that describing things becomes a natural part of the interface. Kids learn to speak by describing things around them; we should be able to tap into this to both help them learn and make the Journal a useful and searchable space. - Eben paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Sugar mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:31 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am concerned that focusing on such systems is breaking simple use cases and causing problems for users in the field. I believe that this functionality is important, but do not agree that it should comprise the base layer of data access on a real-world system. Search is extremely powerful, but technically complicated to implement, and equivalently complex to learn how to use. Remember that almost all of us involved in this discussion have been using search on the web for at least the past decade, and while we now understand it as an intuitive process I contend this is not the case for new users. (I can remember, but not locate, at least one study which noted that uninitated users used search engines in extremely strange ways, for instance, running all their search terms together because it mirrored the typical format of DNS names.) Fully qualified names (file names) are simple. They are misused to the extent that users give things strange or confusing names. But, the names are qualified and the users can encounter their work simply by remembering most components of the name. The concept is straightforward: given this key I will always find the data I need, and only that data. No one said that search would replace names. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 06:05:41PM +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote: On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How are we going to rectify the general slowness of our user interface? It may not be enough to work on the performance problem from within the existing framework. How will we know if this is the case? We will spend more time profiling and understanding the system and less in uninformed mailing list discussions. My point is that the easiest way to improve the user-perceived performance of the system is probably to kill features. Profiling is not going to help us see this. It is merely going to help us compare one implementation of the framework to another. I am suggesting that we may need to think outside the existing box to resolve the issues described by Elana, and for this I believe that discussion is quite important. Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my mind the fundamental problem is that users aren't required to fully qualify names for their work. Doing so seems to lie outside of one of the core points of Sugar's design (There are no files, folders, or applications. -- http://sugarlabs.org/go/Main_Page). Is it conceivable that we could change this feature of the system in future releases to clarify data management on Sugar-running XOs? You keep repeating this and it makes no sense. As Eben said we need to encourage people to tag and name things. Saying that it's outside the Sugar philosophy is nonsense. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my mind the fundamental problem is that users aren't required to fully qualify names for their work. Doing so seems to lie outside of one of the core points of Sugar's design (There are no files, folders, or applications. -- http://sugarlabs.org/go/Main_Page). Is it conceivable that we could change this feature of the system in future releases to clarify data management on Sugar-running XOs? You keep repeating this and it makes no sense. As Eben said we need to encourage people to tag and name things. Saying that it's outside the Sugar philosophy is nonsense. I think we could have two modes: the one Sugar currently uses, where no specific name is required to store a journal entry, and one in which the user is required to name the journal entry when the activity is storing it for the first time. For example, in the first mode Atl-1 would do a screenshot as it does right now. In the second mode Alt-1 would bring up a window querying for the name of the screenshot. Whether users are encouraged or not to actually name and tags things on the XO can be influence by such UI features - no? -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 6:12 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 06:05:41PM +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote: On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How are we going to rectify the general slowness of our user interface? It may not be enough to work on the performance problem from within the existing framework. How will we know if this is the case? We will spend more time profiling and understanding the system and less in uninformed mailing list discussions. My point is that the easiest way to improve the user-perceived performance of the system is probably to kill features. Profiling is not going to help us see this. It is merely going to help us compare one implementation of the framework to another. No. Profiling is going to help you understand *what* is slow in the system and what you need to drop or fix. Right now you are just doing uninformed guesses, which increase the confusion and doesn't get us anywhere near to solve Elana problems. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 11:20:04AM -0400, elana langer wrote: Hey Tech Community- I just wanted to give y'all some feedback from my experience in Mongolia. Feel free to contact me with any questions. Please excuse my lay language - it's how i roll. 1) Computers are slow - So I was in a Ger in the west part of Mongolia and I thought I would show the computer to the family that was hosting me. The husband, wife and 8 year old child huddled around the computer and pressed the on button. Instead of being delighted by the computer they waited, and waited for the computer to load. I asked them in broken monoglian to be patient but once the computer loaded they wanted to open an application and again more waiting. The 8 year old lost interest as did the mom and only the man of the house stuck around to try things. This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. I think this is very interesting, as I have often heard nearly the opposite argument--- that because the XO is often a child's first computer their standards for its responsiveness will be as low as we'd like them to be. Where have you heard this? If you have heard it from any Sugar developer, please cite. If it was a different person, why is this opinion relevant here? If you heard this so often as you say, you must be able to cite sources. What we have forgotten is that slow technology is, to the uninitiated, indistinguishable from broken technology. I think you meant no feedback when you wrote slow. Eben has acknowledged several times that we lack on this aspect and has contributed several patches to improve it. Would be very good if you could devote as well some of your time to this end. I'm sure that Eben will kindly direct you to places where more feedback is needed. How are we going to rectify the general slowness of our user interface? It may not be enough to work on the performance problem from within the existing framework. How will we know if this is the case? First you need to understand why things are slow, then you can start talking about fixing it. If you start talking before that, then you waste other peoples' time. 2) Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. It drives teachers and students crazy. They make something in an application, take some pictures or write something and then have to go through a really tough process to find it and save it on an external drive. My impression is that the journal design stems from a belief that we have an opportunity to completely redesign human-computer interaction in terms of data storage. Unfortunately this is simply not the case. Teachers have experience with existing systems. No, the journal design stems from the wish to provide a way to present the users' work in a better way than existing systems. I don't really understand why the human being must stick to the Windows way of organizing files until the sun explodes. Are you completely sure we cannot improve it? Everybody can understand that sticking to what people already know has some value, but we already know many of the problems that arise from the traditional file managers. These issues are well exposed in this presentation from Federico Mena Quintero: http://www.gnome.org/~federico/news-2008-07.html#document-centric-gnome When one of the founders of the most widely used open source desktop takes the time to expose these flaws and code a prototype that looks a lot like our journal, I think we deserve to be treated as something better than a crazy bunch that just want kids to use the strange stuff they dreamed of. There are a set of usability problems with the traditional file managers and we thought that it was important for OLPC's goals to try to address them. We haven't had the resources we would have liked (not even a single person working full time on DataStore+Journal) but I think that we have seen that the Journal as envisioned provided enough to our users such that it's worth to keep working towards this end. Of course, would be easier for us to just say a folder-based file manager is all our users deserve, but I don't think we would be being honest with our goals. If they have any computing experience (and let us hope they do if they are using computers in the classroom!), they have worked with a hierarchical data management system which required them to give fully qualified names to their work. In breaking with this paradigm we rob them of this valuable expertise and frustrate their work with our system. As I said
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
Hey Gang - Please excuse my absence from this discussion - I think it's really cool how passionate you all are about what you are building. It's really obvious that you all care about what you are doing - I know your work will inspire a generation of kids in developing countries to be this excited about stuff they work on. A couple of quick points on this discussion. Again, please forgive my totally uninformed techtalk. I am only writing on behalf of the users experience here. I am sure that many kids and teachers around the world are loving the OS as it is. I am just trying to give some feedback that I hope will help y'all. a) In response to the question about the Mesh - there are a whole bunch of issues that come up. -- to use acoustic measure only two computers can be on at a time so it makes the tool almost impossible to use in a class or workshop without explaining that the mesh is a work in progress and doesn't work as well as it should. -- the sharing/collaborating tool shuts down with too many computers on the same channel at the same time. I'll check my bug reports/notes and look for the other specific issues. Tyler might be able to fill y'all in on this issue. He was in Mongolia with me and saw a lot of these issues first hand - maybe he can chime in on a few details. b) Tagging isn't as much of an issue as being able to save files to a USB key easily. Folks learn how to tag but there are a bunch of problems - if the subject is in cyrillic they can't open the files. (it's been reported) -also there is usually someone that has used a computer before and they aren't used to tagging and trying to save their files traditionally and totally frustrated by the experience. more by teachers than kids 'cause kids play like they would in a sandbox - they make a big ol' mess and make a new one the next day. It will change when they have assignments for work or things they develop over time. c) I think the idea to make tagging more mandatory/obvious would help locate things on the XO itself more easily. d) Although I think building a tagging tool around kids natural ways of thinking is really exciting, most teachers/schools/gov'ts are really concerned that this OS isn't preparing kids for the digital age properly. Most people feel it is important the computer meet some simple expectations that are common and understandable practices on any OS - like having files that can be saved and accessed in a simple place for example. I think that covers most of the issues/questions. Just a note -- I'll be working with the pilot schools here for the next 2 weeks so if you want things tested here let me know. One thing I plan to do is have all the computers in a school with 3 access points and connectivity try to get online at the same time. It's around 350- 400 kids. I'll let you know how that goes. el. On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 7:57 PM, Ricardo Carrano [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 4) Mesh problems - my sense is that you are all pretty aware of those issues. I think we should start looking into software-level mesh protocols using the libertas thin firmware. This is not a solution to this problem, but it will at least move us to a place where we can have collaborative work on the base layer of our mesh networking stack. There is a lot of totally different issues that are generally described as mesh problems. And every time we are not precise we may fail to address them or even taking measures that will actually make things worse. Please note that even the idea of changing the mesh protocols may be interpreted in many ways. One should argue, for instance, that we should use a L3 routing protocol instead of our L2 mesh implementation or suggest that MDNS is not an efficient way to transport collaboration data, or even complain that some activities do not scale to many users because there is no reliability, just to name a few examples (that, btw are not my ideas, but just ideas we hear now and then). So, I would suggest that we _may be not_ aware of those issues because they are put in a too generic way. Depending on the problems we are facing, the libertas thin firmware won't help us at all and changing routing mechanisms may be completely orthogonal. It is important to understand exactly what are these mesh issues. Elana, if you don't mind adding a little more detail to item 4, I think that would be beneficial. Thank you! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
Fully qualified names (file names) are simple. They are misused to the extent that users give things strange or confusing names. But, the names are qualified and the users can encounter their work simply by remembering most components of the name. The concept is straightforward: given this key I will always find the data I need, and only that data. There is nothing to prevent the user from entering his fully qualified name components as space-separated keywords in the tag field for the journal entry. Then the Journal search function (I just tried it on 8.2) will show only those entries whose keywords match all strings entered in the Journal search box. [The principal problem is that the current implementation does not enforce keyword order, nor keyword length - if an entry tagged Ind Zip matches, so will an entry tagged Zipfiles Index.] mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
Tagging isn't as much of an issue as being able to save files to a USB key easily. I'm trying to think of why a kid would want to save files to a USB key. Normally, except for off-loading objects to a school repository (a process about which I know nothing), 'files' would be kept at the XO itself, and not on removable storage devices. - If the purpose is to later load the objects from the USB key to an XO, I believe the mechanism is supposed to be 'drag-and-drop'. [I'm not a Journal user myself, so I don't have much experience.] In the source XO, have Journal show the XO datastore content, and drag the appropriate Journal entry to the USB-icon at the bottom edge of the Journal screen. In the destination XO, have Journal show the content of the USB key, and drag the appropriate entry to the XO-Journal-icon at the bottom left of the Journal screen. - If the purpose is to create something like an installation USB key, that will usually be done with CLI commands, and will require additional skills. - If the purpose is to transfer, via USB, an XO datastore item (e.g., file) to a non-Sugar system, I don't know whether that is currently supported by Sugar. Some Sugar users may have developed manual procedures or helper scripts to perform this task - I'm not able to provide citations to help you. I think that objects (e.g., 'files') ought to be transported between systems via network connections, rather than via USB sneakernet. I myself have settled upon the CLI command 'rsync' to transfer non-datastore files to another XO, and upon 'ftp' to transfer non-datastore files to a non-Sugar system. [People have told me there are other facilities available besides 'ftp' - but that is what I am familiar with, and have long been using for all the systems on my home LAN.] mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
notes from the field - Mongolia
Hey Tech Community- I just wanted to give y'all some feedback from my experience in Mongolia. Feel free to contact me with any questions. Please excuse my lay language - it's how i roll. 1) Computers are slow - So I was in a Ger in the west part of Mongolia and I thought I would show the computer to the family that was hosting me. The husband, wife and 8 year old child huddled around the computer and pressed the on button. Instead of being delighted by the computer they waited, and waited for the computer to load. I asked them in broken monoglian to be patient but once the computer loaded they wanted to open an application and again more waiting. The 8 year old lost interest as did the mom and only the man of the house stuck around to try things. This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. 2) Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. It drives teachers and students crazy. They make something in an application, take some pictures or write something and then have to go through a really tough process to find it and save it on an external drive. 3) Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes. 4) Mesh problems - my sense is that you are all pretty aware of those issues. There are a bunch of bugs that I reported through reuben which include the problems with applications once they have been translated into cyrillic. These are some of the main foundational issues that folks are having. Let me know if you have questions. elana ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
Disclaimer: these are my personal opinions A feeling I have had all along is that it is not easy for a user to develop a sense of how to use my machine effectively. For instance, the wiki seems to have so much information that the visitor can get overwhelmed. I've tried to help by putting some pieces of advice into the Sugar FLOSSmanual - but I'm not sure of how to open the eyes of new users to the possibilities of what I could use this tool for. Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes. A severely underappreciated capability is Journal 'Search'. At least with 8.2, the user can add information to the Journal entries to help find them later: - First off, every Activity has a 'Name Field' in its top menu. When running any Activity, the user should enter there a short Title to identify the resulting Journal entry from all others. - Then, upon leaving that Activity, the user should reflect on what was done, and update the corresponding Journal entry to make it easier to find later. This is particularly desirable if the Title is not meaningful enough by itself for later locating what the user is looking for: - the 'Entry Name' can be edited (if not adequately identified earlier) to distinguish this Journal entry. - the 'Description Field' in the 'Detail View' for the entry can be used for a concise description of what was done, to later remind the user of what this entry is about. - the 'Tag Field' in the 'Detail View' for the entry can be used to enter multiple Subject Headings to help find this entry later. For example, if the entry is about Triceratops, enter 'Dinosaurs' as a more general subject to find this Journal entry by. The 'Search Box' in the Journal top menu will match the keywords the user enters there against the content of these three fields. By learning what to enter into these fields, the user can find in the Journal what he is looking for. Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. Here we come against initial expectations. The whole concept of Sugar is that the user doesn't need to explicitly save files. They are automatically kept in the Sugar datastore, and are accessed through the Journal interface. [In other words: Don't use the traditional hierarchy of directories to locate the saved file -- instead do characterize the object with a description, and use an intelligent search to locate it.] If the complaint is that users can't retrieve files using traditional cyberspace procedures - then learning how to make use of the 'Search Box' in Journal should help. [Admittedly, expanded support for metadata searching by the Journal interface has been deferred to a future implementation.] mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia
mikus wrote: - First off, every Activity has a 'Name Field' in its top menu. When running any Activity, the user should enter there a short Title to identify the resulting Journal entry from all others. - Then, upon leaving that Activity, the user should reflect on what was done, and update the corresponding Journal entry to make it easier to find later. This is particularly desirable if the Title is not meaningful enough by itself for later locating what the user is looking for: in a traditional system, when a user saves their work, they are pretty much forced to enter the (hopefully) useful name by which that work will be retrieved. if searching is the fundamental retrieval mechanism (which i think is fine), then my first reaction to mikus' advice is that activities and/or sugar should be more emphatic about asking for the descriptive information which be useful later. i.e., adding search tags shouldn't be an optional extra step, but a usual step which must be explicitly skipped by the user. paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
4) Mesh problems - my sense is that you are all pretty aware of those issues. I think we should start looking into software-level mesh protocols using the libertas thin firmware. This is not a solution to this problem, but it will at least move us to a place where we can have collaborative work on the base layer of our mesh networking stack. There is a lot of totally different issues that are generally described as mesh problems. And every time we are not precise we may fail to address them or even taking measures that will actually make things worse. Please note that even the idea of changing the mesh protocols may be interpreted in many ways. One should argue, for instance, that we should use a L3 routing protocol instead of our L2 mesh implementation or suggest that MDNS is not an efficient way to transport collaboration data, or even complain that some activities do not scale to many users because there is no reliability, just to name a few examples (that, btw are not my ideas, but just ideas we hear now and then). So, I would suggest that we _may be not_ aware of those issues because they are put in a too generic way. Depending on the problems we are facing, the libertas thin firmware won't help us at all and changing routing mechanisms may be completely orthogonal. It is important to understand exactly what are these mesh issues. Elana, if you don't mind adding a little more detail to item 4, I think that would be beneficial. Thank you! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
Here we come against initial expectations. The whole concept of Sugar is that the user doesn't need to explicitly save files. They are automatically kept in the Sugar datastore, and are accessed through the Journal interface. [In other words: Don't use the traditional hierarchy of directories to locate the saved file -- instead do characterize the object with a description, and use an intelligent search to locate it.] Is there a wiki page that describes things like this? I'm looking for something primarily aimed at people who are already familiar with computers and probably have many inappropriate initial expectations. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
Hi Elena, I agree with your points about the way that children and professors can perceive the XO and Sugar..and i agree that this issues are of capital importance and the technical community is aware of those problems. But i have to report an experience made in the field also, specifically in Colombia.. in a nearby economically depressed zone called Soacha in an neighborhood called altos de Cazuca. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Colombia/Altos_Cazuca We had a series of workshops, and the same problems you listed before showed up. But the conclusion of the experience was favorable in the sense that both parents and children were continuously interested by the XO, they never lost focus on it. and they were very thankful to have the opportunity to play with a computerso although the XO is not a perfect or either completed tool is more than good compared to nothing. On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:20 AM, elana langer [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Hey Tech Community- I just wanted to give y'all some feedback from my experience in Mongolia. Feel free to contact me with any questions. Please excuse my lay language - it's how i roll. 1) Computers are slow - So I was in a Ger in the west part of Mongolia and I thought I would show the computer to the family that was hosting me. The husband, wife and 8 year old child huddled around the computer and pressed the on button. Instead of being delighted by the computer they waited, and waited for the computer to load. I asked them in broken monoglian to be patient but once the computer loaded they wanted to open an application and again more waiting. The 8 year old lost interest as did the mom and only the man of the house stuck around to try things. This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. 2) Can't save files - this should probably be the first item on my list. It drives teachers and students crazy. They make something in an application, take some pictures or write something and then have to go through a really tough process to find it and save it on an external drive. 3) Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes. 4) Mesh problems - my sense is that you are all pretty aware of those issues. There are a bunch of bugs that I reported through reuben which include the problems with applications once they have been translated into cyrillic. These are some of the main foundational issues that folks are having. Let me know if you have questions. elana ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Rafael Ortiz ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: notes from the field - Mongolia
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 11:20:04AM -0400, elana langer wrote: This is not a unique experience. This is a culture that lives close to the land. Action- reaction. No one is used to waiting for an computer to load or a bagel to toast for that matter. (of course cooking takes time but they can watch as it changes form not just an unmoving screen) In the city the experience is worse. Kids used to PCs quickly grow impatient and leave the XO to find other faster computers. I think this is very interesting, as I have often heard nearly the opposite argument--- that because the XO is often a child's first computer their standards for its responsiveness will be as low as we'd like them to be. This is not a compelling argument. And we'd *like* their standards for responsiveness to be quite high. In my mind the fundamental problem is that users aren't required to fully qualify names for their work. That's part of it. Within the current paradigm, if one had to produce fully qualified file and project names, and were reminded of this and encouraged to do it at appropriate times in activity engagement, it would make [re]discovery much easier. Thank you very much for your feedback and hard work! Ditto. SJ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
