Re: Datastore/Journal + [IAEP] Coloring books on the XO?
On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 2:57 AM, Brian Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is One More Thing that would be a lot simpler and extensible with > a more flexible journal/datastore (meaning storing Pictures, Audio, > Video, Data [csv files], etc in a way that can be shared between > activities). It seems to my uninformed self that, presently, the > activities are constraining the output. (Disclaimer: I haven't gotten > that deep into journal/datastore programming yet). I copy Eben... a > couple sentences on where thought on this is headed? (there's also a > video I took of discussion this... I'll forward when I find it) This is one of the goals behind the new Journal/DS. Right now, entries are stored, more or less, as blobs which contain the "object" (file) and the "state" (metadata). (This is exacerbated by the fact that we don't currently preserve the metadata across reboots, which encourages developers to incorporate it into their entry blobs) We realized rather quickly that, while this makes things nice while working within a given activity stream, it does indeed limit the ability to use stuff from one activity in another activity, or to interact with the outside world. In the new Journal, the object and the metadata will be kept distinctly separate, so that the .png file that is "My Painting" is pure and clean, regardless of my currently selected tool, color, zoom level, and other info about the particular instance of Paint I created it in. The revised import dialog (great work on this so far, Tomeu (and Simon)!) will make it really easy for activities to build buttons which pull in object of various types directly into their activities. The vision for the clipboard also includes text and image previews, custom icons, setting of titles (so the photo of a shark I clipped from wikipedia is titled "shark.png" instead of "image clipping"), etc. This richer system, along with better support for drag'n'drop both in the OS and in all activities, should help to make Sugar a richer environment for sharing objects. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Datastore/Journal + [IAEP] Coloring books on the XO?
On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Brian Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This is One More Thing that would be a lot simpler and extensible with > a more flexible journal/datastore (meaning storing Pictures, Audio, > Video, Data [csv files], etc in a way that can be shared between > activities). It seems to my uninformed self that, presently, the > activities are constraining the output. (Disclaimer: I haven't gotten > that deep into journal/datastore programming yet). I copy Eben... a > couple sentences on where thought on this is headed? (there's also a > video I took of discussion this... I'll forward when I find it) I'm not sure how the datastore design could be modified to make this easier, but will be happy to hear about it. Right now, it's a matter of how the activity author decides to store activity data in the journal. On one side is Record, that creates one entry per media object plus one entry that represents the activity state (so it can be resumed later as a whole). The user can open individual images, sounds, etc in activities that understand them and can also be drag and dropped on already running activities. On the other side is Write, that stores its data in ODF format, so images are zipped along the rest of the data inside one only entry. Any activity that wants to use those images directly from the journal will need to know the format in which they are layed out inside the zip file. While this isn't the ideal situation for data sharing between activities via the journal, media objects can also be shared via the clipboard, but that requires that you have the required activity installed and running. HTH, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Datastore/Journal + [IAEP] Coloring books on the XO?
On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Seth Woodworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How do you feel about providing coloring books like activities in sugar? > I've found material from the American Red Cross on Disaster Preparedness in > around 20 languages[1]. I feel that it would be fairly trivial work to > create a template for children to color in in another activity (hopefully > the wonderful painting activity from ICDL). Is this work worth doing? Simple to do, and it seems the appeal is that it would make getting used to the touchpad/whatever-input-method-works-in-this-imaginary-scenario a palatable process for veryveryyoungkids while displaying useful information. I say get it done and make it available--but consider simply adding image overlay capability to Colors[1]. It can already overlay a snapshot from the video camera, so holding up any picture/piece of nature/drawing to the camera can accomplish a similar (and more open ended) feat. This is One More Thing that would be a lot simpler and extensible with a more flexible journal/datastore (meaning storing Pictures, Audio, Video, Data [csv files], etc in a way that can be shared between activities). It seems to my uninformed self that, presently, the activities are constraining the output. (Disclaimer: I haven't gotten that deep into journal/datastore programming yet). I copy Eben... a couple sentences on where thought on this is headed? (there's also a video I took of discussion this... I'll forward when I find it) > Is a coloring book an effective method of distributing information in a > digital realm? One interpretation is that it is a passive way of learning to fill in shapes that have been handed to the child (and those shapes may be artfully arranged to display informative pictures like in comic books). > Is it a constructionist method or how could it be made one? Disclaimer: I have read little on constructionism. In fact, I'm not positive that I used the word constructionism properly in that last sentence. Consider the utility of coloring books. It is to "provide a colorless guide to draw with a colored medium in and around". (1) The child has a choice of color for each segment. (unless there are letters like R, G, etc in the segments) (2) The child may choose (/struggle) to which extent they color "inside the lines" Yes, in (1), there is some freedom (the number of segments ^ the number of colors), but it is constrained. How can we take the benefits of coloring books and make them a tool... a hammer. Make it versatile -- so the child can choose what to over/underlay on their painting. They can choose a graph they made earlier that day. Or a grid for drafting a design of their house. Or some Red Cross pamphlets on the school server. Or a picture of a cat they found on Google Images (find edges, anyone?). That's utility. That's something I'd like to have to play with right now. :) Cheers, night, Brian > > Seth > > [1] http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/0,1082,0_504_,00.html > > ___ > Its.an.education.project mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project > > ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
