El Mon, 12-07-2010 a las 22:13 -0400, C. Scott Ananian escribió: > Are iPad-class devices (such as the XO-3) or touchscreen devices (such > as the XO-1.75) counted as "mobile devices"? > > There will shortly be a large number of iPad-style devices on the > market. The hackable ones will probably be running some version of > Android (which may or may not mean that a "real" linux distro can be > installed).
(I hope my next statement won't result in a flame-war on hardware) My sense is that iPad-like devices with no physical keyboard may be good for reading books and watching videos, not so good for creating content. Hence, they may not support well the learn-by-doing philosophy that Sugar promotes. Perhaps advancements in touch screen technology, virtual keyboard design and hand-writing recognition will change my mind one day. Presently, the iPad is designed as an accessory for a real computer, and tablets capable of fully replacing a computer are in fact regular laptops with a display that can be rotated 360 degrees, like the XO-1. BTW: who's using the XO-1 in tablet mode? Believe it or not, in 3 years I have *never* seen anyone (adult or child) using it this way. Maybe a touch screen would change everything? The Classmate 3 has a touchscreen. Is it being used in tablet mode? > Are developers using Sugar as their day-to-day development > environment yet? Certainly not me... I'm not even sure it will ever happen. Even developers of Gnome and KDE are probably using the shell as their main work environment for writing code and managing files. Many also use the shell to read email and chat, thus covering over 90% of their computing time. However, I've seen many teachers using Sugar. Not just Browse. They also use Write and Record. Given a choice, many teachers started using Gnome. Some of them messed up their systems, just like children. > > In the past, we've been criticized for insufficient transparency. Does > > anyone still have a problem with this? > > "Open to critique" isn't quite the same as "responsive to critique". > > From an outside perspective, it seems that frequently SugarLabs is > just not listening to people who offer contrary opinions. This is > better than flaming them, but maybe not as good as it could be. > > For an end-of-year report, I'd like to see instances enumerated where > SugarLabs actually internalized some outside critique and responded in > a positive way -- some concrete change made to the UI, or Sugar, or to > process. That would be more convincing that simply stating, "we are > now open to critique". I think you're mostly correct, but this is endemic to how a community works. One can't expect Sugar Labs to react to criticism like a business would (would it?). The most effective way to influence a community is becoming part of it and leading the change from the inside. Aleksey and Sebastian are excellent examples of people who arrived with their own ideas and made Sugar Labs to develop them. Sadly, it doesn't seem to work so well for non-technical folks. I can't think of one good example of an educator or a businessman who came to our community with a good proposal and could make it happen successfully within Sugar Labs. This may explain why we don't have that many educators in our community :-( [Evangeline's portfolio is one notable exception. Her idea was quickly implemented by Walter in Turtle Art. Perhaps it's not as easy to use as she had envisioned, but it's nevertheless a powerful idea.] > > We're definitely intimidating to non-technical people. At least, this is > > what I sensed at the Realness Summit. OLE also seems to be doing a > > better job at connecting with educators. I'm not completely sure what > > corrective actions should be. We might need to do some work on the wiki, > > maybe add web forums, which non-geeks tend to prefer... > > I suspect that the answer to this problem does not involve installing > additional software. Installing software is the only thing I'm good at, so this is what I propose :-) Seriously, you're probably correct. Engaging the educators in our community should be our highest priority today, but I have no idea where to start from. The Realness Summit [1] was quite a positive experience for me. Some real educators came and offered their viewpoint. There was actually a whole spectrum of viewpoints, ranging from the purely constructionist to the purely instructionist. Unbelievably, the atmosphere remained clam and productive. At the end of the meeting, participants were eager to form some kind of un-organization to keep exchanging experience and ideas on education technologies and one-to-one computing. If the educators will not come to Sugar Labs, perhaps Sugar Labs could go where the educators already are. [1] http://realness.org/ -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep