Re: [IAEP] [fonc] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell)

[Jameson Quinn]

2012/3/14 C. Scott Ananian 

> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
>> If you're going to base it on Javascript, at least make it
>> Coffeescript-like. I also agree that some basic parallelism primitives
>> would be great; it is probably possible to build these into a
>> Coffeescript-like dialect using JS under the hood (though they'd probably
>> optimize even better if you could implement them natively instead of in
>> JS).
>
>
> I think you are underestimating the value of using a standard
> widely-deployed language.  I love languages as much as the next guy---but
> our previous learning environment (Sugar) has had incredible difficulty
> getting local support outside the US because it is written in *Python*.
>  Python is "not a commercially viable language" (not my words) and you
> can't even take university classes in Python in many countries (say,
> Uruguay) because there is no company behind it and no one who will give you
> a "certificate" for having learned it.
>

Anyone who can write JS can learn to write CS in 15 minutes, and vice
versa. But CS is a friendlier syntax.

I understand that that's not good enough. But if JS and CS were fully
automatically intraconvertible, a goal which I think is not impossible, I
think it would be.

>
> This is very sad, but the true state of affairs.
>
> JavaScript is not perfect, but at heart it is a functional object-oriented
> language which is pretty darn close to Good Enough.  There are huge
> benefits to using a language which is supported by training materials all
> over the web, university systems outside the US, etc, etc.
>
> I am open to *very* slight extensions to JavaScript -- OMeta/JS and
> quasiquote might squeeze in -- but they have to be weighed against their
> costs.  Subsets are even more problematic -- once you start subsetting,
> then you are throwing away compatibility with all the wealth of JavaScript
> libraries out there, in addition to confusing potential contributors who
> are trying to type in examples they found in some book.
>--scott
>
> --
>   ( http://cscott.net )
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] [fonc] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell)

[Jameson Quinn]

If you're going to base it on Javascript, at least make it
Coffeescript-like. I also agree that some basic parallelism primitives
would be great; it is probably possible to build these into a
Coffeescript-like dialect using JS under the hood (though they'd probably
optimize even better if you could implement them natively instead of in
JS).

2012/3/14 Alan Kay 

> Hi Scott --
>
> 1. I will see if I can get one of these scanned for you. Moore tended to
> publish in journals and there is very little of his stuff available on line.
>
> 2.a. "if (a no hint of the former being tweaked for decades to make it easier to read.
>
> Several experiments from the past cast doubt on the rest of the idea. At
> Disney we did a variety of "code display" generators to see what kinds of
> transformations we could do to the underlying Smalltalk (including
> syntactic) to make it something that could be subsetted as a "growable path
> from Etoys".
>
> We got some good results from this (and this is what I'd do with
> Javascript in both directions -- Alex Warth's OMeta is in Javascript and is
> quite complete and could do this).
>
> However, the showstopper was all the parentheses that had to be rendered
> in tiles. Mike Travers at MIT had done one of the first tile based editors
> for a version of Lisp that he used, and this was even worse.
>
> More recently, Jens Moenig (who did SNAP) also did a direct renderer and
> editor for Squeak Smalltalk (this can be tried out) and it really seemed to
> be much too cluttered.
>
> One argument for some of this, is "well, teach the kids a subset that
> doesn't use so many parens ...". This could be a solution.
>
> However, in the end, I don't think Javascript semantics is particularly
> good for kids. For example, one of features of Etoys that turned out to be
> very powerful for children and other Etoy programmers is the easy/trivial
> parallel methods execution. And there are others in Etoys and yet others in
> Scractch that are non-standard in regular programming languages but are
> very powerful for children (and some of them are better than standard CS
> language ideas).
>
> I'm encouraging you to do something better (that would be ideal). Or at
> least as workable. Giving kids less just because that's what an existing
> language for adults has is not a good tactic.
>
> 2.c. Ditto 2.a. above
>
> 2.d. Ditto above above
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
>
>
>   --
> *From:* C. Scott Ananian 
> *To:* Alan Kay 
> *Cc:* IAEP SugarLabs ; Fundamentals of New
> Computing ; Viewpoints Research 
> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 14, 2012 10:25 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] [fonc] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell)
>
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 12:54 PM, Alan Kay  wrote:
>
> The many papers from this work greatly influenced the thinking about
> personal computing at Xerox PARC in the 70s. Here are a couple:
>
> -- O. K. Moore, Autotelic Responsive Environments and Exceptional
> Children, Experience, Structure and Adaptabilty (ed. Harvey), Springer, 1966
> -- Anderson and Moore, Autotelic Folk Models, Sociological Quarterly, 1959
>
>
> Thank you for these references.  I will chase them down and learn as much
> as I can.
>
>
> 2. Separating out some of the programming ideas here:
>
> a. Simplest one is that the most important users of this system are the
> children, so it would be a better idea to make the tile scripting look as
> easy for them as possible. I don't agree with the rationalization in the
> paper about "preserving the code reading skills of existing programmers".
>
>
> I probably need to clarify the reasoning in the paper for this point.
>
> "Traditional" text-based programming languages have been tweaked over
> decades to be easy to read -- for both small examples and large systems.
>  It's somewhat of a heresy, but I thought it would be interesting to
> explore a tile-based system that *didn't* throw away the traditional text
> structure, and tried simply to make the structure of the traditional text
> easier to visualize and manipulate.
>
> So it's not really "skills of existing programmers" I'm interested in -- I
> should reword that.  It's that I feel we have an existence proof that the
> traditional textual form of a program is easy to read, even for very
> complicated programs.  So I'm trying to scale down the thing that works,
> instead of trying to invent something new which proves unwieldy at scale.
>
> b. Good idea to go all the way to the bottom with the children's language.
>
> c. Figure 2 introduces another -- at least equally important language --
> in my opinion, this one should be made kid usable and programmable -- and I
> would try to see how it could fit with the TS language in some way.
>
>
> This language is JSON, which is just the object-definition subset of
> JavaScript.  So it can in fact be expressed with TurtleScript tiles.
>  (Although I haven't yet tackled quasiquote in TurtleScript.)
>
> d. There is another language -- AIML -- introduced for r

Re: [IAEP] Proposed New K-12 Science Framework

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/7/28 

> On Tue, July 26, 2011 1:21 am, Chris Leonard wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Caryl Bigenho 
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Since it has a total of 270 pages, and I just finished downloading it
> >> (chapter by chapter), I can't comment on the contents. But, this should
> >> be
> >> fuel for some interesting discussions in the next few weeks if the rest
> >> of
> >> you take the time to download and take an in depth look at what is
> >> there.
> >
> > You may need to create a login, but the full book as a single PDF is
> > at this link.
> >
> > http://download.nap.edu/cart/download.cgi?&record_id=13165&free=1
>
> Got it. Thanks. I was able to access it as a guest.
>
> I have only read the first few chapters of the report. It has a number of
> excellent features, such as
>
> * insistence on teaching how science is actually done
>
> * recognition that "Children Are Born Investigators"
>
> * the importance of connecting to children's prior experience and capacity
> for deep thought
>
> However, what I have read so far suggests important lacks in understanding
> of these very principles, along with other matters dealing with the nature
> of science, engineering, and technology. The greatest deficiency seems to
> be in treating of these topics in isolation from mathematics on one side
> and from social semisciences, particularly anthropology, economics, and
> politics, on the other.


As someone who had a somewhat inside view of the process, I think it would
be fair for me to say that the reason the committee held back from touching
these issues (as well as, of course, computer science, which is in some
senses more a branch of mathematics than of science), was not that it didn't
see them, but rather that it felt it could only fight so many battles at
once. The document as it stands is already asking schools and teachers to
restructure themselves in many ways; the authors worried that going further,
to a point which could even imply the need for an entirely different set of
teachers, could be a bridge too far.

Of course, I do not speak for my mother or anyone else on the committee,
this is just my impression.

JQ
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Proposed New K-12 Science Framework

[Jameson Quinn]

>
>
> Now I am going to skip over to Chapter 10 where the nitty-gritty stuff
> seems to be.  I'm talking about things like teacher training and student
> assessment.  I hope they addressed the inadequacy of the "standardized"
> multiple choice test where students regurgitate memorized facts which they
> will promptly forget. We shall see!
>
>
> They couldn't go beyond the research, and research in better methods of
evaluation is not as strong as it should be. Still, they clearly left a
mandate for those who follow them to avoid purely fact-based testing, as
that would undermine the whole point of their "three-dimensional" standards.
I think they did the best they could.
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Proposed New K-12 Science Framework

[Jameson Quinn]

Actually, my mother chaired that committee. I have been reading drafts of
this for the past couple of years, and of course I'm biased, but I think
that it is an important document, not just for those who are concerned with
US education, but for anyone interested in science education in general.
None of the ideas there are fundamentally new or revolutionary, but it
integrates the best practices in science education better than anything else
so far. (Of course, if a year from now, some other national or regional body
from somewhere else takes these ideas a step further, all the better.)

So, as to the specifics. Forster already commented on some aspects of
dimension 1. But I think he missed that also among the dimension 1 practices
are argumentation and bibliographic research. That is to say, that
model-building and data-gathering activities should be sharable and
self-documenting, to support integrating these practices.

Jameson Quinn

2011/7/26 Caryl Bigenho 

>  Hi Everyone,
>
>
> I received an email today from  eSchool News with a link to a very
> important document everyone at OLPC and Sugar Labs should familiarize
> themselves with.  It is the new K-12 Science Framework published by the
> National Academies of the United States.  It is still in the pre-publication
> stage, but pdf files of the uncorrected chapters are available for free
> download at this link:
>
>
> https://download.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13165#orgs
>
>
> We need to be aware of the content with this book as it will shape future
> science and engineering education in the United States.  If we want Sugar to
> be relevant and useful for teachers, knowing what they are charged with
> teaching and the methods they will be asked to use will help us better serve
> them.
>
>
> Since it has a total of 270 pages, and I just finished downloading it
> (chapter by chapter), I can't comment on the contents. But, this should be
> fuel for some interesting discussions in the next few weeks if the rest of
> you take the time to download and take an in depth look at what is there.
>
>
> Caryl
>
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] For Sugar Everywhere, Google-ize!

[Jameson Quinn]

In response to Sameer, I'm going to expand slightly on my prior message.

2011/2/17 Jameson Quinn 

> What does Sugar have? A vision, a community, and a codebase.
>

I should have said: a vision, a user community, a developer community, and a
codebase. We want to move forward; that means piggy-backing on the progress
of others as much as possible, without losing our important assets. Don't
churn the UI, so as not to lose our users; don't churn the programming
language without good reason, to keep developers and code; but do try to
hill-climb towards the largest crowd making fastest progress. And that, in
turn, means trying to find the shortest path between us and stuff like
Android, HTML5, etc., which have large communities actively progressing on
the cutting edge.

That's the justification behind my pyjamas proposal.

Jameson

PS. while it's not really relevant, yes, I do have experience in the field;
I founded and taught for two years in a rural Guatemalan public school.
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] For Sugar Everywhere, Google-ize!

[Jameson Quinn]

What does Sugar have? A vision, a community, and a codebase. But right now,
we're tied to some technologies which, while they work, seem to be
restricting the growth of our community.

I think it's clear that HTML5 is the future. Since Sugar is python-based,[1]
that means learning from the community which knows about using python on
HTML5 - which is the pyjamas community. While pyjamas today is generally
distributed as python-compiled-into-javascript, it is developed as native
python talking to the DOM. That latter setup is called pyjamas desktop, and
it works today, and the pyjamas people have a plan to make it work fully as
smoothly as javascript does.

So, in, say, 2 years, an "installed sugar" user could be running activities
on python with a browser layout engine doing the UI; while a "trial
activity" could be a somewhat-slow-to-download blob of javascript compiled
from python.

Jameson

[1] Yes, we could consider ditching python. But I continue to believe that
python is a much better learning language than either Java or Javascript
(for different reasons, but clearly so in both cases). And anyway, if we can
keep python, we can keep a lot of code instead of throwing it away.

2011/2/17 Frederick Grose 

> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Nicholas Doiron 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> This is a tremendously interesting but increasingly technical discussion.
>> It's difficult to weigh pros and cons of an entire OS in an e-mail
>> discussion. Would it be possible for people to create pages on the wiki so
>> we can get a clearer outline of:
>>
>> * What is each OS?  Explain to a teacher using SoaS what ChromeOS and
>> Android actually are. Avoiding conflation with Chrome browser and Droid
>> phone.
>>
>> * What education apps exist already?  Are there grants or challenge prizes
>> for app developers?
>>
>> * Do you believe Sugar activities can make the transition?  Will Native
>> Development Kit (Android) and Native Client (ChromeOS) help?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Nick Doiron
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
>  is a background primer on
> operating systems.
>
> Why not outline some more of your inquiries from a teacher interested in
> Sugar or Sugar-on- perspective?
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Questions
>
> And the community can begin to fill in the answers.
>
>   --Fred
>
>
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] [Sur] [Caos] Oscar Becerra contesta (2 5 veces) al art�culo de Christoph Derndorfer

[Jameson Quinn]

El 1 de noviembre de 2010 08:31, Yamandu Ploskonka escribió:

>  hmmm...  Creo que desde un punto de vista de ciencia tienes todo el
> derecho de opinar que un determinado estudio tiene falencias graves desde un
> punto de vista metodológico, y pues descartar las conclusiones a las que ha
> llegado siguiendo dicha metodología, pero no creo razonable ni apropiado el
> descartar datos cuya validez en sí va por encima de la *metodología de
> interpretación*, que es específicamente lo que disputa Toni.  Ni él (y creo
> tú tampoco) disputan la validez de los datos de Rumania.
>
> Es desgraciadamente un hecho indisputable que hay una correlación entre
> rendimiento académico y entorno socioeconómico.
>

Eso queda mil veces demostrado, y una vez más con los datos de Rumania.


>  Las computadoras, ¿mejoran o empeoran la brecha? pese a lo que se quisiera
> creer, por mucho que crucemos los dedos pareciera que en términos absolutos
> de cada estamento, tal vez mejoran (aunque ello queda por establecerse - o
> no a los más pobres, si creemos a Rumania), pero al comparar extremos,
> posiblemente empeoran dicha brecha.  Tengo que encontrar ese otro estudio
> reciente en EEUU que la tiene más clara...
>

Hay datos que dan luces a esas preguntas, pero si crees el re-analisis de
Tony Forster, lo único demostrado en el caso de Rumania es que para los
niños precisamente en el estrato socioeconómico donde hicieron el corte - es
decir, al borde de la pobreza, pero no muy pobres - el efecto de "entregar y
correr" en los resultados fácilmente medibles es mínimo y/o mixto. Creo, por
lo tanto, debemos hablar de casos más interesantes de XO, que Rumania es en
general una pista falsa.

Por lo de los XO, los otros de esa lista saben más que yo, aunque encuentro
creible que un "entregar y correr" tenga resultados pequeños pero medibles,
sin cerrar brechas.


>
> Eso, por supuesto, cuando simplemente "entregas y corres", al estilo
> Negroponte/OLPC.
>
> Programas bien pensados y pertinentes, con adecuado esfuerzo apropiado al
> medio e integrados al currículo y a la comunidad, como los de Nepal, cambian
> la figura y hacen posible efectivamente el ayudar a la superación de "los de
> abajo", no solo a quienes por natura o nurtura tienen mejores aptitudes.
>
> Ahora, aparte de Nepal, ¿conoces tú otros programas integrados? Yo no.
>

No muy. Hay esfuerzos, pero no hay nadie que yo conozca que llegue al nivel
de Nepal.


>
> Ciertamente no el de Perú, y si en Uruguay la figura está progresivamente
> moviéndose a eso, lo es por el esfuerzo de los voluntarios, no por el diseño
> de Ceibal.
>

De acuerdo. Creo que Paraguay y México y otros más pequeños tienen algo de
promesa, sin igualar a Nepal.


> Me encantaría que me corrijas - estoy un poco cansado que algo tan obvio no
> parece serlo a otros...
>

En general, estoy de acuerdo - pero también a mi me encantaría ver datos que
lo contradijiera.

JQ

>
> Yamandú
>
>
>
> On 11/01/2010 04:38 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
>
>
> El 31 de octubre de 2010 20:39, Yamandu Ploskonka 
> escribió:
>
>> Perdona, Jameson, me refería a una crítica a este estudio anterior a lo
>> que vi en el blog de Tony.
>> Tony se queja de la metodología.  Esa otra crítica (no recuerdo URL, lo
>> siento) indicaba que los datos no eran válidos ya que los niños que habían
>> recibido estas computadoras eran de un nivel socioeconómico menor, luego,
>> sus menores resultados académicos no debían sorprender a nadie.  Es decir
>> esa crítica criticaba el enfoque de recolección de datos.  La crítica de
>> Tony es respecto al método para interpretar dichos datos.
>>
>> La realidad de lo que ese informe de Rumania ha depistado es que los niños
>> de menor nivel socioeconómico que recibieron un subsidio para comprar una
>> computadora para la casa dedican menos tiempo a los deberes domiciliarios
>> (tareas escolares) que los que no tienen computadora en casa, y que sus
>> grados (notas) son menores.  Eso son hechos, evidencia contundente, sólida y
>> objetiva.  Ahora, ¿qué significa?
>>
>> Dado que es sabido :-( que los niños de menor nivel socioeconómico dedican
>> de hecho menos tiempo a su trabajo escolar y tienen peores notas
>> (¿causalidad? sabemos que es más complicado que eso), y dado que estas
>> máquinas fueron facilitadas a los niños más pobres, se ha criticado que este
>> estudio tan solo "prueba" lo que ya se sabía, es decir, menos tiempo en
>> tareas, menores grados. ¿es eso culpa de las computadoras? según Tony y ese
>> otro crítico, na que ver.
>>
>> Sin embargo, ni ellos (ni naides hasta ahora, usando buena metodología) ha
>> probado que las computadoras *ayuda

Re: [IAEP] [Sur] [Caos] Oscar Becerra contesta (2 5 veces) al art�culo de Christoph Derndorfer

[Jameson Quinn]

El 31 de octubre de 2010 20:39, Yamandu Ploskonka
escribió:

>  Perdona, Jameson, me refería a una crítica a este estudio anterior a lo
> que vi en el blog de Tony.
> Tony se queja de la metodología.  Esa otra crítica (no recuerdo URL, lo
> siento) indicaba que los datos no eran válidos ya que los niños que habían
> recibido estas computadoras eran de un nivel socioeconómico menor, luego,
> sus menores resultados académicos no debían sorprender a nadie.  Es decir
> esa crítica criticaba el enfoque de recolección de datos.  La crítica de
> Tony es respecto al método para interpretar dichos datos.
>
> La realidad de lo que ese informe de Rumania ha depistado es que los niños
> de menor nivel socioeconómico que recibieron un subsidio para comprar una
> computadora para la casa dedican menos tiempo a los deberes domiciliarios
> (tareas escolares) que los que no tienen computadora en casa, y que sus
> grados (notas) son menores.  Eso son hechos, evidencia contundente, sólida y
> objetiva.  Ahora, ¿qué significa?
>
> Dado que es sabido :-( que los niños de menor nivel socioeconómico dedican
> de hecho menos tiempo a su trabajo escolar y tienen peores notas
> (¿causalidad? sabemos que es más complicado que eso), y dado que estas
> máquinas fueron facilitadas a los niños más pobres, se ha criticado que este
> estudio tan solo "prueba" lo que ya se sabía, es decir, menos tiempo en
> tareas, menores grados. ¿es eso culpa de las computadoras? según Tony y ese
> otro crítico, na que ver.
>
> Sin embargo, ni ellos (ni naides hasta ahora, usando buena metodología) ha
> probado que las computadoras *ayudan* a mejorar esa dispar situación.  Los
> autores de ese informe rumano se basan en que en el límite de los que eran
> lo suficiente pobres para recibir facilidades para esas computadoras, y
> aquellos no lo suficientemente pobres para ello, y por lo tanto sin
> computadoras, habría poblaciones significativamente similares, casi
> idénticas en lo socioeconómico (así descartando el impacto de lo
> socioeconómico en el mal rendimiento), y por lo tanto lo único que habría
> afectado - variable independiente - sería si tenían computadora o no.  En
> ESE contexto es que se habrían "probado" que las computadoras "perjudican".
>

Exactamente. Y, viendo los supuestos datos que tiene Tony, hicieron un truco
indebido. En vez de comparar la población real justo debajo de la linea con
la población real justo arriba, los del estudio usaron regresión simplemente
lineal para extrapolar lo que debería ser las dos poblaciones. Cosa que, de
haber una verdadera relación lineal entre ingreso y rendimiento escolar,
subiría la resolución estadística del estudio. Pero si la relación no fuera
lineal, hace la comparación totalmente inválida, una comparación entre dos
datos mal extrapolados. Y queda demostrado que la relación no puede ser
lineal, porque los dos coeficientes de abajo y arriba son muy diferentes.

Como dices, viendo los supuestos datos de Tony, la conclusión no es que las
computadoras ayudan, sino que no hacen ni bien ni mal. Pero el argumento de
Tony me parece lo suficiente fuerte como para descartar por completo el
resultado significamente negativo que proclamen en el estudio.

JQ
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] future of the Sugar user experience

[Jameson Quinn]

In the end, this is one of the dynamic tensions that we're never going to
resolve once and for all. Between power and simplicity of the interface,
there are some win/win choices, but there are also tradeoffs. This also
relates to the tradeoff between speed and quality of development, because
the faster you develop, the less time you spend mapping out the possible
tradeoffs and finding the best option. I'm going to respond by first playing
devil's advocate against Tomeu's position, then suggesting some compromises.

Tomeu says that it would be disasterous if engineers start designing the
user experience. Scott responds that "developers need not be disqualified
from design work, so long as they make an effort to turn off their
implementation brains and/or get their work polished/reviewed by someone who
knows nothing of the implementation." Let me (for a minute) go further than
Scott: developer experimentation may not just be acceptable, it may be the
best solution in some cases. On I think every pressing design issue on
Tomeu's list (and others that I'd add), there is nobody who isn't at least
trying to give some consideration to design issues. In fact, in at least the
case of keyboard shortcut work, the entire focus is on a cleaner user
experience, and very little in the way of new functionality is proposed.
Moreover, as Sugar moves from its heierarchical roots under OLPC to a more
open model, the critical resource is not developer time, but contributor
enthusiasm. In that context it may make sense to have people implement their
crazy ideas, and then figure out if that's what the community wants, rather
than trace out an elaborate consensus roadmap beforehand.

Of course, at either extreme lies madness. Sugar needs coherent versions,
not a pile of poorly-integrated "add feature X" patches (we already have
enough of those, most crucially Rainbow). And yet locking down all new
development until it has a chance to get a Perfect Consensus (or Dictator
Approves) stamp at the next Design Team meeting three months from now is
just as much of a death spiral.

So we're left in the land of compromises. Tomeu is probably right that just
skating along and letting engineers decide will lead to a consistent bias -
say, for featuritis over simplicity. The solution is absolutely not to take
the power from the engineers and give it to someone else; in open source,
power to help decide the project direction is the main wind in our sails.
Yet if you try to share that power, in practice you often get such a rainbow
of bikeshed-color suggestions that the engineer feels that there's no
practical way to take the feedback into account, and so goes back to just
doing it their way.

Here's my proposal. Insofar as we've substituted for Marco's full-time
developer work, we've done it piecemeal. There's not a committee poring over
each line of code; different developers do different parts, with community
quality control mechanisms. I'd say we have to do the same for Eben's
full-time design work. Every developer should be paired up with somebody
wearing their design hat, whose job is explicitly not to worry about
implementation but about design coherence. This person would help facilitate
community discussion, but in the end they'd make a decision if discussion
got stuck for whatever reason. They'd try to formulate a long-term goal. The
developer would have both significant voice in the community debate, and
(more importantly for their motivation) significant autonomy deciding on
their own step-by-step approach to the long-term goal.

Basically, the first person to volunteer on any given issue would be the
design partner for that issue. They

I'm absolutely not trying to find a way to eliminate Eben and the other
respected design voices from the process. Their voices would still carry
serious weight. I'm just trying to find a way to get design input and
attention to the issues that need it, but avoid deadlock and keep some
autonomy.

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] design meeting recap

[Jameson Quinn]

When's the next design team meeting? I'd like to talk about shortcuts there.
It's not announced on the wiki, nor is there a place for putting proposed
agenda items.

yeah-I-should-know-this-but-what-if-I-were-a-newbie-ly y'rs,
jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] What to call ASLO in the wiki?

[Jameson Quinn]

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Caroline Meeks wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero <
> dir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm up more to call it Activities Portal, that name is easier to remember
>> and associate.
>
>
> +1
>
> ASLO seems very confusing to new people and hard to say when you are
> talking to someone.
>

Sad to say, I agree with +1. I like aslo personally, but how do you even say
it? A slow? Ass low? As low? None of these have particularly kid-friendly
connotations. Activities portal is clearer.

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] GSoC applications open until April 3 - Please continue to promote Sugarlabs GSoC

[Jameson Quinn]

The Google Summer of Code applications period is open now, for both Sugar
Labs <http://socghop.appspot.com/org/show/google/gsoc2009/sugarlabs> and other
participating 
organizations<http://socghop.appspot.com/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2009>,
and runs until 3 April at 19:00 UTC. We have had a fair number of interested
students in IRC and on the mailing lists, and last I checked we had 4
generally strong applications in the wiki
category<http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Category:2009_GSoC_applications>.
However, we have over 13 mentors signed up;* the more applications we get,
the more slots we will be assigned*; and there are no applications yet in
some of our important project
ideas<http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas>.
So please, use your blogs, your tweets, and even your actual mouth, to
promote GSoC and encourage more high-quality students (at any level, as long
as they're 18 or over) to apply; and of course, feel free to apply yourself.
The sooner you start to apply, the more time you'll have to refine your
idea. The steps to apply are:

1. write out an idea in the wiki
category<http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Category:2009_GSoC_applications>
2. get comments on that idea by discussing it on these mailing lists and/or
IRC
3. repeat steps 1 and 2 to refine your idea as many times as possible
4. sign up on google's webapp <http://socghop.appspot.com/> and submit your
application to sugarlabs there, preferably by April 1
5. You can continue to refine your idea until the deadline on April 3.

Cheers,
Jameson Quinn
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] 2 design proposals: home view, discoverable shortcuts

[Jameson Quinn]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz <
bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> This is not a comprehensive response, but
>
> Edward Cherlin wrote:
> > activities must be available before they have been used,
> > meaning when they do not appear in the Journal.
>
> This is a front on which we have actually made some progress.  I believe
> it is already the case that any activity installed as a .xo bundle appears
> as such in the Journal, even if it has never been launched.  The next step
> is to make sure that all Activities appear as Journal entries, so that
> they are susceptible to the usual mechanisms for search, tagging,
> deletion, etc.. Throw in a special "create new instance" option on
> Activity journal entries, and we're functionally ready.


That is already what happens by default when you click them. There are still
open issues here - I think that packets are reinstalled overzealously, for
instance. But the biggest gap in this, IMO, is that people have never used
the journal as the primary way to create new instances, so the interface is
lacking. We need a "new" icon in the toolbar that sets filter to activities
only, and a "create new instance of this activity" member somewhere down in
the menu for each instance in the journal, and maybe other thought for this
problem.

By the way, this thread is all about my home view proposal. Should I start a
new thread about the keyboard shortcut proposal? I think it is less
creative/controversial - but still I'd like some +/- 1's.

Jameson Quinn
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] OLPC on public radio

[Jameson Quinn]

you can find a stream at www.publicradiofan.com

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Edward Cherlin  wrote:

> To the Best of Our Knowledge, with Jim Fleming, has a segment on OLPC
> in the show starting in five minutes. Also Larry Lessig will be on.
>
> --
> Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
> And Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
> http://earthtreasury.net/ (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] 2 design proposals: home view, discoverable shortcuts

[Jameson Quinn]

>
> We naturally want to organise our knowledge into hierarchies, its how we
> manage complexity. (I suspect it has to do with the limitations of short
> term memory  and the ability to chunk information and to bring a chunk in as
> one item.) Tagging is good, but best for information which is impractical to
> structure.


I doubt that there is consensus here on this question. Does anybody know of
any relevant empirical data?

Anyway, the Journal, as it is, is not good at handling complexity. It is
> good for beginners but rapidly imposes limits. This is because it tries to
> anticipate the user's needs, automate processes and hide its workings.
>
> It would be good if it was possible to bridge from beginning learners to
> the needs of more sophisticated users. It might be good if the saving
> behaviour could be changed from the control panel, defaulting to saving
> everything for beginners but able to be configured so that advanced users
> had more control.


What control would you recommend? Honestly, I have a hard time imagining a
system which I'd want the kids in my classroom to use which was anything but
"Autosave everything, smart and powerful tools with relatively-safe defaults
for deleting the old stuff". For instance, I'd love a "delete everything
over a month old without tags outside this set of useless tags, except the
last instance of each activity and anything in the last month" broom tool.


> Likewise, some bridge from a flat file system to a hierarchical file system
> would be good.


Have you seen http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal%2C_reloaded ?


> Also a bridge to making the workings more transparent, for example viewing
> and editing mime type?


This is the best, simple, idea to come out of this discussion so far. Of
course such a ability (logically in journal details view somewhere) should
have a list of known mime types, but also allow free text entry within the
mime type charset.


>
>
> Tony
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] 2 design proposals: home view, discoverable shortcuts

[Jameson Quinn]

>
> I view "resume by default" as a kind of ugly hack ...


In fact, "resume by default" has the really awful result that in 0.84
> users will naturally tend to overwrite important documents...


In the current world, this is ugly. However, with a versioned datastore -
something I think it's not unreasonable to hope for as soon as 0.86 - this
would be much less of a problem. Add some smarts in activities to treat
"resume, immediately erase over 90% of content" as "create new instance" and
you have no more problem here at all.

On the other hand, I would still advocate for "resume by default" in a world
of infinite disk space and versioned file system. I suspect it is most
frequently the desired behavior. Yes, I realize that this makes the home
view just an alternate interface to the journal.


>
>
> (Resume by default also includes "alt+tab by default", ...


My proposal includes visual cues to differentiate "alt+tab by default"
activities from "resume by default" ones, and the ability to halt the
"alt-tab" ones from the home view. Also consider that the "recent" filter
would logically pick up all currently-running activities. That would begin
to address this issue.

(If we do not support this proposal, this might be a reasonable use for
concentric circles in the home view - inner circle would be like ~656 sugar,
outer one would be like current sugar.)


>
>
> NONETHELESS, I think you make a very important point: the Journal should
> really replace the Home View.  Logically, the Journal makes perfect sense
> at that point in the zoom hierarchy.  It would also resolve the weirdness
> of the Journal being a single-instance pseudo-activity.  The trick, then,
> will be to come up with a Journal interface that is suitable for use as
> the main launching point.  From that perspective, your mockups explore
> some very important ideas.


I agree, provided of course that there is a clear and easy way to create new
instances from this new journal. However, I still like the ring view/list
view choice - a non-text-centric interface is a worthwhile goal IMO. My
proposal can just as easily be thought of as an alternate "ring view" for
the journal, as as an enhanced home view layout proposal. The only missing
piece for a newer-better combined-journal-and-home-view is a good way (or,
probably, a few good ways) to create new instances from inside journal list
view.
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] 2 design proposals: home view, discoverable shortcuts

[Jameson Quinn]

Thanks for the response. A few quibbles below.

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz <
bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Jameson Quinn wrote:
> > Proposal 1: home view: "Filtered ring w/ side panels"
> >
> >
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Homunq/activity_ring_filters_and_sidepanes
>
> I'm glad that you're thinking about tagging.  For all of our talk about
> tags, we have yet to implement anything like a usable tagging system, and
> without it we have essentially no organizational tools at all.  It should
> be a high priority.  However,...
>
> I don't like this design, though it does force me to think.  Opinions
> about design are always mostly intuitive, so it's hard to justify any
> particular opinion. However, let me try a few suggestions:
>
> 1.  Is this really necessary?  The tagging system's purpose is for
> categorizing all Journal entries, as a student easily generates thousands
> of entries.  However, the total number of Activities in existence is
> relatively small (there are what, maybe about 50 that actually run in a
> given build?).  Are we anywhere near the point where students have so many
> Activities installed that the favorite/star system is insufficient?  Does
> such a point even exist?


This design is explicitly breaking that paradigm. Any activity icon in this
design is connected to all instances of that activity; but a single click
will start up an instance. I would even consider allowing two instances of
an activity within a given filtered view, if both are recent enough (less
than twice as old?).

The home view, in my opinion, should becomes more journal-like, while
retaining the ability to launch new activity instances.


>
>
> 2.  I find these filters confusing, and I think users would do.  "Star"
> makes sense; it filters the Activity bundles themselves.  "Recent" and
> "Mine" seem to be filters not on the bundles, but on other Journal
> entries.  I think placing them on the Home View, where the only items
> shown are Activities, is tremendously confusing.  Those filters should
> live in the Journal.
>
> The purpose of the Home view is to allow users to launch new, empty
> Activity instances in a convenient way.  Are you proposing a change in the
> purpose of the Home view, and if so, why is your proposal better than
> simply replacing the home view with the Journal?


Yes, I am. Not a change, an addition; what you mention is still *a* primary
purpose, but not *the* primary purpose. This is the logical conclusion of
"resume by default".


>
>
> 3.  Selecting filters by dragging them is unnecessary.  A click should
> suffice.


I did not explain that well, I guess. You select filters with a click; you
can *assign tags* by dragging.


>
>
> 4.  There is no provision for filtering by multiple tags, without which
> tagging is a very weak organizational system.


I'd thought about that, but didn't write it up. I would have "add to filter"
(needs better name) in a submenu for the tags.


>
>
> 5.  The distinction between "Start tagless" and "Start with current tag"
> seems unnecessary and confusing.  Assigning or removing a tag should be a
> trivial operation.


IMO it should be both trivial, and available from all places where you might
logically want it.


>
>
> 6.  The "Leftovers panel" does not seem to add any value.  Instead, we can
> simply grow or shrink the number of items shown on the home view itself,
> changing the ring into a sunflower, or eventually even a grid with
> scrollbars.


It is for ALL activities, to discourage rampant favoritting and allow
drag-and-drop tagging. The idea that it would serve as a spillover for an
overloaded ring is not central. I agree this might be a bridge too far.



>
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAknGtmoACgkQUJT6e6HFtqQo3QCgg2FLeVBpRPD5eZniEOUoKGjV
> fv0AnRreB2pLCgjNU/BmuRghHiljPvGs
> =g5nL
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] 2 design proposals: home view, discoverable shortcuts

[Jameson Quinn]

Proposal 1: home view: "Filtered ring w/ side panels"

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Homunq/activity_ring_filters_and_sidepanes

comments to
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Vision/Proposals/Home_View

Proposal 2: shortcut keys

monopoly key (windows key) would be the frame key. This would also be
available as ctrl-enter as a (hopefully unnecessary) backup.

F1-F4 would be view / zoom level, as currently. Pressing F3 while already in
home view would toggle view all/ring view, while pressing F4 while already
in app view would cycle through open activities. If we ever get different
friend sets or something, we could do something similar for F2. F9-F12 would
be reserved for sugar, too - for instance, journal, context-sensitive help.
F5-F8 would be for activity-specific functions. (IMO this is consistent with
the XO keyboard and a fair way to divvy up this set of keys)

alt- would be reserved for application-specific shortcuts.
alt- would switch toolbars to toolbar x. Holding alt would bring up
a translucent letter over the appropriate icon in the toolbar. Python apps
(at least) would get keys assigned for free, though they could do it
manually with an underscore char (or similar) before the given letter. This
behind-the-scenes magic would respect localization - shortcuts would change
by language. Shortcuts would be available even if the given toolbar were not
open.

ctrl- would be reserved for sugar-wide (or nearly) shortcuts. This
would presever z, x, c, v as the 1984 mac standards. ctrl-numeral would be
equivalent to Fx (ie, F1). Other globally-available keys: print screen, view
source, power/volume/brightness controls, shut activity (ctrl-escape),
next/previous activity, possibly in the future
chat-with-people-sharing-with-me-now/ bulletin board, etc. Holding down
control would bring up a static cheat sheet of these shortcuts.

All other keys would have their conventional meaning, except for num lock.
The number pad would always be numbers, and pressing num lock would cause
the machine to make a loud farting noise.

(copy of above at
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Vision/Proposals/Keyboard_Action#discoverable,%20consistent,%20lazy-programmer%20keyboard%20shortcuts
)
Did I leave anything out, or not explain anything?

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] Sugar Labs in GSoC (Fwd: Congratulations!)

[Jameson Quinn]

Sugar Labs has been accepted into Google Summer of Code
2009<http://socghop.appspot.com/org/show/google/gsoc2009/sugarlabs>.
Yay! Now we have work to do. Remember: the more students apply to our
program, the better our chances of getting more actual slots assigned, so
both publicity and making a good impression count. Go ahead, blog it, tweet
it, tell your friends.

-We can expect most of those students to check out at least the pages linked
to directly by our organization
profile<http://socghop.appspot.com/org/show/google/gsoc2009/sugarlabs>.
That is: http://sugarlabs.org/ ,
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/Student_application_template ,
and http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas . Go look at
those pages, pretending you're a GSoC student who's never heard of Sugar
Labs. Do they answer your questions?

-We need to be ready to answer student questions on IRC, sugar-devel, and
iaep.

-If you would like to be a mentor, we can still add mentors. Please sign up.

-If you are already signed up as a mentor, please set up your profile on
http://socghop.appspot.com/ and then privately email your link_id to walter
bender, mel chua, and(or) me.

-Random answers: right now we have 11 mentors signed up; OLPC did not get in
:( ; new organizations are usually limited to 2 slots but it is all
discretionary by LH and other GSoC admins, and she is very reasonable, so I
suspect we may "inherit" OLPC's history; otherwise, slots are generally
proportional to student applications (more FAQ on slot
allocations<http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/studentallocations>);
list of accepted
orgs<http://socghop.appspot.com/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2009>;
timeline<http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/timeline>:
student applications from March 23 through April 3, then we madly
decide,
then acceptances are announced April 15th.

Hooray!
Jameson

-- Forwarded message --
From: 
Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 11:48 AM
Subject: Congratulations!
To: jameson.qu...@gmail.com

Hi Jameson Quinn,

 Your "Sugar Labs (a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy)"
organization application for Google Summer of Code 2009 has been accepted.
...

For full instructions on how to create a home page and best practices for
creating it, please see our User's Guide at
http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/userguide

It is worth taking a look at the in-depth documentation for tips even if you
are familiar with the program or a past participant.
You will now also be able to review and accept mentor applications for your
organization.
Congratulations! We look forward to having you with us for Google Summer of
Code 2009.

Best regards,
Google Open Source Programs
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs

[Jameson Quinn]

Croquet (squeak virtual worlds) or seaside (smalltalk web apps) would be
fine projects, if croquet isn't too 3d-resource-hungry. But IMO they do not
have the same high priority as work on AJAX.

2009/3/18 Frederick Grose 

> How about something in Croquet,
> http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Main_Page, or  Seaside,
> http://www.seaside.st/, that would create a Sugar environment for the web,
> say Honeycomb?
>
> I, too, need to spend more time under those hoods or in those
> hoods.      --Fred
>
>
> 2009/3/18 Jameson Quinn 
>
> I think that for a GSoC project, we care less about development kits/IDEs
>> like aptana, than about desktop-apps-with-AJAX solutions like Appcelerator
>> Titanium, Mozilla Prism (and in closed-source world, Adobe AIR and Curl). I
>> think it would be a great project to take Titanium or Prism and make a
>> generic sugar-like hello-world which used Javascript to save to the journal,
>> set some tags, open a file, coexist with Rainbow, and have a sugary toolbar.
>> Whether you worked on that activity with Aptana or whatever is a separate
>> issue.
>>
>> Disclaimer: I know nothing under the hood about any of the products
>> mentioned here, so I could be totally wrong.
>>
>> Jameson
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 4:14 AM, Bryan Berry  wrote:
>>
>>> They don't compare currently but they are developing rapidly,
>>> particularly aptana http://www.aptana.com. The great thing about aptana
>>> is that there is for-profit company behind it that seems to do a good
>>> job of sponsoring open-source development.
>>>
>>> Also, Apple, Palm, and maybe Android are pushing for js+html5 for all
>>> apps place of flash.
>>>
>>> On Wed, 2009-03-18 at 10:47 +0100, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>> > 2009/3/18 Bryan Berry :
>>> > > Felipe,
>>> > >
>>> > > "never bet against the browser" is absolutely true
>>> > >
>>> > > However, gnash is roughly 2-3 developer years behind macromedia
>>> flash.
>>> > > the big hurdle is adding support for ActionScript3 to Gnash.
>>> > >
>>> > > I don't think that better integrating Gnash into Sugar would be the
>>> best
>>> > > use of your time. The better bet is to integrate activities created
>>> with
>>> > > javascript + html5 into Sugar.
>>> > >
>>> > > I earlier advocated a framework called "Karma" for integrating flash
>>> > > swfs into Sugar. I now believe that javascript + html5 is a much
>>> better
>>> > > bet because it better adheres to our common belief in open-source and
>>> > > allows "View Source." Also, there are far more javascript developers
>>> out
>>> > > there than flash developers. This new rework of Karma could take
>>> > > advantage of projects like jquery-UI and new javascript animation
>>> > > libraries like processing.js and GX.
>>> >
>>> > That looks very interesting, but what about authoring tools for
>>> > javascript+html5? Are any that compare to the flash authoring tools?
>>> >
>>> > Regards,
>>> >
>>> > Tomeu
>>> >
>>> > > You could start out by trying to recreate some of OLE Nepal's
>>> existing
>>> > > flash activities as javascript + html5. You can find some here:
>>> > >
>>> http://www.pustakalaya.org/external-content/static/epaath/E-Paath-2.activity/activity/Activity/MenuStage.html
>>> > >
>>> > > If you are interested in such a project, I am definitely be
>>> interested
>>> > > in mentoring you. I have to warn you though that I am professionally
>>> a
>>> > > project manager and not a software engineer. In fact my software
>>> > > development skills are extremely limited beyond writing broken python
>>> > > scripts.
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > --
>>> > > Bryan W. Berry
>>> > > Technology Director
>>> > > OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > On Tue, 2009-03-17 at 15:37 -0600, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>>> > >> Flash is still not open source, and that creates issues when
>>> > >> distributing it (Adobe does not let you include it pre-installed in
>>> > >> images for download).
>>> > >>

Re: [IAEP] Wiki reorganization proposal

[Jameson Quinn]

Oops, you are right. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13203

Proposal shelved until this is fixed.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 9:40 AM, Frederick Grose  wrote:

> I had trouble getting the category list to transclude; have you tested that
> idea, can you share the syntax.
>
> Thanks, --Fred
>
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I think the Team structure is serving us well and Fred Grose has been
>>> adding/updating the tags. Enabling better search by eliminating
>>> CamelCase is probably the most important single action we could have
>>> taken.
>>
>>
>> I agree that the team structure is great. The question is, subpages,
>> namespaces, or categories? I'd pick categories, for better chances for
>> navigation. It is also easier to search "uncategorized" and categorize them
>> than "not a subpage, and not this or that or the other special case".
>>
>> It's not too late. I can make a bot. For this and for CamelCase.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But the power is in the link. Link your pages to other pages. Link to
>>> your page from other pages.
>>
>>
>> link++
>>
>>
>> ___
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Wiki reorganization proposal

[Jameson Quinn]

> I think the Team structure is serving us well and Fred Grose has been
> adding/updating the tags. Enabling better search by eliminating
> CamelCase is probably the most important single action we could have
> taken.


I agree that the team structure is great. The question is, subpages,
namespaces, or categories? I'd pick categories, for better chances for
navigation. It is also easier to search "uncategorized" and categorize them
than "not a subpage, and not this or that or the other special case".

It's not too late. I can make a bot. For this and for CamelCase.


>
>
> But the power is in the link. Link your pages to other pages. Link to
> your page from other pages.


link++
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] Wiki reorganization proposal

[Jameson Quinn]

I think navigation would be easier if the large majority of pages were moved
out of their camel-case subpage position (DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas) to a
more simple wikipedia-style name (Project ideas). We would use team
categories for organization. We could still get the same "subpage links" as
currently by transcluding the category (and having any category intro text
as a ). The only pages that would stay as subpages would be
internal-business pages like TODO and Mission, which have the same name and
different content for each project.

What do people think?

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Priorities and Ideas (for GSoC)

[Jameson Quinn]

It's true that most new organizations are capped at two slots, and that
there are 20% fewer slots overall this year than last. On the other hand, we
are not most new organizations, and generally number of slots is
proportional to number of applicants. If everybody on this list helps get
people to apply in Sugarlabs, we will have plenty of applications, and can
(tentatively) hope to get more than two slots. I think that sugar has a kind
of altruistic appeal, and a variety of tasks, that many projects lack. All
we have to do is make sure people don't just think "oh, OLPC, didn't they
switch to Windows?"



> The bottom line is that we will be getting at most two students from
> GSoC this year. (We have  5-1 ratio of mentors to mentees.) So I would
> propose that we think of your taxonomy and what ever framework we put
> into place as something to apply more broadly across all the sources
> of students coming to Sugar Labs with project ideas.
>
> -walter
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Priorities and Ideas (for GSoC)

[Jameson Quinn]

>
> My fourth priority is other educational activities. There are 
> hundreds
> of  
> good
> ideas  out there.


Just to clarify: this is not to denigrate activities. In the end, Sugar will
stand or fall on its activities. But my attitude here is "if you build it,
they will come"; we have to take care of the other priorities, so that
people are motivated to make/bring more activities.
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] Priorities and Ideas (for GSoC)

[Jameson Quinn]

I will link to this thread (in IAEP) on the GSoC project
ideaspage. This
page is the primary location where prospective GSoC students will
come to learn about out project, and so I want them to get a feel for our
community discussion of priorities. So please, in this thread, try to be a
little bit more explicit and foot-noted than you would be otherwise, so they
can understand what we're talking about.

The primary purpose of GSoC, as others have pointed out, is NOT to do the
things we're too busy to get around to. It is primarily a community-building
exercise: to get students engaged in helping Sugar, and get mentors engaged
in passing on knowledge to new community members. If somebody develops an
educational game that only blind 3-year-olds use, but FINISHES it, has a
great time doing it, and becomes a long-term contributing community member,
then that would be a total GSoC success. However, that being said, we'd
still prefer projects that help acheive our highest priorities for Sugar.

There is no absolute ordering of Sugarlabs' priorities. Different members
will not agree perfectly on what steps will do more to help our educational
mission. So the list below is just my version. Community: Please respond
with your thoughts. Students: I'll link what I can in the list, but I can't
find good links, or even any links, for everything. If one of these ideas
intrigues you, please, come ask in IRC (#sugar on freenode) - we'd love to
try to point you in the right direction, and help you cut your ideas down to
a reasonable GSoC size.

My first priority is things that will have a strong effect on the long-term
rate of development of Sugar. I'd put just 2 things in that category: easier
sugarizing (primarily from
AJAX,
Flash , and
legacy Linux); and a structure for sugar unit tests (IMO we will never get
good enough software quality for wide adoption, running on multiple
distribution without automated
testing
).

My second priority is things that will improve on sugar's key promises. An
easier and better way to handle files: versioned
datastore,
improvements in creating and
usingtags for the
journal, file picker dialogs, and home
view . A
simpler and safer security model: getting Rainbow into the Sugar
platformand
improving
it's coverage of the Bitfrost
ideals.
A simple and discoverable, yet powerful, UI overall: improved accessibility,
discoverable keyboard shortcuts. Ubiquitous connectivity and collaboration:
multi-pointer sharing, auto-collaborating data
structures,
viral/peer-to-peer activity
distribution,
shared journals. Useful in the classroom: a one-click workflow for getting
AND turning in 
homework
.

My third priority is activities to better cover the core functions. Reading:
an improved 
Read,
which handles true ebook formats. (PDF is made for printing, and deployments
have asked for this.) Writing: Write is pretty good. Communication: an email
activity. Math: a good spreadsheet/graphing utility (spreadsheets are not
the best back-end for graphs, but they are very very flexible).

My fourth priority is other educational activities. There are
hundreds
of 
good
ideas  out there.

Let me repeat, the best project is the one that gets done. The highest
priorities on my list are also the hardest. An achievable idea for an
educational activity is better than pie in the sky. And if you want to take
on a bigger task, ask us in IRC - we will help guide you.
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] yet another corrected screenshot image!

[Jameson Quinn]

I agree that we should drop freeform, and choose one, iconic, layout. Then
we could plan for easy searching - using tags, names, or recentness - which
greyed out the unselected apps.

If we did this, my vote would be: ring up to 16 activities, then a single
(non-sunflower) spiral.

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Walter Bender wrote:

> I haven't studied it in any scientific way, but I have never seen
> anyone use freeform in the field. I can also make a strong case for
> its inappropriateness in the classroom and the additional support
> overhead. For simplicity-sake, if for no other reason, we should drop
> it.
>
> That said, I cannot argue with your observation that an overloaded
> ring is problematic as well. For 0.86, we should consider some of
> spiral options, such as the sunflower, which are much more space
> efficient. At the same time, I think the real answer lies in better
> use the idea that groups of activities can be selected for the ring: a
> teacher might say to the child, this week, I want everyone to put
> Browse, Write, and Turrtle Art on their desktops. At home, a different
> collection might be available. So maybe we can explore the notion of
> collections rather than layouts?
>
> -walter
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt
>  wrote:
> > I fully understand your confusion, this issue has been going back and
> > forth for too long.
> >
> > We should probably talk this over more thoroughly before deciding
> > either way. Nicholas had (and I'm assuming still has) very strong
> > reservations about the ring, which caused us to reconsider it, but at
> > the time it was too late to change and it made it into the build. As
> > you know I was initially in favor of the ring (which I think has a
> > strong iconic presence), but when I began seeing screenshots of
> > overloaded rings it seemed like the favorites model perhaps wasn't
> > working as well as we had hoped.
> >
> > This is a case where it would really help to do observations and see
> > how children are using the Home view, and which of the two views they
> > prefer using... Or do we have any findings and observations we can
> > already draw from?
> >
> > For now, the question remains which view (freeform/ring) we use to
> > represent Sugar. Or perhaps at least in the interim it would make
> > sense to avoid Home altogether and use the Neighborhood view as the
> > "signature" shot?
> >
> > I agree that we would ideally keep either the ring or freeform, but
> > not both, for simplicity...
> >
> > More discussion ahead, I sense.
> >
> >
> > Christian
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Walter Bender 
> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt
> >>  wrote:
> >>> Hi Sean
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> We are currently debating moving to freeform view as the default
> >>> (maybe even the only) view in Home. To be on the safe side, should we
> >>> use that view here instead, seeing as it already exists in the UI?
> >>> CC'ing Walter for his thoughts as well...
> >>>
> >>
> >> Boy am I ever confused. I thought (and hoped) that we were going to
> >> get rid of the freeform view, not the ring view.
> >>
> >> -walter
> >>
> >> --
> >> Walter Bender
> >> Sugar Labs
> >> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com
> >
> > http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com
> >
> > 917/ 575 0013
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> ___
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] GSoC application about to be sent in: last call for checks

[Jameson Quinn]

Just to add to what Mel said: a good application also means a good ideas
page .

Jameson

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Mel Chua  wrote:

> We're going to be submitting our organization's GSoC application in ~24
> hours, so this is a last call for edits and sanity checks. Many thanks
> to Jameson and Walter for their constant reminders and for writing and
> editing our org app!
>
> http://sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/SL_application
>
> --Mel
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] irc logs

[Jameson Quinn]

Just because it has been mentioned, I would be a definite -1 on retroactive
public indexing, though without indexing, I would be +1 on retroactive
logging with or without a private index (local search engine, but
non-permissive robots.txt).

Good consequences of logging: better ability to participate for those with
poor connections or occasional availability. This is a Worthwhile Goal.

Indeterminate consequences of logging: people may be less willing to talk
about people behind their backs; this talk could be productive or
counterproductive or both.

Bad consequences of logging: people's words could come back to haunt them in
the sense of employment. I understand that the lurkers on the channel right
now could easily be skynet and yourboss.com, but practically speaking, I
doubt that the latter is really paying much attention. But if any Google
snooping picks up the channel logs, that changes the practical situation
seriously. Note the danger is not the whole log, just certain keywords -
mainly personal and company names.

So, I have two proposals:

1. Log, but exclude major search engines using robots.txt. Logging can be
retroactive.

2. Log, and allow searching, but set up the logger to ignore any statements
that include some "off the record" flag. (Ideally, there would be a bot, and
you could tell it to go to sleep for 5 minutes, or to wake up, and it would
tell you when it changed state.) This should NOT be retroactive.

Obviously, either of these should be announced on the channel logon text.
You could combine them, using 1 for retroactive and 2 for forward-moving
logging.

Either way, I would be in favor of this being done centrally, not being an
individual responsibility. But not enough so to actually help doing it,
sorry (that's why I don't want individual responsibility :).

And this is my final word on the subject. :)
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] irc logs

[Jameson Quinn]

Would it be reasonable to ask for logs to be only half-heartedly public? ie,
hiding behind a captcha/login choice or at least a non-permissive
robots.txt? With that qualification, I would vote for logs +1, without that
I am -0.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:51 AM, David Farning wrote:

> Morgan,
>
> Could you run xbot from one of our other servers?  If so please file
> bug against infrastructure.
>
> david
>
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Morgan Collett 
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 14:10, Ties Stuij  wrote:
> >> I would really appreciate some logging of the #sugar channel, as my
> >> connection to the #sugar irc channel is killed quite often, my
> >> timezone doesn't converge very well with a number of you, and it's of
> >> course a practical service to have in general.
> >>
> >> As I understand we don't have backlogs atm because they were frowned
> >> upon by certain elements in the OLPC era. But since Sugar has since
> >> cut the umbilical cord, and Sugarlabs is now – almost – a transpant,
> >> open and happy organisation, in which lambs can dart around in happy
> >> ignorance, perhaps it is time to symbolically open the windows by
> >> allowing this feature.
> >
> > +1.
> >
> > Unfortunately my xobot bot doesn't do logging properly, and gets
> > kicked off the net occasionally by my unreliable connectivity... I'll
> > look into a better bot, but don't let that stop anyone else from
> > getting there first :)
> >
> > Regards
> > Morgan
> > ___
> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
> >
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] XOCamp diplomas? + beg for housing

[Jameson Quinn]

*1. Diplomas*

I know it sounds ridiculous, but here in Guatemala every conference or
training anybody goes to hands out nicely-printed diplomas, many of which
say you are now a Certified Educational Quality Monitor or some such
bullshit. The diplomas are common as dirt; the people who pay any attention
to them, rarer, but the latter do exist and sometimes hold positions of
power. I'd like one for XOCamp, and I suspect some kind of pretentious
record of our attendance would be useful to some other attendees too.

I'd be happy to throw something together. I would need a list of attendees
who want them, and 1 or 2 people with official titles to sign the things;
and I'd like some resources for printing the things (printer and nice paper,
or a few bucks to acquire [the use of] those).

*2. Housing beg

*I will be in Boston from the night of the 12th (Monday, arriving on a late
train) to that of the 17th (leaving by train on the morning of the 18th). I
am confident that I can, if necessary, find housing independently of this
list; but it would be nicer to be staying with other XO people. If anybody
has a couch/room available, please let me know privately. Thanks.

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] Fwd: XOCamp fundraising guest post for OLPCNews - help please.

[Jameson Quinn]

I sent the following general fundraising request as an unsolicited guest
post to OLPCNews on Dec. 23. They haven't put it up or gotten back to me,
and I don't have the connectivity right now to follow up on this. Can
somebody - preferably somebody who has already done guest posts there -
please take this off my hands? I do not care whose name appears as the post
author, or whether you or they see the need to edit my post; all I want is
for there to be a link to the fundraising page, and some kind
of accompanying explanation, from OLPCnews, before the year ends (since I
believe that many people are more likely to make tax-deductible
contributions then). I am in an internet cafe now, and will probably not be
able to reply to messages, so instead of replying "should I do it?", just
take the task.


This message bounced with image attachments, so I uploaded the images I'd
selected at http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Xocampattendees.png and
http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Sugarcamp_cool.JPG

Thanks,
Jameson Quinn

-- Forwarded message --
From: Jameson Quinn 
Date: Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 9:51 PM
Subject: Guest post: Give for XOCamp, help Sugar development and XO
deployment
To: edit...@olpcnews.com



XOCamp 2 is coming up, January 12th to 16th. It's a meeting for the people
who are doing the hard work developing Sugar and deploying the XO in
countries like Uruguay, Colombia, Nigeria, and Nepal. It's an important
chance for people to get to know each other, and for synergy to happen
between different projects. And... we need your (or your company's)
US-tax-deductible help for travel
scholarships<http://sugarlabs.org/go/XOCamp_2#Pledges>
.

Why? Let's start with deployments. Exciting things are happening with the XO
in Uruguay <http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/>,
Nigeria<http://schoolkey.net/blog/2008/10/22/earth-treasury-africa-project-considering-a-sugar-on-a-stick-approach>
, <http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/07/i_if.01.html>
Colombia<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nicholas_negroponte_takes_olpc_to_colombia.html>,
and Guatemala <http://www.guatemala.gob.gt/noticia.php?codigo=1561&tipo=1>,
and the volunteers and workers on the ground who are helping those things
happen right would love to meet each other. But our salaries in these
far-off places do not stretch very well to pay the full cost of tickets to
Boston. We are taking the bus and train to make our plane tickets as cheap
(and low-carbon) as possible; your tax-deductible contribution would help.

Then there's development. Sugar, as you know, is the free software that
makes the XO run for kids. And the dirty secret is that free software is not
actually a lot easier than the other kind. People who say "with enough eyes,
all bugs are shallow" mostly aren't the people attached to the eyes which
hurt from staring at the screen looking for those bugs. Experience
suggests<http://mako.cc/writing/funding_volunteers/funding_volunteers.html#id2447268>that
in-kind support, like travel scholarships, are one of the best ways to
encourage open source development, safer even than directly paying for work
because it doesn't create a division between volunteers and staff.

And finally, there's the synergy between the two. At the last experience
like this - Sugarcamp <http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugarcamp> - developers and
deployers met and the sparks that were struck are bearing fruit. Developers
need to know what deployers need; deployers need to know what features and
workarounds are available. Hanging out on IRC or email lists is never going
to result in the kind of concentrated knowledge transfer that happens at a
real-world meeting. The cool photo on the left is a hacked up XO projector
that was shown off at the sugarcamp.

So please make your tax-deductible year end donation today. Here's how to
send money via Google Checkout, Paypal, or
check<http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Donate>;
please remember to note your donation on the
wiki<http://sugarlabs.org/go/XOCamp_2#Pledges>,
or we won't know to apply it to travel scholarships. All money raised will
be divided between qualifying applicants: half divided equally, half
proportional to any remaining direct travel expenses. Though there probably
will not be enough to give full scholarships, if there is, then any leftover
money will be used for other Sugarlabs purposes, possibly including future
travel scholarships. If you can get your company to match your gift - or
even to give on its own; this kind of direct donation is a highly effective
use for a couple of thousand dollars - that would of course be much
appreciated.
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] XOCamp fundraising (and, please sign up to donate)

[Jameson Quinn]

I was just about to write a guest post  for
OLPCNews<http://www.olpcnews.com/contribute.html>asking for (tax
deductible) contributions towards the travel scholarship
fund for XOCamp. But when I asked on IRC if anybody had any good photos of
Sugarcamp to include, they told me to wait, because SJ  has
to move the fundraising
page<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2/Fundraising#Donations>off of
the OLPC wiki (for tax reasons or something). I wanted to get this
done ASAP because time is growing short, but I'm going to the country
(offline) until Monday or Tuesday.

So: if anybody can take on the task of waiting until the page is moved, then
*writing a fundraising post to OLPCNews*, I'd really appreciate it, and so
would the rest of the people who are looking for partial travel
scholarships. There's applications from Guatemala, where exciting things are
happening and 3000 XOs will be arriving next year; from Uruguay, where
Proyecto Ceibal is now the organization with more experience in XO
deployment than anyone else; and from Denmark, to help with packaging
issues; and more applications are expected. All donations are tax
deductible, going through sugarlabs.

Thanks,
Jameson

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 10:02 PM, Edward Cherlin  wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 7:51 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 04:19:54PM -0600, Jameson Quinn wrote:
> >>It's getting to be time to buy tickets for XOCamp 2, which is in under
> >>a month now. Those of us who'd like to come from far away would love to
> >>know whether we can get some financial support for our journey.
> >
> > I am wondering: Do you guys think it would be relevant for me to
> > participate in this?
> >
> > I mean, I don't develop activities themselves and am not a
> > construcionism theorist. I "just" do packaging for Debian an Debian-edu,
> > and do what I can to unite the Sugar packaging efforts of .deb based
> > distros.
> >
> > I do not foubt that I am welcome. Question is more if you imagine that
> > it would be beneficial for the project - also as I would like to request
> > financial support for my travel costs (I live in Denmark).
>
> Your presence would be highly beneficial. We have been having serious
> packaging problems. I don't know how they differ between distros, but
> I feel the lack every day on Ubuntu.
>
> > I can offer to stay longer in the area, before and/or after the event,
> > if anyone would find that beneficial.
> >
> >
> >- Jonas
> >
> > - --
> > * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
> > * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
> >
> >[x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
> > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
> >
> > iEYEARECAAYFAklHJdsACgkQn7DbMsAkQLiezQCgkQr3++cqyhjQ4q0ZcBoSMMn2
> > GNIAnjjUtxooWDXNKmVVEHmS6kt+e6+q
> > =eqs/
> > -END PGP SIGNATURE-
> > ___
> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
> And Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] XOCamp fundraising - more urgent than I realized.

[Jameson Quinn]

It turns out that the wiki was out of date and many of the pledges were
already used for SugarCamp. That means that fundraising is urgently needed.
Donations are still tax deductible.

Please add your information to
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOCamp_2/Fundraising if you would like to pledge
or request money.

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] XOCamp fundraising (and, please sign up to donate)

[Jameson Quinn]

>
> >
> >> As for a mechanism for distribution, I propose the following. 50% of the
> >> money would be divided equally between applicants, and 50% would be
> divided
> >> proportional to any remaining travel costs.
>
> I would just pay all travel costs and food and be done with it, and
> see about some sort of low-cost, close-together group lodging, except
> for people who can find free crash space and prefer that. What else do
> people need? Anybody know of a big house we could take over? With good
> bandwidth?


Obviously, if we have enough money, we pay all travel costs, and any extra
goes to Sugarlabs. My proposal was what to do if there isn't enough money.
If we had $600 and two people came for $400 and $800, my system would give
them $350 and $550 and they would pay $50 and $250 out of pocket. This
system is proposed as the average of the possible fair proposals (even split
and proportional split). It is explicitly intended to be nobody's first
choice, even mine (I'd go proportional), so as to presuppose an attitude of
compromise.
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] XOCamp fundraising (and, please sign up to donate)

[Jameson Quinn]

OK. It seems that Sugar Labs is willing to receive
donations<http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Donate>to the travel
fund. That would make such donations
*tax-deductible*. I also got a couple of +1's to my 50/50 disbursement plan:
half the money split equally, half of it split proportionally to remaining
direct travel expenses (ie, plane/bus/train tickets). I am also taking the
liberty of assuming that people can put up the money and then get reimbursed
at the event. If I'm wrong -- if there is anybody who cannot afford to buy a
ticket, but could with some help -- please respond to me *soon*.

There are currently $3150 of pledges and
donations<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2/Fundraising#Donations>on
OLPC's wiki. There are 6 requests for funds there, and one other that
I
know of (aa, that's you). Average travel cost is currently around $685.
Let's say that there will be 9 people receiving partial travel scholarships,
and that the average travel cost will stay about the same (aa's expensive
Uruguay flight and two cheap domestic ones). That would mean that the
average subsidy would be about $350, or $175 + 1/3 of remaining costs. I
suspect that these are relatively conservative assumptions, so you can
reasonably hope for more, but you should not, of course, absolutely rely on
even this much. This prospect is clear enough to make the difference for me;
I can't really afford full price, but hoping for this I will buy my ticket
soon.

I think that since Sugar Labs is willing to take tax-deductible
contributions for this, it should be relatively easy to fundraise another
couple of thousand dollars, which would leave participants paying at most a
small amount without too much risk of having money left over to refund to
people.* If anybody reading this is a regular contributor to OLPC news*,
that would be a good place for us to ask for money; if nobody steps forward,
I guess I'll do that next week. Also, fundraise with your organizations if
possible - any first-world organizations which care about sugar should be
able to add a few hundred to the pot.

Please, anybody making a donation for this purpose, note it on the wiki
(link above) with the words "donated to Sugarlabs". Otherwise, the donation
will just get lumped in with other sugarlabs donations.

Have I missed anything?

Jameson

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:11 PM, David Farning wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Jameson Quinn 
> wrote:
> > It's getting to be time to buy tickets for XOCamp 2, which is in under a
> > month now. Those of us who'd like to come from far away would love to
> know
> > whether we can get some financial support for our journey. However, the
> > relevant wiki page is somewhat out-of-date. When I asked today on IRC:
> >
> > [13:45]  yes, but both SL and OLPC have issues with actually
> being
> > the coordinating party; there are tax implications
> > [13:45]  it might even be best if someone not affiliated took on
> the
> > coordination
> > [13:46]  poke bernie hard about it; he's a little more empowered
> to
> > act on behalf of SL than I am to act on behalf of OLPC
> > [13:46]  and i'm sure that if you volunteer to help w/ the
> > coordination, it would be appreciated
> >
> > So bernie, consider this a hard poke. Others who'd be willing to donate,
> > consider this a request to add your pledge to the wiki page. Anyone
> outside
> > SL/OLPC but inside the US who can do the actual money coordination
> (funnel
> > money through checks and/or paypal, devote some time to handling the
> issues
> > involved) please step forward. And in general, this is also me
> volunteering
> > to take some tasks: if someone will explain to me how the money part
> works,
> > I would be happy to do a fundraising post for OLPC News, to blog it on
> the
> > planet, to keep the wiki up-to-date, and/or to be in charge of contacting
> > people.
>
> Thanks for stepping up!  You are now the official point of contact for
> Sugar Labs at the up coming event:)
>
> Some thoughts. Sugar Labs held SugarCamp last month.  At that event
> Sugar Labs struggled with many of its hard problems.  I expect that
> OLPC will be looking at some of its hard problems this time around.  A
> full week of hard problems is really long.
>
> From an SL point of view let's turn this into a fun community
> engagement event.  In stead of talks, let have work shops and work
> sessions were we focus on engaging the community.  Then, we will be
> freshed enough to listen or participate in OLPC talks that pertain to
> us.
>
> I can help you through the Sugar Labs stuff.  Paul Frields, of Fedora
> Fame, will be the best resource on how to run a successful event.
>
> dav

[IAEP] XOCamp fundraising (and, please sign up to donate)

[Jameson Quinn]

It's getting to be time to buy tickets for XOCamp 2, which is in under a
month now. Those of us who'd like to come from far away would love to know
whether we can get some financial support for our journey. However,
the relevant
wiki page  is somewhat
out-of-date. When I asked today on IRC:

[13:45]  yes, but both SL and OLPC have issues with actually being
the coordinating party; there are tax implications
[13:45]  it might even be best if someone not affiliated took on the
coordination
[13:46]  poke bernie hard about it; he's a little more empowered to
act on behalf of SL than I am to act on behalf of OLPC
[13:46]  and i'm sure that if you volunteer to help w/ the
coordination, it would be appreciated

So bernie, consider this a hard poke. Others who'd be willing to donate,
consider this a request to add your pledge to the wiki page. Anyone outside
SL/OLPC but inside the US who can do the actual money coordination (funnel
money through checks and/or paypal, devote some time to handling the issues
involved) please step forward. And in general, this is also me volunteering
to take some tasks: if someone will explain to me how the money part works,
I would be happy to do a fundraising post for OLPC News, to blog it on the
planet, to keep the wiki up-to-date, and/or to be in charge of contacting
people.

As for a mechanism for distribution, I propose the following. 50% of the
money would be divided equally between applicants, and 50% would be divided
proportional to any remaining travel costs. We can also ask people for whom
it is not the single primary reason for the trip to please take only half of
the money. I think that anybody who's going to come to Boston specifically
to attend XOCamp, from more than 500 miles away, should be funded, whether
or not they are signed up as speakers. I don't see enough benefit in trying
to divide people by merit or need for it to be worth the drama. (And I say
this as an applicant who's about average in most regards; I can't even think
of any plausible proposal that would benefit me specifically).

Cheers,
Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Add Fedora logo to Sugar

[Jameson Quinn]

>
> >> Small, highly adaptable and can quickly cover large distances by
> >> gliding. Worth considering if you want to stay with the "Sugar"
> >> name. I have a colleague who can help prepare an SVG logo if needed.
> >
> >
> > You must have missed some discussion:
> >
> > http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Suggie_glidie_3.svg
>
> But one more logo/mascot proposal may not hurt ;)
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu


As the creator of the first "sugar glider" proposal, I'd welcome
counterproposals, and might well vote them up.

Also, my proposal was more a mascot than a logo; it is a touch too
graphically complex for a logo. If people are interested, I could do a
simpler logo which was based on the XO logo, without fingers and eyes - just
ears, forehead stripe, wings (phalanges), and tail. The inner X would be
softened as with the later versions of my mascot proposal, including in
back.

Jameson

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Branding and mascot (Was: Re: Color combos for the logo)

[Jameson Quinn]

Not stylized enough for you? That's as stylized as I can do it. My version
of stylized is control-L in inkscape.

But I do have a version for using as the xo
icon.
(Again, I do not think this should be the default, but it is a nice
customization.)

Jameson

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 3:23 PM, Bernie Innocenti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
>
> > Wow.  +1 to the Sugar Glider.
>
> Reminds me of another project:
>  http://www.minix3.org/doc/raccoon-2.jpg
>  http://vig-fp.prenhall.com/bigcovers/0131429388.jpg
>
> But, well, racoons are not marsupials so the similarity is just
> accidental :-)
>
> Can someone good at drawing come up with a stylized or cartoonish
> version of the Sugar Glider?
>
> --
>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
>  \X/  Sugar Labs   - http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Color combos for the logo

[Jameson Quinn]

>
>
> While the logo concept is based on the treatment of icons in the Sugar
> interface, my initial feeling was that we should restrict the color
> combinations to only a few carefully chosen ones, both for recognizability
> and optimal control.


I agree on the limited choices, but would like to see the center color vary
across the choices, as on the XO.

>
> Color aside, I don't believe the logo should be altered in any other way.
> The change in color in itself is enough variation, and we need to pin down
> other variables to maintain a degree of consistency.


I think that there should be two versions: sugarlabs is the organization,
sugar is the product.

Also, when I requested the SVG for mashups, I did not mean altering it, I
meant things like rotating it and including it in larger graphics. Putting
it on the screen of a laptop, for instance. I still think that an open
source project should have an open source - vector - logo.

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Branding and mascot (Was: Re: Color combos for the logo)

[Jameson Quinn]

Last try. Smilier, the X is closer to the real animal, and bigger eyes. On
IRC they say this one's much cuter.

http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Suggie_glidie_3.svg

Same questions:

>
>
> 0. Is anybody worse than neutral on the idea of a mascot (which would not
> replace the xo icon or sugar logo)?
> 1. Do people like the species?
> 2. Do people like the idea of incorporating the XO logo and the two-color
> look?
> 3. If the above two are "yes", then what is wrong with this one? Should it
> be more cartoony - bigger eyes and head, fewer fingers? Is it still too
> flasher-y? Other suggestions?
>
>
Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Branding and mascot (Was: Re: Color combos for the logo)

[Jameson Quinn]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 12:52 PM, Caroline Meeks
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

>
> My thinking is as follows.
>
> When a kid is using Sugar you want them emotionally engaged with their work
> and the other kids, who they probably know in real life.  The XO is a great
> icon for transparently representing other people and letting your use that
> as a symbol for a mental model of them.
>
> When we are teaching about Sugar, making powerpoints, books etc.  We want
> to emotionally engage out readers hindbrain, with cute images that helps the
> person learning about Sugar feel like they are having fun.  I'm getting this
> from a Kathy Sierra talk.  So a mascot is not something that appear in the
> UI of Sugar. Its a branding element we put in book and slide shows and to
> spark up web sites. Maybe we also make it a fictional kid character we use
> in examples.
>

I agree 100%. This is not meant as part of the default interface, but has
its place.


>
> I like the animal, but  I think we need a cuter version then this first
> try.



I made a second attempt at http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Suggie_glidie.svg .
A bit of skew to get the gliding vibe, a bit more concave at the edges to
reduce the flasher vibe, and some real sugar colors to see how that works.
However, this is still pretty close to the real animal except for a bigger
head (http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Bigsuggie-xo.svg now has the references
to the source images). So I have some basic questions:

0. Is anybody worse than neutral on the idea of a mascot (which would not
replace the xo icon or sugar logo)?
1. Do people like the species?
2. Do people like the idea of incorporating the XO logo and the two-color
look?
3. If the above two are "yes", then what is wrong with this one? Should it
be more cartoony - bigger eyes and head, fewer fingers? Is it still too
flasher-y? Other suggestions?
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Branding and mascot (Was: Re: Color combos for the logo)

[Jameson Quinn]

I absolutely agree that the xo icon is the best for inside the interface,
and that the sugarlabs word is a good general logo for sugarlabs.

But there's no reason we can't have a mascot too.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: (provisionally named)
Suggie
!
<>___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Branding and mascot (Was: Re: Color combos for the logo)

[Jameson Quinn]

>
> Trivia: the modern German name "Kurzkopfgleitbeutler" sounds quite
> funny, although it doesn't mention Sugar anymore, whereas the famous
> zoologist Alfred Brehm called it "Zuckereichhorn":
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Zuckereichhorn_brehm.png
>
> - Bert -
>

While we're vetting it (pun intended) in other languages: in Spanish
wikipedia the page is by the latin name, but it suggests "Falangérido de
Azúcar" as a common name. Which is awkward-sounding for such a cute critter,
but at least it has sugar in the name.

No page in the nepali wikipedia :)

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Branding and mascot (Was: Re: Color combos for the logo)

[Jameson Quinn]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 6:59 AM, Christian Schmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

>
> >> 1. I really think the svg should be up in a public place, as well as
> >> (references for) the font (is that the ubuntu font, or other?).
>
> I can do this, but I'm not sure that SVG is needed. We currently have
> high-resolution RGB PNGs, and I could also upload CMYK EPS files for use in
> print.
>

As tomeu said on IRC, "isn't the logo open-source?" Inkscape is a great
tool, and it is much easier to do a mashup of the logo with an svg. And as
my example with the Obama campaign showed, it really is possible to do good
branding at the grass roots. Sure, there were probably anti-Obama spoofs
which used "his" font and logo, but they just helped his branding; and that
was in a far more divisive environment than Sugar.

Just release the svg; we promise we will be nice to it.

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

[IAEP] Branding and mascot (Was: Re: Color combos for the logo)

[Jameson Quinn]

I think that Sugarlabs can do better at branding in general. A good branding
presence has related logos for the organization and for the product; color
swatches, 4 or 5 at a time (not just 2-by-2; including greys, we have at
most 3 at a time); a decorative font; and more workaday serif and sans-serif
fonts chosen to go well with the decorative font.

I'm not saying we need all of this tomorrow, but that should be the
direction we're heading. Think, for instance, of the excellent branding of
the Obama campaign, which AFAIK was completely available to the grassroots
and nevertheless (in a totally content-free regard) kicked the pants off of
McCain's more-centralized campaign.

Immediate action items:

1. I really think the svg should be up in a public place, as well as
(references for) the font (is that the ubuntu font, or other?).

2. We need a logo for sugar, as opposed to sugar labs and OLPC. The XO dude
is inevitably going to have associations with OLPC which might turn off
other hardware vendors. I guess the obvious option would be the "sugar" part
of the sugarlabs logo.

3. Personally, I'd love a mascot too; kids like cuddly. My initial
brainstorms:

associated with sugar?
Pollinators (nectar)
Hummingbirds (too western-hemisphere)
Bats (anything nocturnal is culturally dangerous, but I love 'em)
Bees (good possibility)
flies (yuck)
ants (has good community associations)
gingerbread man (cute, but a little too gendered and shrek-y)
bears (too generic)
sugarcane fieldworker (yeah, right)

I just googled and OMG WE HAVE A
WINNERas
far as I am concerned. That is cute beyond words and it is called a
"sugar glider". I'd never heard of that name even though my mom's Australian
but it is beyond my wildest dreams.

What do other people think?

Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] who is homung

[Jameson Quinn]

Oh and by the way, I'm in Guatemala, not Nicaragua. Soon to be split between
Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico.

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 10:17 PM, Jameson Quinn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

> yep, it's me. I was actually hoping to keep the association between my
> handle and my real name as far off google as possible, obviously given that
> launchpad profile I have failed. Anyway, it's no secret to any humans, just
> something I wanted to be moderately hard to google.
>
> David, did you have any questions or suggestions for me?
>
> Cheers,
> Jameson
>
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] who is homung

[Jameson Quinn]

yep, it's me. I was actually hoping to keep the association between my
handle and my real name as far off google as possible, obviously given that
launchpad profile I have failed. Anyway, it's no secret to any humans, just
something I wanted to be moderately hard to google.

David, did you have any questions or suggestions for me?

Cheers,
Jameson
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] wiki wacking

[Jameson Quinn]

I agree with Nate. Redirects should not be a goal, and of course you should
delete them if they break, but until then just leave them - they do more
good than harm (unless people start to see creating redirects as an
important task).

Jameson

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 9:08 PM, David Farning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

> Wiki maintenance is a nightmare:(  There a million theories on maintaining
> wiki.
> One theory is make it flat and let the user search.
>
> The theory that I am using is to create a simple framework of
> NAME/[home|Getting involved||Todo|].  We try to keep theses basic
> pages in good shape.  The rest get pruned and merged until they fit
> somewhere.
>
> It is far from perfect.  But it works until we can find someone with
> more time and data management skills:)
>
> david
>
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 8:49 PM, Nate Ridderman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > Why get rid of redirects that are working fine? I see some deletions of
> > these in the logs. Earlier I noticed that [[Sugar]] had been deleted,
> which
> > redirects to [[What is Sugar?]].
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Nate
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 8:53 PM, David Farning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Just a heads up that I am doing a bit of wikiwacking
> >>
> >> Sugarcamp* -> MarketingTeam/Events/Sugarcamp Boston 2008*
> >> Regional Sugar Labs -> Local Labs
> >>
> >> General pruning of dead redirects and blank pages.
> >>
> >> david
> >> ___
> >> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> >> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
> >
> >
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Fwd: [OLPC-SF] Not new, but needs to be addressed

[Jameson Quinn]

Here is my list of complaints from that evaluation, which was obviously
using a 600-series OS version.


   - not traditional desktop metaphor
   - no tabbed browsing
   - flaky wireless
   - some bad machines: difficulty turning on and peeling mousepad.
   - flaky mouse
   - has a mouse instead of mouse-alternatives (?)
   - popup menus too slow
   - activity startup too slow
   - see address in browser bar should be easier (fixed)
   - hard to save to USB. *Should be accessible from within an activity.*
   - scroll bars too small, especially for subsidiary panes (interesting
   issue for grab key, BTW)

I may have missed a few, but I think that most of these are either already
the focus of effort (and progress) or have been decided against by many
here. The one I bolded is I think a useful one: *why not have a "keep to
USB" and "keep to SD" option in the keep dropdown menu in the activity
toolbar*?

Jameson

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:53 AM, Edward Cherlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> FYI.
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Valerie Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:13 AM
> Subject: [OLPC-SF] Not new, but needs to be addressed
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> This just in from a well-meaning colleague who was using XOs. There
> are lots of issues identified here. There is a serious
> failure-to-communicate. These are real concerns for many people and
> this is what they hear. It is easy to dismiss this as Leigh's problem,
> but it isn't his alone. Everyone of us associated with OLPC needs to
> do a better job at bridging this gap.
>
> Are there good sources of information that address these issues and
> guidelines that would ease the transition from PC to XO in situations
> like this?
>
>
> http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/my-experience-with-olpc-in-tuvalu/
>
> ..Valerie
> ___
> OLPC-SF mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sf
>
>
>
> --
> Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
> And Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep