[sugar] Fwd: 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

[Edward Cherlin]

Sorry, this got away before I added the rest of the recipients.


-- Forwarded message --
From: Edward Cherlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:25 PM
Subject: Re: 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.
To: Chris Ball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Chris Ball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm learning Spanish at the moment, and I wish the XO made it easier
> for me.  I don't have any knowledge of what the right way to do either
> conventional or constructionist language learning on computers is; if
> anyone has much experience with either, I'd love to hear about it.

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/une.education.pour.demain/materiels_pedago/sw/swprese.htm
Caleb Gattegno: The Silent Way

The Silent Way is the pedagogical approach created by Gattegno for
teaching foreign languages; the objective is for students to work as
autonomous language learners.

> I have some obvious candidates for software that could be produced in
> mind:
>
>   * A method -- similar to Scott's recent GtkLabel overlay for allowing
> strings inside Sugar and activities to be translated -- that does a
> dictionary lookup of a word on the screen and overlays the
> translation of that word into a local language.  This should be
> activity-agnostic, if possible.  For bonus points, translate
> phrases instead of just words.

I worked once for Sentius Corp., which had such software for providing
either translations or definitions through pop-up "portlets". This
kind of software is in wide use.

Sites such as translate.google.com and
http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx or http://www.rikai.com
offer various ways of doing this, including copy and paste, or
entering a URL to get a version of a page annotated dynamically.

>   * Perhaps some kind of Pronunciation Activity that gives you words
> in the target language, speaks them to you, explains what they
> mean in your local language, and asks you to speak them back,
> perhaps grading your response?  (All but the last part is already
> possible to do manually in the Words activity, but not in a
> structured way.)

Our text-to-speech engine will be available for all Activities. In
addition to speaking selected text in any supported language, it will
highlight the point of pronunciation as it reads. It can be adapted to
a language lesson Activity.

>   * Is there any free content that matches iconic images to words,
> so that language vocabulary could be taught even without textual
> translation to a local language?

We ought to be able to combine Google Translate and Google Images
using Google APIs.

There are a number of picture dictionaries or visual dictionaries, in
which all of the parts of an object are labeled in the target
language. We could ask for a license, or create our own. We could
throw a draft together out of free clip art in fairly short order, and
get our artists to do something even better for global publication.

> Feel free to come up with questions/ideas around language learning on
> the XO in general in this thread, and they'll make it into the
> conference talk.

There is a substantial body of Free Software for language learning,
and other Computational Linguistics software that could be adapted to
language learning.

o Content: Literature; man pages and other documentation; localization files

o Dictionaries

o Typing tutors for various writing systems

o Kana drill and practice

o Flashcard programs usable for vocabulary, simple grammar drills
(plurals, genders, tenses) and somewhat more.

o Spelling and grammar checkers

What we need most is a Transformational Grammar engine to drill more
advanced constructions.

>From simple transformations, such as "I am going out."-->"We are going
out." to such things as counterfactual conditionals. "He went."-->"Had
he gone..." or "If he had gone...", including different patterns for
the formal, even the old-fashioned (to prepare students for
literature) and the more colloquial. Or dialect. "If'n he went...", if
a student so chooses.

A quite decent summary of some of the development of this field is in
>From algorithms to generative grammar and back again
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/goldsmith/Papers/CLS2004Algorithms.pdf,
by John Goldsmith, The University of Chicago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldsmith
http://hum.uchicago.edu/~jagoldsm/Webpage/index.html

The author describes one of his research interests as "unsupervised
learning of morphology". Unfortunately for us, that means unsupervised
computers attempting to analyse word structure, with a 70-80% success
rate measured by words in the corpus. It has nothing to do with human
learning or the grammar of sentences.

An algorithm for the unsupervised learning of morphology
http://hum.uchicago.edu/~jagoldsm/Papers/algorithm.pdf

 Abstract

This paper describes in detail an algorithm for the unsupervised
learning of natural lan-
guage morpholog

Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Files

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Mel Chua wrote:
> I'm going to try to reword this as a list of features that would potentially
> be good for the XO to have

Me too.  I should make my bias clear:  I believe we should put our efforts
into improving our existing datastore/Journal implementations, focusing on
pure-userspace solutions with carefully considered semantics, robustness,
and performance properties.  I have yet to be convinced that any
filesystem-like proposal can provide the behaviors that I believe we
require.  If we give up on these behaviors, then there is hardly any
reason left to develop Sugar, and we should instead just ship a standard
lightweight desktop.

> 1) Compatibility with existing applications

Problem: In current Sugar, Linux/X applications that are ported without
source-level changes cannot retrieve and store data to the Journal.

Erik's solution: Throw out the current datastore and API, and replace it
with a straight POSIX filesystem.  Remove the Rainbow layer that prevents
Activities from accessing files to which access has not been granted
explicitly by the user.

Other solutions:
 - Throw out the current API and replace it with an API implementing
similar semantics but routed through the VFS layer instead of DBUS.
 - Write a userspace wrapper that copies files out of the datastore using
the current API to an appropriate location, and then copies the modified
files back into the datastore when the file is updated (e.g. using inotify).
 - Replace the GTK filechooser with a Datastore-aware chooser (e.g.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal%2C_reloaded)

> 2) Data access and user-perceived reliability:

Problem: Users can't find things because they're not providing enough
metadata for search to work, and there's too much stuff for them to find
it without search.

Erik's solution:  Only keep objects by saving them as files.  This forces
users either to choose a unique name for each item they produce or to
close an Activity instance without producing a file.  Unique names provide
searchable metadata that may improve the effectiveness of search, and
requiring users to type in a unique name in order to save may reduce the
number of objects that are saved, allowing easier non-search navigation.

Other solutions:
 - Use modal dialogs to encourage users to provide better metadata such as
titles.  (We may then easily experiment with making titles optional or
mandatory.)
 - Reduce the number of unwanted objects that accumulate
   - by providing a "draft mode" option that does not produce any object
 - but still produces a listing in a separate Actions view (see
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Journal)
   - by resuming previous instances by default, so as to encourage
continued work on existing objects
   - by automatically "starring" only those objects that have been titled
  - and automatically deleting the oldest unstarred objects when
necessary to free space or declutter the Journal
  - and emphasizing or only showing starred objects in the default
view of the Journal

> 3) Resting on upstream stability:

Problem: Our current datastore is buggy.

Erik's solution: Replace the datastore with a standard Linux filesystem
that already has millions of users and is maintained by upstream developers.

Other solutions:
 - Write a dramatically simplified datastore that is less likely to have
serious bugs.
 - Join with Gnome and other projects to produce an upstream datastore
that serves our needs, is maintained independently, and has many stakeholders.
 - Devote more OLPC developer time to the datastore.

> 4) Collaboration

Problem: Users can't send Objects to each other directly over the network.

Erik's solution: store Objects directly in a Linux filesystem, and then
use a standard file-sharing mechanism such as an HTTP server to list these
files, possibly with some access restrictions.

Other solutions:
 - Use Scott's HTTP-based networked object sharing system that runs over
Xapian and the datastore
 - Implement the push-to-share plan drawn up at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Specifications/Object_Transfers

> 5) Hackability

Problem:  A sophisticated Journal-like interface abstracts away the
behaviors of the underlying filesystem.  This means that using the
interface does not provide children with knowledge required to understand
and alter its implementation.

Erik's solution:  Provide a direct view into the underlying filesystem as
a first-class component of the interface.  In this way, children will gain
familiarity with POSIX filesystem semantics and so be better prepared to
modify Sugar.

Other solutions:
 - Extend the Journal so that it is easy to write Activities without
touching the filesystem.
 - Accept the two systems as a necessary cost in order to provide a richer
user experience.
 - Regard the filesystem as a low-level implementation detail, as we
regard a raw block device.

> 6) System modularity

Problem: The datastore is a linchpin of the system.  If it fai

Re: [sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

To state the obvious: language is the means for human collaboration and, 
therefore, central to the XO mission. I also believe that the computer 
can be more effectively used to support language learning than it is.

The target user for the XO is a primary school child in a developing 
country. Consider the language learning task faced by this child. First, 
the child is learning his native language (mother tongue) at a rate of 
approximately 1000 words per year. Second, the child is learning the 
language (or medium) of instruction. This may, or may not, be the same 
as the native language. Third, the child is attempting to learn a 
foreign language (probably English). Note: research has shown that a 
child typically learns new vocabulary at a constant rate. So while 
learning new languages appears easy for a child, a bilingual child may 
have a smaller vocabulary in the native language as a result.

Learning English is likely to be a priority for many or even most of the 
target users. Educators distinguish teaching of English as a foreign 
language into ESL and EFL. ESL is the situation in which the student is 
living in an English-speaking community while EFL is for students living 
in a community speaking the native-language. In most cases the XO will 
support the EFL model. Moreover, it many cases the teacher will not be 
fluent in English.

Current dogma among educators is that learning a foreign language 
involves four 'competencies': listening, reading, speaking, and writing. 
These should be learned in the context of the culture of the people 
speaking the language. Each of these should receive essentially equal 
emphasis.

The rote learning of vocabulary and study of grammar are somewhat 
deprecated. In practice, however, I believe the traditional 'Latin' 
course (grammar, vocabulary, reading, recitation, and writing) is still 
predominant simply because it is well understood, practical in a 
classroom setting, and able to be 'assessed'.

An overlooked point here is that learning to read in one's native 
language is very different from learning to read in a foreign language. 
In the first case, one is trying to connect the printed word with the 
word in one's current spoken vocabulary. In the second case, one is 
trying to recognize a word and then remember it's meaning in one's 
native language.

Greg Thomson has provided a quite complete roadmap to learning a foreign 
language at

http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/LANGUAGELEARNING/LANGUAGELEARNING.HTM

which is based on two important ideas: one, that the student should have 
a 1:1 relation with a native-speaker of the language being learned (a 
language resource person) and two, that the first task is to learn to 
understand the spoken language. I believe his materials can form the 
basis for an organized approach to use the computer to support language 
learning.

Short of viable speech recognition, language learning on a computer is 
going to involve keyboarding. We need tools (esp. games) to help 
children learn to touch-type. Activities such as Chat and Speak provide 
a motive for learning.

Learning vocabulary is central to learning to communicate. However, this 
learning should result from frequent exposure and opportunities to use 
the vocabulary which a computer makes easy. Traditional flashcards are 
text-based. We need 'flashcards' which speak a word or phrase and allow 
the learner to select a corresponding image.

Learning to pronounce a foreign language correctly is believed to be 
easier for children than adults. Songs and poetry can certainly help.
Without speech recognition, the XO can support a child hearing a word or 
phrase, recording it, and then hearing the two together for comparison.

In summary, language learning is central to the mission of the XO, 
Computer usage in language learning is way below what is needed and 
possible. The XO with access to the internet, the ability to collaborate 
within communities and across communities, the ability to record and 
display images, record and play sounds, and to enter and display 
information in most of the world's languages gives it great potential.

Efficient tools and content development depends on a clear understanding 
of how languages are learned and the paradigm-shift possible by a focus 
on 1:1 learning and the immediate use of new language skills in 
collaboration.

Personally, I am looking to developing, adapting, or using tools on the 
XO which support Greg Thomson's model/roadmap for learning a foreign 
language. A short-term problem is that most of the available content is 
proprietary; however, I believe the OLPC/Sugar/XO community worldwide 
can provide these materials if we have a well-defined direction and a 
easily-available repository for free content.

Tony

Tony

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Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Files

[david]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2008, Mel Chua wrote:


1) Compatibility with existing applications

Feature: Making it possible to convert Linux/X applications into Activity
bundles, retaining all important functionality, without source code
alterations.

Current Sugar: Has a custom API for saving data that's "difficult to work
with" (help clarifying, please - why is this hard?)


part of it is that it's just so different than any other system, part of 
it is that there are many more pieces involved (for many apps there is no 
other reason to use dbus for example)



3) Resting on upstream stability:

Feature: It should be possible for upstream contributors to see, at any
given point in time, how features on, code in, and bugs filed against the XO
trace back to the applicable things that they can fix in the standard
version of their upstream project.

Current Sugar: Actually, I don't know how this works at all. Have there been
problems getting needed help from upstream? Why?


there are probably many things that never get submitted to upstream, 
simply becouse they are such drastic departures



Potential solutions: Use the standard versions of upstream projects without
modification. Others?


seperate out the modifications that you want to support small screens, low 
memory, etc from those that would be needed to support sugar specific 
things like the journal.



4) Collaboration

Feature: Provide a standard mechanism for Activity collaboration between an
XO and another computer not running Sugar.

Current Sugar: Install Sugar on the other computer and use Jabber to
collaborate. (Time-consuming, and not always possible given time and
privilege constraints on the non-Sugar computer.)

Potential solutions: Use standard non-Sugar-to-non-Sugar computer
collaboration systems, including thoes based on file-based asynchronous
collaboration. Make cross-platform non-Sugar versions of Sugar Activities
(and a script to autogenerate these from native-Sugar Activities) that can
somehow collaborate seamlessly with XOs. Others?


there are other softwrae packages out there that can collaberate over a 
Jabber server. In many ways I'd love to see the Jabber-based collaberation 
become the standard mode with the pure XO-XO mode intercepting the Jabber 
communication from the software and doing more efficiant distribution of 
the information. this would also let the XO serve as a Jabber server for a 
non-Sugar machine. it doesn't need to handle many users, just handling a 
few would be enough.



5) Hackability

Feature: Indicate how an Activity's functionality and the objects it creates
in the Journal map to editable source code files on the XO. This indication
should be shown directly in the Sugar GUI for an Activity and also when a
user is viewing source code for that Activity. (This can probably be phrased
much more coherently. Help?)

Current Sugar: There are currently two "views" that coders have to switch
between; the underlying filesystem with .py files in nested and named
folders, and the Journal view for the same Activity, which does not (afaik)
expose a way to get into the source code through the GUI. (Exception: if you
hit the "view source" key for Chat, one file of the Chat code opens in Pippy
and is editable. Even for this, though, if you want to edit other Chat
files, you have to navigate the filesystem.)

Potential solutions: Have them be the same view. Others?


they don't need to be exactly the same view, but if you know one you 
should be able to track it down in the other.


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Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Files

[Mel Chua]

I'm going to try to reword this as a list of features that would potentially
be good for the XO to have, followed with a section on how Sugar currently
addresses the problem, and then potential solutions, including - but not
limited to - "modifying the datastore to provide human-readable file names
on disk," as Ben Schwartz has rephrased "use filesystems."

 I'm doing this because I think that Erik points out some good problems to
tackle in his email, and I'd like to take a moment to explore the range of
possible solutions instead of framing this solely as a Filesystem Vs
No-Filesystem argument. (This discussion may eventually make more sense on a
wiki page.) The original email is at
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020692.html for
reference.

-Mel

PS: Metaquestion - is this a helpful way of looking at things? I did this as
an experiment, with much help from bemasc and Jerub over IRC, and would like
to know if this actually advances the discussion.

- begin reply! 

1) Compatibility with existing applications

Feature: Making it possible to convert Linux/X applications into Activity
bundles, retaining all important functionality, without source code
alterations.

Current Sugar: Has a custom API for saving data that's "difficult to work
with" (help clarifying, please - why is this hard?)

Potential solutions: I've heard "using a standard filesystem," "Pippy does
part of this already," and others... please discuss.

2) Data access and user-perceived reliability:

Feature: Encourage users to add appropriate metadata (such as titles) to
objects they want to save by requiring them to explicitly decline to do so.

Current Sugar: Tries to do this already in practice and in future design in
a number of ways - users can explicitly name and save (keep) items in their
Journal, there are Journal design documents that detail separate views for
looking at a history of user actions vs. finding files (
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Journal), etc. - how can we better
articular the desired feature here, using words more concrete than "it
should be easier"?

Potential solutions: Ben broke it down into complaint/solution: "The
complaint is that users can't find things because they're not providing
enough metadata for search to work, and there's too much stuff for them to
find it without search. The solution is to encourage users to provide better
metadata, and reduce the number of unwanted objects that are produced."
Stephen suggested that the Journal capture metadata on how long a given
Activity was open as another metric to sort by. Erik's original email
suggested using a standard filesystem and requiring users to manually save
things with unique names (rather than autosaving). Others?

3) Resting on upstream stability:

Feature: It should be possible for upstream contributors to see, at any
given point in time, how features on, code in, and bugs filed against the XO
trace back to the applicable things that they can fix in the standard
version of their upstream project.

Current Sugar: Actually, I don't know how this works at all. Have there been
problems getting needed help from upstream? Why?

Potential solutions: Use the standard versions of upstream projects without
modification. Others?

4) Collaboration

Feature: Provide a standard mechanism for Activity collaboration between an
XO and another computer not running Sugar.

Current Sugar: Install Sugar on the other computer and use Jabber to
collaborate. (Time-consuming, and not always possible given time and
privilege constraints on the non-Sugar computer.)

Potential solutions: Use standard non-Sugar-to-non-Sugar computer
collaboration systems, including thoes based on file-based asynchronous
collaboration. Make cross-platform non-Sugar versions of Sugar Activities
(and a script to autogenerate these from native-Sugar Activities) that can
somehow collaborate seamlessly with XOs. Others?

5) Hackability

Feature: Indicate how an Activity's functionality and the objects it creates
in the Journal map to editable source code files on the XO. This indication
should be shown directly in the Sugar GUI for an Activity and also when a
user is viewing source code for that Activity. (This can probably be phrased
much more coherently. Help?)

Current Sugar: There are currently two "views" that coders have to switch
between; the underlying filesystem with .py files in nested and named
folders, and the Journal view for the same Activity, which does not (afaik)
expose a way to get into the source code through the GUI. (Exception: if you
hit the "view source" key for Chat, one file of the Chat code opens in Pippy
and is editable. Even for this, though, if you want to edit other Chat
files, you have to navigate the filesystem.)

Potential solutions: Have them be the same view. Others?

6) System modularity

Feature: Code modules and applications that save objects should be decoupled
from code modules and applications used to sea

Re: [sugar] [Localization] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

[Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero]

Hello Chris

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:46 PM, Chris Ball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>   * A method -- similar to Scott's recent GtkLabel overlay for allowing
> strings inside Sugar and activities to be translated -- that does a
> dictionary lookup of a word on the screen and overlays the
> translation of that word into a local language.  This should be
> activity-agnostic, if possible.  For bonus points, translate
> phrases instead of just words.


Nice idea

>
>
>   * Perhaps some kind of Pronunciation Activity that gives you words
> in the target language, speaks them to you, explains what they
> mean in your local language, and asks you to speak them back,
> perhaps grading your response?  (All but the last part is already
> possible to do manually in the Words activity, but not in a
> structured way.)
>

We can use HablarConSara
(http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:HablarConSara-1.xo)  for this purpose, we can
tweak her database and teach her how to respond to pronunciation inquiries.

>
>
Another idea is using infoslice to translate little slices of wikipedia or
texts  and allowing the writer to edit the automated (google translated),
translation for giving meaning to the overall result. This would be like a
''translator'' activity.


(just thoughts)



-- 
Rafael Ortiz
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Re: [sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

[Eben Eliason]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 7:46 PM, Chris Ball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm learning Spanish at the moment, and I wish the XO made it easier
> for me.  I don't have any knowledge of what the right way to do either
> conventional or constructionist language learning on computers is; if
> anyone has much experience with either, I'd love to hear about it.
>
> I have some obvious candidates for software that could be produced in
> mind:
>
>   * A method -- similar to Scott's recent GtkLabel overlay for allowing
> strings inside Sugar and activities to be translated -- that does a
> dictionary lookup of a word on the screen and overlays the
> translation of that word into a local language.  This should be
> activity-agnostic, if possible.  For bonus points, translate
> phrases instead of just words.

OSX has a really powerful built-in dictionary/thesaurus, which works
in a similar manner.  It's only available anywhere there is selectable
text, but even that is invaluable.  Here's a sample:
http://niquimerret.com/?p=72

You could imagine offering dictionary/thesaurus/translation all in a
similar manner.

- Eben

>   * Perhaps some kind of Pronunciation Activity that gives you words
> in the target language, speaks them to you, explains what they
> mean in your local language, and asks you to speak them back,
> perhaps grading your response?  (All but the last part is already
> possible to do manually in the Words activity, but not in a
> structured way.)
>
>   * Is there any free content that matches iconic images to words,
> so that language vocabulary could be taught even without textual
> translation to a local language?
>
> Feel free to come up with questions/ideas around language learning on
> the XO in general in this thread, and they'll make it into the
> conference talk.
>
> Thanks,
>
> - Chris.
> --
> Chris Ball   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Re: [sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

[Gary C Martin]

On 28 Oct 2008, at 23:46, Chris Ball wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm learning Spanish at the moment, and I wish the XO made it easier
> for me.  I don't have any knowledge of what the right way to do either
> conventional or constructionist language learning on computers is; if
> anyone has much experience with either, I'd love to hear about it.
>
> I have some obvious candidates for software that could be produced in
> mind:
>
>   * A method -- similar to Scott's recent GtkLabel overlay for  
> allowing
> strings inside Sugar and activities to be translated -- that  
> does a
> dictionary lookup of a word on the screen and overlays the
> translation of that word into a local language.  This should be
> activity-agnostic, if possible.  For bonus points, translate
> phrases instead of just words.
>
>   * Perhaps some kind of Pronunciation Activity that gives you words
> in the target language, speaks them to you, explains what they
> mean in your local language, and asks you to speak them back,
> perhaps grading your response?  (All but the last part is already
> possible to do manually in the Words activity, but not in a
> structured way.)
>
>   * Is there any free content that matches iconic images to words,
> so that language vocabulary could be taught even without textual
> translation to a local language?
>
> Feel free to come up with questions/ideas around language learning on
> the XO in general in this thread, and they'll make it into the
> conference talk.

Still being worked on by Urko, but functioned quite well last time I  
tested on an XO. I set it up with a bunch of pathophysiology term  
flash card type questions/answers:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Assimilate

> Thanks,
>
> - Chris.
> -- 
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[sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Sugar as an upstream project

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

I would like to give a try to explaining *why* I think we need to
establish Sugar as an independent upstream project and to discuss a
roadmap on *how* to gradually get there. Given the strong feelings and
the complexity of the issue, I'm willing to give the talk only if we
will be present in person to xocamp (which is also the reason I'm
posting the proposal so late and without a good outline of the talk,
sorry).

Marco
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[sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

[Chris Ball]

Hi,

I'm learning Spanish at the moment, and I wish the XO made it easier
for me.  I don't have any knowledge of what the right way to do either
conventional or constructionist language learning on computers is; if
anyone has much experience with either, I'd love to hear about it.

I have some obvious candidates for software that could be produced in
mind:

   * A method -- similar to Scott's recent GtkLabel overlay for allowing
 strings inside Sugar and activities to be translated -- that does a
 dictionary lookup of a word on the screen and overlays the
 translation of that word into a local language.  This should be
 activity-agnostic, if possible.  For bonus points, translate
 phrases instead of just words.
 
   * Perhaps some kind of Pronunciation Activity that gives you words
 in the target language, speaks them to you, explains what they
 mean in your local language, and asks you to speak them back,
 perhaps grading your response?  (All but the last part is already
 possible to do manually in the Words activity, but not in a
 structured way.)

   * Is there any free content that matches iconic images to words,
 so that language vocabulary could be taught even without textual
 translation to a local language?

Feel free to come up with questions/ideas around language learning on
the XO in general in this thread, and they'll make it into the
conference talk.

Thanks,

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:04 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, some of the API uses "variable" types, so even if the interface does
> not change literally, changing the types involved poses a problem.
>
> E.g., meta-data properties are declared as dictionary with string keys but
> arbitrary values ("a{sv}"). In practice, all meta data values are strings.

They are in practice all strings because all the properties defined by
the datastore are strings, and we didn't persist custom properties
(and so no one used them)?

> They used to use the String ("s") D-Bus type, but now Tomeu changed it to
> byte arrays ("ay"). This is breaking Etoys resume which reads the title
> property and expects a String but gets a ByteArray.

Hm, that sort of sucks. I'd like to hear the rationale of this change
from Tomeu and why we should break API to do it.

Let's keep in mind that we are probably going to change the datastore
API again in the near future. Also, the datastore dbus interface is
currently marked as STABLE, as I pointed out in my API policy email
(that's pending objections/discussion though).

Marco
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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 28.10.2008, at 14:20, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:16 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
>> Guess I should make Etoys cope with the changed datastore interface
>> then.
>
> Did the interface change? I think tomeu new datastore actually has the
> same dbus interface...


Well, some of the API uses "variable" types, so even if the interface  
does not change literally, changing the types involved poses a problem.

E.g., meta-data properties are declared as dictionary with string keys  
but arbitrary values ("a{sv}"). In practice, all meta data values are  
strings. They used to use the String ("s") D-Bus type, but now Tomeu  
changed it to byte arrays ("ay"). This is breaking Etoys resume which  
reads the title property and expects a String but gets a ByteArray.

- Bert -


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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:16 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Guess I should make Etoys cope with the changed datastore interface
> then.

Did the interface change? I think tomeu new datastore actually has the
same dbus interface...

Marco
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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 28.10.2008, at 10:55, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:52 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
>>
>> On 28.10.2008, at 04:01, Simon Schampijer wrote:
>>
>>> Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:

 Dear maintainers,

 the next stable release is  the 30th October.
>>>
>>> Just for the record - it is an unstable release :)
>>
>>
>> Is this basically what's in jhbuild right now?
>
> Yup.


Guess I should make Etoys cope with the changed datastore interface  
then.

- Bert -


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Re: [sugar] Design-meeting REMINDER (Thursday October 16 2008 - 15.30 (UTC)) --- irc.freenode.net, #sugar-meeting

[Christian Marc Schmidt]

Hi everyone


Unfortunately I'm travelling today and won't be able to be on the  
call. Can we do this tomorrow instead?

Christian

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 16, 2008, at 9:26 AM, "Eben Eliason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:

> Hello everyone -
>
> We'll be having an open design meeting today.  There is but one topic
> on the agenda: Journal.  We've spent some time talking about it
> recently, but it's a big part of the UI, and one that's been sorely
> neglected. In particular, we'll be discussing a plan forward given the
> work that both Tomeu and Scott have put into it.
>
> For background:
>
> Tomeu's new datastore:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg08412.html
> Scott's new Journal: http://dev.laptop.org/~cscott/journal2-talk.pdf
>
> - Eben

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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] Jabber Server

[Robert McQueen]

Robert McQueen wrote:
> Morgan Collett wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 03:32, Robert McQueen
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> with this JID" option where you can type it in (or if you want to be
>>> fancy, use your laptop's camera to capture a 2D barcode of the other
>>> user's JID off their laptop screen?). Worth asking Sugar folks about?
>> Ivan mentioned this concept some time ago, and there is code available
>> for it: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-February/011033.html
> 
> This has been a bit of an open issue with Sugar's UI since Dan Williams
> visited Collabora in the UK in 2006 - we actually played around with 2D

Oh, it was early 2007. Anyway, I've made a note on the Sugar 0.84/Ideas
page that we should fix this. :)

Regards,
Rob

-- 
Robert McQueen +44 7876 562 564
Director, Collabora Ltd. http://www.collabora.co.uk

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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] Jabber Server

[Robert McQueen]

Morgan Collett wrote:
> [cc: sugar]
> 
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 03:32, Robert McQueen
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> with this JID" option where you can type it in (or if you want to be
>> fancy, use your laptop's camera to capture a 2D barcode of the other
>> user's JID off their laptop screen?). Worth asking Sugar folks about?
> 
> Ivan mentioned this concept some time ago, and there is code available
> for it: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-February/011033.html

This has been a bit of an open issue with Sugar's UI since Dan Williams
visited Collabora in the UK in 2006 - we actually played around with 2D
barcode stuff then too because it was big hole in our plans. It was
kinda "cool, we can sort that out later because there's no UI for it at
the moment anyway, lets just jerry rig the server in the meantime".
Oops. Maybe that later should be now. :)

The problem: If the server doesn't make assumptions about who should be
allowed to see who (shared roster crap), and you're not willing/able to
expose information about yourself/your activities via Gadget (want to
talk to people on a different server, or non XO users), how do we
actually let people subscribe see each other?

This is a blocker for linking XS servers together (for either
scalability or for collaboration between institutions), and more
generally allowing safe use of non XS servers and talking to non XO
users from Sugar, which I think are all desirable goals.

The very least we could do is tweak presence service to use the user's
nickname to make a JID which is human readable, expose it in the UI
somewhere, and then do what normal XMPP clients do, ie let people type
in JIDs to add as friends, and have a "do you want to be friends with
$foo?" popup/question.

We can do better with 2D barcodes or such, but do we actually want to if
it harms our interoperability? Or do we offer both, so if you have two
XOs life is better, but if you want to talk to [EMAIL PROTECTED] you can
type it in? Eben? :)

> Regards
> Morgan

Regards,
Rob

-- 
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Director, Collabora Ltd. http://www.collabora.co.uk

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Re: [sugar] The XO laptop gets a Windows makeover

[rihowa...@gmail.com]

It was a very poor experiment and the article had a number of items  
of misinformation.  The author of the article did not take advantage  
of the fact that she had 2 XOs .  She did not boot both in Sugar to  
observe the collaboration capabilities of Sugar and Activities.  If  
she had then Sugar would have won hands down.
Windows is pointless as an educational platform.  I have never seen  
what I would call an educational application on Windows.  I have seen  
rote training applications on Windows.  About all Windows is good for  
is in a school training the next generation of low skilled, low wage  
support personal for Microsoft with out of date knowledge.


Remember education and training are 2 different concepts.  Education  
gives you the ability to reach beyond your base knowledge and to  
continue to learn, explore and synthesize ideas and concepts. Rote  
training freezes you in time and makes you inflexible.



On Oct 25, 2008, at 11:34 PM, Carlos mauro wrote:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10074298-56.html? 
part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20


Was a experiment (informal) with a girl with 8 years old wich used  
olpc with Sugar an Windows...


:)

-- Forwarded message --
From: Carlos mauro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 2008/10/26
Subject: Niños en Prueba Informal Prefieren Sugar q WindowsXp
To: kunix <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "OLPC en castellano para  
usuarios, docentes, voluntarios y administradores" [EMAIL PROTECTED]>, OLPC-Peru <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Claudia Colque <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, AD Luyo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,  
Kri0z <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Victor Arturo Simich L�pez  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, EDUARDO CIEZA DE LEON <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,  
Lucia Elisa Loyola Cordova <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, KETTY JULCA  
VALDEZ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Natividad Gonzales Cordova  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Mica <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10074298-56.html? 
part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20



Intersante

Espero que me respondan la forma de colocarle el windows Xp a la  
OLPC para hacer los test de usabilidad de contraste.

--
http://unimauro.blogspot.com/
Creemos en el amor de los Seres Humanos
Carlos Mauro Cárdenas Fernández
4582877 980525716



--
http://unimauro.blogspot.com/
Creemos en el amor de los Seres Humanos
Carlos Mauro Cárdenas Fernández
4582877 980525716
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Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support

[Peter Robinson]

>> can's mdns/avahi help with discovery?  it'd be a shame to have to
>> manually configure a server address or name.
>
> DNS-SD is the Right Answer (which is not exactly the same thing as
> mdns).  But getting a standard "one school server, and a classroom of
> XOs" solution in place for 9.1 using a standard name ("printer", say)
> would be a good first step; we can handle autodiscovery (via CUPs or
> something else) for 9.2.

The current cups dns-sd is written in perl. It apparently works pretty
well in Fedora but I know OLPC remove perl due to space. Apparently
there is general mainline (Fedora and cups) for a rewrite in something
else.

Peter
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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] Jabber Server

[Morgan Collett]

[cc: sugar]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 03:32, Robert McQueen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> with this JID" option where you can type it in (or if you want to be
> fancy, use your laptop's camera to capture a 2D barcode of the other
> user's JID off their laptop screen?). Worth asking Sugar folks about?

Ivan mentioned this concept some time ago, and there is code available
for it: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-February/011033.html

Regards
Morgan
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[sugar] [PATCH] Fix frame device ordering logic

[Martin Dengler]

---
 src/jarabe/frame/devicestray.py |8 
 1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/jarabe/frame/devicestray.py b/src/jarabe/frame/devicestray.py
index 8514efb..47a7bf5 100644
--- a/src/jarabe/frame/devicestray.py
+++ b/src/jarabe/frame/devicestray.py
@@ -40,12 +40,12 @@ class DevicesTray(tray.HTray):
 
 def add_device(self, view):
 index = 0
+relative_index = getattr(view, "FRAME_POSITION_RELATIVE", -1)
 for item in self.get_children():
-index = self.get_item_index(item)
-view_pos = getattr(view, "FRAME_POSITION_RELATIVE", -1)
-item_pos = getattr(item, "FRAME_POSITION_RELATIVE", 0)
-if view_pos < item_pos:
+current_relative_index = getattr(item, "FRAME_POSITION_RELATIVE", 
0)
+if current_relative_index >= relative_index:
 break
+index += 1
 self.add_item(view, index=index)
 view.show()
 
-- 
1.5.5.1

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Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support

[Martin Langhoff]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 12:52 PM, Bill Bogstad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Martin will probably hate me for this...

Oh, I won't! However implements this gets to say how it's done; good
to hear you have an opinion that you're willing to back with code :-)

> If you can assume the existence of an XS (or at least a suitably
> configured web server), what about doing printing via file upload in
> the Browse activity?
> Punt ALL the complexity of printer drivers/queues/etc to the server.
> Instead of Write generating a postscript/pdf file and queuing it, just
> send the file directly.
> CUPS already has management of the print queues via http (which is
> really just ipp).  So why not add the ability to accept all the
> 'standard' file formats which
> XO activities generate?

That's not *that* hard. And even then, we could just say "generic PS
printer support is what we do" and provide it on the XO itself and
it'd make sense too. I suspect we can aggressively trim cups to only
only eat 20% of your NAND.

But printing it's a much broader problem. You'll want quotas,
priorities, printer selection and related management to get something
usable in a school environment you get ac lot of human/social
considerations. PS vs PCL is not where the intersting problem is. I've
worked with several secondary schools and tertiaries, all using
various schemes for this, all imperfect and leaky, but quite
informative about the challenges.

It's a big task. Right now I have other priorities that will take a
while. Printing *is* important, but other things are more important
and more reachable right now -- I'm pleased to hear others care a lot
about this. Hopefully enough to get moving on this!

cheers,



m
--
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 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: [sugar] World readable documentation for Chandler rearchitecture

[Jeffrey Harris]

Hi Scott,

>> Trellis is Philip Eby's simplified, pseudo-STM based async processing system
>> for Python:
>>
>>
> 
> Cute!
> 
> Better Chandler doc references to Trellis would still be nice.  From
> the Chandler docs I get a vague idea that Trellis is being used to
> keep various bits of data up-to-date, and I *think* the 'current time'
> is treated as a trellis variable as well, but a "big picture" overview
> could be helpful.  Is there a regular second-by-second tick which is
> being propagated through Trellis to trigger events, or what?

The documentation feedback is much appreciated.

I updated the documentation a bit today, hopefully it reads a little
more clearly from start to finish (with important basic concepts first,
imagine that).

Particularly, I added a link to TrellisActivity at the top of

http://people.osafoundation.org/~jeffrey/rearch_documentation/Chandler-Platform/TimeServices.html

which is the actual answer to your question; Trellis is designed to
integrate with an event loop and update time dependent cells in a batch
when time ticks past a Timer cell's trigger time.  As I re-read that
sentence it seems like gobbledygook, probably better to just read the
TrellisActivity documentation ;)

Probably there should be a one or two paragraph explanation of Trellis
somewhere early on, but I haven't figured out where yet.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey
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[sugar] USB Based Community Access - What could work technically?

[Caroline Meeks]

Hi,

This is a request for technical assistance for "Sugar on a Stick".

It looks like we have a pilot school for our USB boot project, and a grant
proposal in so I am trying to think through various use cases around
creating ubiquitous access with a USB storage device.  I've written up some
use cases here:

http://www.sugarlabs.org/go/DeploymentTeam/School_Key#Vision_of_different_ways_the_USB_might_work_in_the_students_environment

I'd love thoughts on what is feasible, how hard, and how much benefit would
each scenario actually provide.

I've done tests to show that "Home" and "Grandma's" are feasible.  I'm
curious as to whether putting some of the boot files on the hard drive (Zoo)
could reduce boot time or have any other advanatages as most of our donated
computers will likely have working disk drives.  I wonder if combining with
a LTSP or other virtualization scheme is possible (YMCA/School).

Note all scenarios are fictional.

Write your ideas here or on the Wiki page as you see fit.

Thanks!
Caroline

-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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[sugar] Use cases and work flows (was Sugar Digest 2008-10-27)

[Greg Smith]

Hi Michael,

Can you add your use cases on this page for tracking?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Use_Cases

That page includes some older stuff and some newer stuff so it could be 
re-organized and then linked from the [[Feature roadmap]] page.

Let me know how it goes. I have an outstanding task on my to do list to 
create more detailed use cases. If you can make progress on this and 
keep me in the loop, I can focus on other things or other cases.

I'm also interested in coming up with examples of "learning 
interactions" which we will help us define end to end workflows for XO 
users. So I'm interested to talk about this next month too.

Thanks,

Greg S

***
From: Michael Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [sugar] Sugar 
Digest 2008-10-27 To: Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: iaep 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Sugar Mailing List , 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; 
charset=utf-8; format=flowed On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 08:12:37PM -0400, 
Walter Bender wrote:
 > >2. What would creating a Sugar Activity require from me and what
 > >benefits would it bring?

I've been pondering this question in some depth for the last week using
my list summarization problem as a model. In hopes of offering something
useful to other people facing this question, I have also started an
outline covering some of the challenges and goals I have discovered

 
http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/mstone/summarize-activity;a=blob;f=NOTES;hb=HEAD

in preparation for a talk that I intend to give on this subject in
November. Would you care to speak alongside me?

 > >7. ?Qu?? ?C?mo? ?Por qu?? ?Para qui?: We also discussed the role that
 > >a portfolio might play in Sugar. What? How? Why? For who? are
 > >questions that are part of the teacher/student discourse in Peru. They
 > >are also questions that are important to the "select-reflect-perform"
 > >cycle of portfolio assessment. Scott, Rafael, Sebastian and I spend
 > >quite a bit of time discussion possible approaches to building a
 > >Portfolio Activity (we agreed that it makes sense to make it a
 > >separate Activity from the Journal for the time being). My
 > >hair-brained idea is to make a Turtle-Art-like snap-together
 > >programing Activity to create narrative presentations from items
 > >selected from the Journal. I'll make some sketches in the coming days
 > >and post them to the wiki. The team at the ministry was very upbeat
 > >about portfolio tools, regardless of the implementation details.

This work sounds like it complements another talk I hope to give in
November describing several conversations I've had recently with a mixed
tech/learning-team audience on the subject of "how can small activities
be combined to make bigger activities?". We have proceeded by
identifying three model use cases:

1) Going on a hike:

a) Making a manifest of what to take which can be refined for
future trips.
b) Recording beautiful scenes that I pass.
c) Taking measurements at my destination.
d) Returning and combining my measurements and observations with
those of friends who went on similar hikes to other destinations.

2) Developing a recipe:

a) Writing a recipe draft and recording the stages of preparation.
b) Sending the draft to a friend who will try to follow the recipe
   and who will suggest improvements.

3) Running a physics jam:

a) Preparing for the jam by snagging some sample physics-based
activities.
b) Making a new physics-based activity, perhaps by modifying one
of the samples.
c) Capturing developer commentaries and screenshots explaining the
new activity as it is created.
d) Publishing the results to, e.g., a wiki.

which we are in the process of exploring with paper mockups.

Questions:

   * Do you have favorite model interactions that you'd like to share?

   * Anyone else want to talk about this subject in November besides
 Walter and me?

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Re: [sugar] [OLPC-Peru] windows vs. sugar, comparacion incorrecta.

[Carlos mauro]

Holas

Pero tampoco creo que sea un buen criterio.

Por ejemplo, Comparar WindowsXP con linux+ Gnome en un desktop esta bien.
Comparar WindowxXp con Sugar no hay nada parecido...

Es mas lo mas correcto es impedir que el Perú en un futuro gaste en
tecnología propietaria. Esto sucederá porque esas laptops deberán ser
"actualizadas" y tener encuenta que Microsoft ya dejo de actualizar el
WindowsXp. Además hará a un pais sumamente dependiente de una tecnología
cerrada.

Evitemos eso, ni bien lleguen mas maquinas con Windows se haga el
formateo... Creo que la idea es ir a enseñar Linux a los profesores de
Cantuta para que hagan propio su reclamo en el uso de tecnologías libres en
la educación...

Saludos

El 28 de octubre de 2008 14:08, Ivan Rojas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> escribió:

> Comparar windows con sugar es como comparar platanos con naranjas,
> pues sugar es un entorno que funciona sobre linux.
>
> La version de windows que funciona con el olpc no tiene todavia algo
> asi (pero es posible hacer algo similar y seria bueno que se
> desarrollara).  Me gustaria desarrollar algo asi para windows pero
> aqui en los Estados Unidos han limitado solo a linux las olpc
> obtenidas a traves del G1G1, que es mi caso concreto.
>
> Una comparacion mas correcta seria windows-olpc vs xfce-Linux-olpc.
>
>
> Jose Rojas.
>
>
>
> On 10/28/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Send Peru mailing list submissions to
> >   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> >   http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/peru
> > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> >   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > You can reach the person managing the list at
> >   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> > than "Re: Contents of Peru digest..."
> >
> >
> > Asuntos del día:
> >
> >1. Re: [Sur] Niños en Prueba Informal Prefieren Sugar q
> >   WindowsXp (Carlos mauro)
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:15:31 -0500
> > From: "Carlos mauro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: Re: [OLPC-Peru] [Sur] Niños en Prueba Informal Prefieren
> >   Sugar q WindowsXp
> > To: "OLPC en castellano para usuarios, docentes,  voluntarios y
> >   administradores" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,   OLPC-Peru
> >   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Message-ID:
> >   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> > Como lo menciona Walter. Estuvimos este fin de semana en un encuentro con
> > los desarrolladores de SugarLabs y OLPC.
> >
> > Además hay colaboracion individuales. No directamente en la implantación
> del
> > proyecto. Creo que algo que se puede hacer es también incentivar a los
> > profesores de mi país en contar sus experiencias y a la comunidad de
> > software libre de país en crear colaboraciones peruanas o enseñar a los
> > profesores a crear sus actividades.  En la liste vi algunos email de
> > profesores de Ferreñafe y también de evento... Claro falta mucho mas como
> > los hacen en otros lados... una suerte de cambiar de paradigma.
> >
> > Saludos.
> >
> > 2008/10/26 Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> >> A number of us (Rafael and Sebastian among others) were just in Peru
> >> for a week of congresses dedicated to Sugar and learning. We discussed
> >> the opportunity of more Peruvian participation on this list. I think
> >> we will see it. But many of the teachers using the OLPC XO in Peru
> >> have very little internet access, so it is difficult.
> >>
> >> Regarding Windows, there are, as I understand it, plans for a small
> >> pilot. This is in the future and would not have had any impact on the
> >> pedagogy in Peru.
> >>
> >> We did see some beautiful learning guides for Sugar being prepared by
> >> the team at the Ministry of Education. These will be of use in Peru,
> >> Uruguay, and anywhere else where Sugar is being used.
> >>
> >> regards.
> >>
> >> -walter
> >>
> >> 2008/10/26 Daniel Ajoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >> >>
> >>
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10074298-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
> >> >
> >> > El artículo hizo que en mi mente surga la pregunta:
> >> >
> >> > Si muchas XO en Peru tienen Windows, ¿dónde está la comunidad de
> >> > maestros
> >> y voluntarios que intenta cosas con esa configuración?
> >> >
> >> > Me hizo pensar que quizá esa sea la razón por la que en esta lista no
> se
> >> escucha casi nada de maestros peruanos o de la comunidad peruana: están
> en
> >> otro lado.
> >> >
> >> > Daniel
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > ___
> >> > Lista olpc-Sur
> >> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Walter Bender
> >> Sugar Labs
> >> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> >> ___
> >> Lista olpc-Sur
> >> [EMAIL PROTE

Re: [sugar] Deadline for new modules proposals

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Greg Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> Where can I get more info on what is new in 0.83?
>
> Changelogs from GIT is OK but if there is any higher level write up
> (e.g. list of trac bugs resolved and features if any) that would be more
> helpful.

Hello,

a list of changes will be available in the release notes. Maintainers
should make sure to provide good change log in their announcements!
(talking to myself, too).

Marco
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Re: [sugar] Deadline for new modules proposals

[Greg Smith]

Hi Guys,

Where can I get more info on what is new in 0.83?

Changelogs from GIT is OK but if there is any higher level write up 
(e.g. list of trac bugs resolved and features if any) that would be more 
helpful.

Thanks,

Greg S

> Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:24:22 +0100
> From: "Marco Pesenti Gritti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [sugar] Deadline for new modules proposals
> To: sugar 
> Message-ID:
>   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I think there is no reason to introduce a deadline for new modules
> proposal other than the feature freeze, currently planned for December
> 21. We should evaluate proposals as they get in. I will give a stab to
> the three proposal presented so far now, so that we get the new
> modules in 0.83.1.
> 
> Marco
> 
> 
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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:52 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On 28.10.2008, at 04:01, Simon Schampijer wrote:
>
>> Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear maintainers,
>>>
>>> the next stable release is  the 30th October.
>>
>> Just for the record - it is an unstable release :)
>
>
> Is this basically what's in jhbuild right now?

Yup.

Marco
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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Simon Schampijer]

Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> 
> On 28.10.2008, at 04:01, Simon Schampijer wrote:
> 
>> Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
>>> Dear maintainers,
>>>
>>> the next stable release is  the 30th October.
>>
>> Just for the record - it is an unstable release :)
> 
> 
> Is this basically what's in jhbuild right now?
> 
> - Bert -

Yes - the master branches.

Simon

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Re: [sugar] Sugar Digest 2008-10-27

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 8:12 PM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 15. XOCamp: Marco has written three proposals for the November XOCamp.
> (I am working on one for the Portfolio as well.)  There are many more
> being posted on the Sugar and Devel lists.

We're trying to raise money to send more developers to the XOcamp: see:
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2/Fundraising

This is your chance to help ensure that your favorite issues are
represented by someone in person!  You can adopt a specific developer
and ensure that they attend.  If you wanted to make a proposal before,
but weren't sure how you could afford to attend, this might be a good
time to go ahead and email your proposal to devel@ and sugar@ and add
your name to the 'adopt a developer' list on the fundraising page.  I
hope the end result is a much more inclusive conference, that more
completely incorporates the viewpoints of the community.  Help out if
you can!  There's a paypal link to donate on the page above.
 --scott

-- 
 ( http://cscott.net/ )
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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 28.10.2008, at 04:01, Simon Schampijer wrote:

> Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
>> Dear maintainers,
>>
>> the next stable release is  the 30th October.
>
> Just for the record - it is an unstable release :)


Is this basically what's in jhbuild right now?

- Bert -


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Re: [sugar] Sugar Digest 2008-10-27

[Michael Stone]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 08:12:37PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote:
>2. What would creating a Sugar Activity require from me and what
>benefits would it bring?

I've been pondering this question in some depth for the last week using
my list summarization problem as a model. In hopes of offering something
useful to other people facing this question, I have also started an
outline covering some of the challenges and goals I have discovered

   
http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/mstone/summarize-activity;a=blob;f=NOTES;hb=HEAD

in preparation for a talk that I intend to give on this subject in
November. Would you care to speak alongside me?

>7. ¿Qué? ¿Cómo? ¿Por qué? ¿Para qui?: We also discussed the role that
>a portfolio might play in Sugar. What? How? Why? For who? are
>questions that are part of the teacher/student discourse in Peru. They
>are also questions that are important to the "select-reflect-perform"
>cycle of portfolio assessment. Scott, Rafael, Sebastian and I spend
>quite a bit of time discussion possible approaches to building a
>Portfolio Activity (we agreed that it makes sense to make it a
>separate Activity from the Journal for the time being). My
>hair-brained idea is to make a Turtle-Art-like snap-together
>programing Activity to create narrative presentations from items
>selected from the Journal. I'll make some sketches in the coming days
>and post them to the wiki. The team at the ministry was very upbeat
>about portfolio tools, regardless of the implementation details.

This work sounds like it complements another talk I hope to give in
November describing several conversations I've had recently with a mixed
tech/learning-team audience on the subject of "how can small activities
be combined to make bigger activities?". We have proceeded by
identifying three model use cases:

   1) Going on a hike:

   a) Making a manifest of what to take which can be refined for
   future trips.
   b) Recording beautiful scenes that I pass.
   c) Taking measurements at my destination.
   d) Returning and combining my measurements and observations with
   those of friends who went on similar hikes to other destinations.

   2) Developing a recipe:

   a) Writing a recipe draft and recording the stages of preparation.
   b) Sending the draft to a friend who will try to follow the recipe
  and who will suggest improvements.

   3) Running a physics jam:

   a) Preparing for the jam by snagging some sample physics-based
   activities.
   b) Making a new physics-based activity, perhaps by modifying one
   of the samples.
   c) Capturing developer commentaries and screenshots explaining the
   new activity as it is created.
   d) Publishing the results to, e.g., a wiki.

which we are in the process of exploring with paper mockups.

Questions: 

  * Do you have favorite model interactions that you'd like to share?

  * Anyone else want to talk about this subject in November besides
Walter and me?

>9. On collaboration
>: Juliano Bittencourt has stirred the pot regard the Sugar
>collaboration model. In a discussion on the developers mailing list
>(http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020588.html) he
>raises the issue of synchronous vs asynchronous collaboration, arguing
>that too much emphasis has been given over to the former, when the
>latter is generally more useful in a school setting.  I agree with him
>to a great extent. 

I agree. (Tangentially, one fundamental goal for my summarization
project (described above) is to experiment with "async-collab" in the
sense in which summarization "collaborates" with the data being
summarized as more data accumulates over time. (If I have success in
this area, then I might try something fancier too. We'll see.))

>To some extent, Juliano's point was less in regard to synchrony and
>more in regard to the lack of any means within Sugar to maintain
>persistence of a collaboration over a longer time frame than a single
>interactive session. This omission is will in part be filled by
>services external to Sugar, such as Moodle or AMADIS. However, some
>aspects of the yet-to-be-implemented Bulletin Board would also meet
>these needs. (Better versioning in the Journal/Datastore—in the
>roadmap for 0.84—will play a role as well.) The Bulletin Board is
>designed to be a place for the persistent sharing of objects and
>actions between a group of collaborators. In some sense, one could
>think of it as a share, persistent clipboard. Bulletin Boards would be
>created in support of group projects that involve multiple activities
>and multiple sessions. We should develop a requirements document and
>architectural description of what is needed in order to both best
>leverage existing tools and set realistic goals for any Sugar
>developments.

I think that the technologies you mention are all incidental to the
essence of asynchronous collaboration, which I take to be diff-and-merge
(or perhaps 'guide

Re: [sugar] Donations for travel to Nov 17 XOcamp, also spare bedrooms needed!

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 4:34 PM, C. Scott Ananian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> of other "good projects".  I'm hoping that similarly-minded people
> will pitch in to make the good ideas reality.
[...]
> towards the conference, because I don't have a budget at OLPC.  But I
> can put $1000 of my own money towards that end.

It's been suggested that a paypal link would make it much easier to
donate.  I've set up a Paypal biz account via my fledgling publishing
business (http://ahuasemigre.com) to collect donations: click through
  https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=750448
and voila!

I'm also tracking the status of the contributions as well as
collecting developer info (who needs help, how much it would cost) at:
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2/Fundraising
 --scott

-- 
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Re: [sugar] Sugar Works Now!

[Kevin Cole]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 20:42, Marco Pesenti Gritti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Why no one is posting the good press these days and I have to find it
> out myself??? :)
>
> http://www.olpcnews.com/software/sugar/xo_laptop_software_upgrade_review.html

I guess I've been remiss.  The XO with the triangular layout and the
funky computer icon in the center is mine. ;-)

(On the other hand, I appeared to be the only one in the room who gets
a rainbow-daemon error every time I start the browse activity.  That
was after a clean install of the gg image.  The browser still starts,
but I wasn't sure where to post the error, and haven't had time to
look much.)
-- 
Ubuntu Linux DC LoCo
Washington, DC
http://dc.ubuntu-us.org/
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Re: [sugar] API policy

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

I updated according to the discussion in the irc meeting and put it on the wiki:

http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/API_policy

Also I marked the sugar package modules as described above.

Please make sure to have a look, we will need to maintain the
stability promises we are making. In particular, I marked the
datastore dbus service as stable, but I'm not sure we reached
consensus on that one in the meeting. Let's discuss it if anyone
disagree with that choice.

Marco
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[sugar] Reviews report

[Release Team]

= Rejected requests =

Make sugar control panel support selection of multiple languages
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8876

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[sugar] Reviews report

[Release Team]

= Rejected requests =

Make sugar control panel support selection of multiple languages
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8876

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Re: [sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Simon Schampijer]

Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> Dear maintainers,
> 
> the next stable release is  the 30th October. 

Just for the record - it is an unstable release :)

Best,
Simon
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[sugar] October 29 - Tarballs due for 0.83.1

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

Dear maintainers,

the next stable release is  the 30th October. Please provide source
code tarballs by the end of tomorrow and announce them as explained
here:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/ReleaseTeam#Module_release

If you are fearless and want to try the automatic release script see
my mail about it:

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-October/009524.html

We are going to allow some more time for feedback about new modules
inclusion, but there seem to be consensus about them already so please
provide releases for 0.83.1.

Thanks,
Marco
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Re: [sugar] Measure Activity inclusion in Fructose

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

+1 about inclusion from me, based on Walter and Rafael explanations. Thanks!

Marco
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