subject:"Re\: \[Sugar\-devel\] \[IAEP\] ASLO Suggestion"

ultimately, the question is: are there (or not) Activities common to
every, or nearly every instance of Sugar?

Browse
Read
Write
etc.

Sean


On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 1:05 AM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote:
 On 10 Jun 2009, at 18:24, James Simmons wrote:

 Martin,

 I phrased that poorly.  A kid might care that James Simmons wrote
 Read Etexts.  He probably won't care if James Simmons is a part of
 Sugar Labs, or part of the community, or if it was part of GCompris,
 or if we consider Read Etexts part of Glucose, Sucrose, Fructose, etc.

 If a kid accidentally removes the Moon Activity and wants it back he
 might look in Math and Science or he might look in Pre-Installed.
 It should be listed in both places.

 I know what you meant about a core or pre-Installed category, but
 this is going to break so fast, actually already broken. Different
 distros are bundling different activities, some more some less, it's
 their call. I think David Van Assche mentioned getting 50+ Activities
 in the latest openSUSE image; and I'm sure school deployments will
 choose their own Activity sets.

 --Gary

 As far as Dominick's vs. Costco, I enjoy the time I spend at Costco
 and hate the time I spend at Dominick's.  A good taxonomy would
 encourage a kid to explore the site and see what's available.  A
 poor one would make him feel like I do on Sunday afternoons,
 wondering why canned tomatoes are in a totally different aisle than
 other canned vegetables, or why Pita bread isn't with the rest of
 the bread, or why Blue or Feta cheese isn't with the rest of the
 cheese in the Dairy section, etc.

 James Simmons


 Martin Dengler wrote:

 Other than that, does any kid or teacher care who maintains an
 Activity?


 Clearly you view the answer as no (I think in general, the right
 answer is not unless they can get something out of that person,
 which is a distinct possibility in FOSS-land, so actually I think the
 answer should be they should because it can help them).  I don't
 know what point you're making, expect possibly we needn't care about
 aslo's coherency for anyone other than 'learners'.


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 09:51:24AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
 ultimately, the question is: are there (or not) Activities common to
 every, or nearly every instance of Sugar?

This is Fructose:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy#Fructose:_The_set_of_demonstration_activities

If you keep asking what to call them we'll keep telling you what
they're called.

Feel free to suggest alternates, but it's hard to effectively do so
without an understanding of the status quo.  Please point out what's
confusing as I'm sure plenty of people would like to make things as
comprehensible as possible.  I recognise that the fact people keep
asking could certainly be because it's not being well-explained.

Please consider this diagram as well:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy#The_SUGAR_stack:_block_diagram_view

 Sean

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

hmmm thanks Martin for that

I guess I'm confused because for me, a set of demo Activities is not
at all the same thing as baseline Activities included in every Sugar
deployment.

I mean, to demonstrate online collaboration, I could choose a fancier
or more advanced Activity than might be on a list of more basic ones
used in deployments already. As an example, Read Etext's ability to
bring in an eBook from the tens of thousands in the Gutenberg Project,
have it read by Speak, then share it, is an ultracool demo. But, is it
in Fructose?

GCompris has doubled our Activity offer and although the collaboration
/ view source / graphics are not where most other Activities are, I
would include one or two GCompris Activities in any demo set, if
only to market Sugar to teachers already using GCompris in their
classrooms these past few years.

Activity Packs (Sets? Groups? Bundles? Hives?) seem to me a key part
of deployments, but I'm not sure where they fit in the diagram :-( and
I can't find a list of packs actually used in deployments, do we have
one somewhere?

thanks

Sean



On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Martin
Denglermar...@martindengler.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 09:51:24AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
 ultimately, the question is: are there (or not) Activities common to
 every, or nearly every instance of Sugar?

 This is Fructose:
 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy#Fructose:_The_set_of_demonstration_activities

 If you keep asking what to call them we'll keep telling you what
 they're called.

 Feel free to suggest alternates, but it's hard to effectively do so
 without an understanding of the status quo.  Please point out what's
 confusing as I'm sure plenty of people would like to make things as
 comprehensible as possible.  I recognise that the fact people keep
 asking could certainly be because it's not being well-explained.

 Please consider this diagram as well:

 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy#The_SUGAR_stack:_block_diagram_view

 Sean

 Martin

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:55:51AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
 I guess I'm confused because for me, a set of demo Activities is not
 at all the same thing as baseline Activities included in every Sugar
 deployment.

I agree they're not exactly the same, but I think that's probably
because baseline Activities included in every Sugar deployment
really is the wrong set to seek to define: why might we think every
deployment ever will need a given activity?  I can't see many
deployments going out without the ones you listed (Browse, Read, etc.)
but they certainly *could* (imagine a small deployment that doesn't
want / have internet / web browsing).

It's not only theoretically hard to define, but:

 I can't find a list of packs actually used in deployments, do we have
 one somewhere?

...it's practically impossible to observe this list, as you've begun
to encounter.

Perhaps the discussion might be what should we call Fructose instead
of 'demo' activities?  I agree demo feels like it misses the point
somehow.  But core seems to beg the question (core activities
are...those that are core??) and pre-installed deployed everywhere
seems to presume too much.

Maybe core / base or soemthing is as good as we're going to get,
though.

 Activity Packs (Sets? Groups? Bundles? Hives?) seem to me a key part
 of deployments, but I'm not sure where they fit in the diagram :-(

Activities are manifest in activity bundles (.xo).  Or are you talking
about content bundles (which are going to go away as a separate
concept, IIRC)?

 thanks
 
 Sean

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

Bert - many thanks, I understand much better now.

We're expecting a traffic peaks at the end of the month with our media
push, that's why this work on clarity/simplicity is important.

I'm afraid Fructose as a left-hand category on ASLO is obscure, it
really should be base or core or base install, this last I like
best because it's very clear. Note: a search for Fructose in ASLO
returns no results!

I actually don't think it's that hard to set a list; it's really just
a Get Started list which covers online/offline, younger/older
Learners, and super-helpful to have even if off-ring (Terminal...).

I agree some deployments will want to zap some Activities, but as long
as it's clear that there's no technical barrier to doing so we're
fine.

The list of 13 Fructose Activities at
http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/fructose/
does not match the list of 11 Fructose Activities on ASLO
(http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:112?sort=name).
I imagine Image is off the bus (replaced by Image Viewer), but is the
omission of Write intentional? I couldn't find it on ASLO at all :-(

(N.B. Write is always the first Activity I choose to demonstrate
classroom collaboration; people understand collaboration instantly
when each of two machines can edit the same document live. My kids'
nanny who is in her early 60s and does not use computers understood
right away the usefulness of XOs in a classroom when she saw that, she
got all excited and started asking me questions!)

So I think the ASLO Fructose list, plus Write, can certainly be
qualified as 12 base install Activities:

Browse
Calculate
Chat
Etoys
ImageViewer
Jukebox
Log
Pippy
Read
Terminal
TurtleArt
Write

However I think it would be judicious to add Help to this list. Help
is very reassuring during discovery of the totally unfamiliar
interface. I'm aware there are issues right now building a new Help
from the FLOSS Manuals source, but I believe Help aids teachers and
parents significantly with the Sugar GUI learning curve.

Are there any other candidates today for the Fructose list we should
consider? Not to open a can of worms - adjusting the pantheon is much
less urgent than the discoverability/usability issues - but a review
before each SoaS version seems judicious to me, especially since a
choice needs to be made about which Activities are in the ring and
which are off. I would suggest:

Clock
Help
Maze
Memorize
Moon
Read ETexts
Speak
Tux Paint

I hesitated over:
* Record which kids adore, but which I understand is iffy due to wide
hardware variations, also teachers don't seem to like it much :-)
* the TamTams which would make the list longish... (though my
four-year-old figured out TamTam Mini in ten seconds the other day and
loved every second with it)
* GCompris Chess, since no 2-player yet.


Our introduction to Sugar has a page with an attractive smorgasbord of
Activities 
(http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=pagepage=about_activities),
and a link to ASLO. We listed the Activities in teacher/parent
interest order: reassuring basics, net stuff,
games/language/multimedia, the TamTams, tech/system utilities. Image
Viewer and Jukebox are missing from this page, I propose to add them
and two others to the matrix so the complete Fructose set (minus
Image) is present. The Journal starts the list due to its special
status, but it really should be broken out as a special Activity
that is always there, saves everything automatically, allows resuming
of work, etc. ASLO should have a brief mention of the Journal in the
orientation intro I want to edit; telling inexperienced Sugar
admins/teachers/parents/Learners that it is always in Sugar and can't
be installed or uninstalled. This super-Activity distinction is
important because the Journal icon occupies the same spot under the
central XO avatar as the current Activity. Note that each icon links
to the OLPC page (the intro site was published on a tight deadline
just before the March 16th press release :-), I think we can update it
to link to the ASLO pages now.

Note: we have been doing some star marketing of Activities in our
PR: Write, InfoSlicer, Mindmap, Portfolio. We chose these to appeal to
teachers; they are differentiators. Some press articles have mentioned
the star Activities, recognizing that they are interesting and unique
to Sugar. Library for example is an Activity I'm not quite sure does
what, but its name and logo will be irresistible to parents and
teachers.

OLPC has their list (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All) and we
need to get that page to link to ASLO, the information there is uneven
(contains some stillborn/abandonware). Perhaps the easiest fix would
be to link from each Activity position on that page to that Activity's
ASLO page; people searching the Activity population would quickly
understand the different/parallel nature of the OLPC page and ASLO. As
far as I know, there aren't any issues with the very latest versions
running on XO-1s, would I

Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

David - do you have a list, or a link to same?

thanks

Sean


On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:57 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote:
 I recommend u take a look at the openSUSE offering. I took a careful look at
 the activities available and packaged those that seemed useful, relatively
 bug free, and fun. I think we have about 55 activities now.

 kind Regards,
 David (nubae) Van Assche

 On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:09 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com
 wrote:

 Aleksey,

 That will teach me to open my mouth.  At the moment the only Activities
 I'm really familiar with are my own, Read, and your Library Activity which
 isn't finished (but would definitely be worthy otherwise).  I'll have to add
 some more Activities to my XO and give them a try.  Any suggestions on what
 might be worth a recommended status will be welcomed.

 Your other ideas sound good, but I still think we need some highly visible
 counts in there.  As someone once said, You gotta tell 'em to sell 'em!

 Thanks,

 James Simmons


 Aleksey Lim wrote:

 You are an editor now and can do the best on
 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/editors/featured ;)

 And after fixing #948 all featured activities will appear on main page
 and per category main pages.



 I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities
 are related to each other, but the relationship would not be meaningful
 to a teacher or a student.


 fixed

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-11 Thread Gary C Martin

On 11 Jun 2009, at 08:37, Aleksey Lim wrote:

 Hi all,

 Let me finalize this What tags we should use for GCompris/Fructose/ 
 etc
 discussion :)

 New AMO version and incoming ASLO v3 version have collections feature
 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections

 I think we can move tags GCompris and Fructose(Core, etc) to  
 collections
 moreover every user/deployer/editor could create theirs own  
 collections.

 Is it the way to go?

Yes this seems to be a solution. Allows the tags (categories) to be  
simple and learner friendly, while collections can be used for for the  
rest (collections are a secondary site UI, so don't clutter up the  
main site unless you visit their page).

Regards,
--Gary

 On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 09:50:31AM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
 The new style sheet for ASLO reminds me that something has bugged me
 about the design of the site from the beginning.  The site does not  
 do a
 good job of showing just how much is available.  When you click on a
 category you see entries for three or four Activities, seemingly  
 picked
 at random, and no indication that these Activities are not the only  
 ones
 available in the category.  Yes, there is a link to show everything  
 in
 the category.  It's not that you can't find anything if you really  
 want
 to.  It's that the site doesn't do a good job of selling what it has.

 What I would suggest is to put totals for each category in a  
 prominent
 place on the page.  When you first come into the site and no  
 category is
 selected you should see something like 500 Great Activities
 Available!  Choose a category like Documents and the line would read
 10 Activities In This Category.

 The other thing that has bugged me is the Recommended Activities.  We
 need to put more thought into what gets recommended.  Currently one  
 of
 the Activities that is recommended is Read.  Now an XO owner or SoaS
 user already has Read, so why recommend it?  Is there some reason I
 should remove the Read I already have and install this one?

 Recommended Activities should promote Sugar.  They should meet the
 following criteria:

 1).  Fairly robust.
 2).  Not included by default with anything.
 3).  Should do something interesting.  Think of the iPhone  
 commercials
 that show all the apps that are available.  Why not recommend  
 something
 like Food Force or Story Builder?

 I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities
 are related to each other, but the relationship would not be  
 meaningful
 to a teacher or a student.

 A little salesmanship could go a long way in making this site better.

 James Simmons


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 i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
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 -- 
 Aleksey
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 03:10:49PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
 I actually don't think it's that hard to set a list[...]

27 messages in this thread: 
http://n2.nabble.com/G1G1v2-Activities-td1096680.html

 thanks
 
 Sean

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 02:47:45PM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
 On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 03:10:49PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
  I actually don't think it's that hard to set a list[...]
 
 27 messages in this thread: 
 http://n2.nabble.com/G1G1v2-Activities-td1096680.html

20 comments on this ticket: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6598

Martin



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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-11 Thread Gary C Martin

On 11 Jun 2009, at 14:10, Sean DALY wrote:

 Bert - many thanks, I understand much better now.

 We're expecting a traffic peaks at the end of the month with our media
 push, that's why this work on clarity/simplicity is important.

 I'm afraid Fructose as a left-hand category on ASLO is obscure, it
 really should be base or core or base install, this last I like
 best because it's very clear. Note: a search for Fructose in ASLO
 returns no results!

 I actually don't think it's that hard to set a list; it's really just
 a Get Started list which covers online/offline, younger/older
 Learners, and super-helpful to have even if off-ring (Terminal...).

 I agree some deployments will want to zap some Activities, but as long
 as it's clear that there's no technical barrier to doing so we're
 fine.

 The list of 13 Fructose Activities at
 http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/fructose/
 does not match the list of 11 Fructose Activities on ASLO
 (http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:112?sort=name 
 ).
 I imagine Image is off the bus (replaced by Image Viewer), but is the
 omission of Write intentional? I couldn't find it on ASLO at all :-(

 (N.B. Write is always the first Activity I choose to demonstrate
 classroom collaboration; people understand collaboration instantly
 when each of two machines can edit the same document live. My kids'
 nanny who is in her early 60s and does not use computers understood
 right away the usefulness of XOs in a classroom when she saw that, she
 got all excited and started asking me questions!)

 So I think the ASLO Fructose list, plus Write, can certainly be
 qualified as 12 base install Activities:

 Browse
 Calculate
 Chat
 Etoys
 ImageViewer
 Jukebox
 Log
 Pippy
 Read
 Terminal
 TurtleArt
 Write

 However I think it would be judicious to add Help to this list. Help
 is very reassuring during discovery of the totally unfamiliar
 interface. I'm aware there are issues right now building a new Help
 from the FLOSS Manuals source, but I believe Help aids teachers and
 parents significantly with the Sugar GUI learning curve.

Can I raise Populate Journal with a handful of useful/exemplary  
items trac ticket:

http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/840

And suggest that we start using the Journal as a journal, rather than  
trying to create monoliths. Why not just take the help content break  
it into it's sections/chapters and add each as a PDF** entry with a  
nice title, description, and set of tags. That way anyone can go into  
Journal and type, help turtle and will be given the sections about  
turtle art.

** I'm just choosing PDF as it's support is mature in the current  
Sugar platform. Splitting up the help content will improve accuracy of  
search and avoid the memory issues of opening single large documents.

 Are there any other candidates today for the Fructose list we should
 consider? Not to open a can of worms - adjusting the pantheon is much
 less urgent than the discoverability/usability issues - but a review
 before each SoaS version seems judicious to me, especially since a
 choice needs to be made about which Activities are in the ring and
 which are off. I would suggest:

FWIW: As an Activity author I've long resisted any of my stuff going  
into Fructose. The whole point of Activities is that they are  
divisible from the base distribution and can be developed out of sync  
from the core Sugar platform. The harder you try to glue them all  
together as one great lump, the more brittle the whole development and  
release process is going to get.

For me, the only reason for Fructose is for those Activities  
considered an essential part of the Sugar platform, i.e without Browse  
it's going to be tough to install other Activities, without Read you  
won't be able to read documentation. Most Activities ended up in  
Fructose because their developers were also 'core' developers (those  
also working on the core Sugar platform), and they usually needed  
specific Activities to actually test and exercise the various features  
they were working on and integrating in Sugar.

Fructose is a technical term used by developers, it's also mutable as  
Activities fall in and out of it over time.

Regards,
--Gary

 Clock
 Help
 Maze
 Memorize
 Moon
 Read ETexts
 Speak
 Tux Paint

 I hesitated over:
 * Record which kids adore, but which I understand is iffy due to wide
 hardware variations, also teachers don't seem to like it much :-)
 * the TamTams which would make the list longish... (though my
 four-year-old figured out TamTam Mini in ten seconds the other day and
 loved every second with it)
 * GCompris Chess, since no 2-player yet.


 Our introduction to Sugar has a page with an attractive smorgasbord of
 Activities 
 (http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=pagepage=about_activities 
 ),
 and a link to ASLO. We listed the Activities in teacher/parent
 interest order: reassuring basics, net stuff,
 games/language/multimedia, the

Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-11 Thread Tomeu Vizoso

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 16:22, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote:
 On 11 Jun 2009, at 14:10, Sean DALY wrote:

 Bert - many thanks, I understand much better now.

 We're expecting a traffic peaks at the end of the month with our media
 push, that's why this work on clarity/simplicity is important.

 I'm afraid Fructose as a left-hand category on ASLO is obscure, it
 really should be base or core or base install, this last I like
 best because it's very clear. Note: a search for Fructose in ASLO
 returns no results!

 I actually don't think it's that hard to set a list; it's really just
 a Get Started list which covers online/offline, younger/older
 Learners, and super-helpful to have even if off-ring (Terminal...).

 I agree some deployments will want to zap some Activities, but as long
 as it's clear that there's no technical barrier to doing so we're
 fine.

 The list of 13 Fructose Activities at
 http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/fructose/
 does not match the list of 11 Fructose Activities on ASLO
 (http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:112?sort=name
 ).
 I imagine Image is off the bus (replaced by Image Viewer), but is the
 omission of Write intentional? I couldn't find it on ASLO at all :-(

 (N.B. Write is always the first Activity I choose to demonstrate
 classroom collaboration; people understand collaboration instantly
 when each of two machines can edit the same document live. My kids'
 nanny who is in her early 60s and does not use computers understood
 right away the usefulness of XOs in a classroom when she saw that, she
 got all excited and started asking me questions!)

 So I think the ASLO Fructose list, plus Write, can certainly be
 qualified as 12 base install Activities:

 Browse
 Calculate
 Chat
 Etoys
 ImageViewer
 Jukebox
 Log
 Pippy
 Read
 Terminal
 TurtleArt
 Write

 However I think it would be judicious to add Help to this list. Help
 is very reassuring during discovery of the totally unfamiliar
 interface. I'm aware there are issues right now building a new Help
 from the FLOSS Manuals source, but I believe Help aids teachers and
 parents significantly with the Sugar GUI learning curve.

 Can I raise Populate Journal with a handful of useful/exemplary
 items trac ticket:

        http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/840

 And suggest that we start using the Journal as a journal, rather than
 trying to create monoliths. Why not just take the help content break
 it into it's sections/chapters and add each as a PDF** entry with a
 nice title, description, and set of tags. That way anyone can go into
 Journal and type, help turtle and will be given the sections about
 turtle art.

 ** I'm just choosing PDF as it's support is mature in the current
 Sugar platform. Splitting up the help content will improve accuracy of
 search and avoid the memory issues of opening single large documents.

 Are there any other candidates today for the Fructose list we should
 consider? Not to open a can of worms - adjusting the pantheon is much
 less urgent than the discoverability/usability issues - but a review
 before each SoaS version seems judicious to me, especially since a
 choice needs to be made about which Activities are in the ring and
 which are off. I would suggest:

 FWIW: As an Activity author I've long resisted any of my stuff going
 into Fructose. The whole point of Activities is that they are
 divisible from the base distribution and can be developed out of sync
 from the core Sugar platform. The harder you try to glue them all
 together as one great lump, the more brittle the whole development and
 release process is going to get.

IMO, the only reason for an activity to be part of Fructose is to be
tied closely to the release cycle. For most activities this will be a
bad thing, but for some it's good. I think it's good for activities
that depend closely on some part of the platform, so that when the
platform updates, say, xulrunner or evince, the activity for this
release cycle won't work in the past releases and past versions won't
work in the last release cycle. Using the same release cycle as the
platform makes things much easier.

Also might benefit translators, but Sayamindu would be able to confirm this.

Regards,

Tomeu


 For me, the only reason for Fructose is for those Activities
 considered an essential part of the Sugar platform, i.e without Browse
 it's going to be tough to install other Activities, without Read you
 won't be able to read documentation. Most Activities ended up in
 Fructose because their developers were also 'core' developers (those
 also working on the core Sugar platform), and they usually needed
 specific Activities to actually test and exercise the various features
 they were working on and integrating in Sugar.

 Fructose is a technical term used by developers, it's also mutable as
 Activities fall in and out of it over time.

 Regards,
 --Gary

 Clock
 Help
 Maze
 Memorize
 Moon
 Read ETexts
 Speak
 Tux Paint

Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

Over 50 responses on this thread :D

But we are advancing I think :-)

Sean


On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 3:50 PM, Martin Denglermar...@martindengler.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 02:47:45PM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
 On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 03:10:49PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
  I actually don't think it's that hard to set a list[...]

 27 messages in this thread: 
 http://n2.nabble.com/G1G1v2-Activities-td1096680.html

 20 comments on this ticket: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6598

 Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread James Simmons

Sean,

I had another thought.  Activities can be included in up to three 
categories on ASLO.  So, in addition to GCompris we could also have a 
Core category (or Pre-Installed or some other agreed upon phrase) 
that would include all the Activities that are installed by default.  
This would showcase our most essential Activities and also give people a 
place to download stuff they may have removed by mistake.

When I first got my XO I didn't have a wireless router, so I had to copy 
everything in using a thumb drive.  I agree that some simple 
instructions would be worthwhile.

James Simmons

Sean DALY wrote:
 Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
 I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
 it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
 alertly figure it out.

 Sean

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Sean DALY

I think that's a great idea - will be very helpful in identifying the
classics.

i don't mind trying to write the instructions if someone else can edit
 post them.

thanks

Sean


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 4:37 PM, James Simmonsjim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
 Sean,

 I had another thought.  Activities can be included in up to three categories
 on ASLO.  So, in addition to GCompris we could also have a Core category
 (or Pre-Installed or some other agreed upon phrase) that would include all
 the Activities that are installed by default.  This would showcase our most
 essential Activities and also give people a place to download stuff they may
 have removed by mistake.

 When I first got my XO I didn't have a wireless router, so I had to copy
 everything in using a thumb drive.  I agree that some simple instructions
 would be worthwhile.

 James Simmons

 Sean DALY wrote:

 Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
 I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
 it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
 alertly figure it out.

 Sean


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Martin Dengler

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 05:34:29PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
 I think that's a great idea - will be very helpful in identifying the
 classics.

It'd be great if the classifications found happened to, or could be
easily made to, be sensibly related to the classifications used for
quite some time now:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy

Somthing like:

SL-maintained / classics / core -- Fructose
community-maintained / others -- Honey
pre-installed [on SoaS] -- Starch/Cellulose

I'm not saying the existing Taxonomy is the sexiest or
most-comprehensible-to-the-outsider, but it's well-aligned with the
development/deployment processes and if we promote a completely
orthogonal categorization it may cause a troublesome impedence
mismatch.

 thanks
 
 Sean

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Martin Dengler

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:48:43AM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
 Martin,

 First and foremost ASLO has to make sense to grade school kids and their  
 teachers.

Sure - I'm agreeing

  That's why I didn't care for GCompris as a category.

I didn't see that as an issue.

 Now since we can give an Activity up to three Categories it might
 make sense to have one for the stuff that comes pre-installed.

Sure - I'm agreeing

 Other than that, does any kid or teacher care who maintains an
 Activity?

Clearly you view the answer as no (I think in general, the right
answer is not unless they can get something out of that person,
which is a distinct possibility in FOSS-land, so actually I think the
answer should be they should because it can help them).  I don't
know what point you're making, expect possibly we needn't care about
aslo's coherency for anyone other than 'learners'.

 Among ourselves we can make any taxonomy we like, but for the public
 face of Sugar Activities we have to remember the target audience.

Did you think I was saying the opposite?

 It'd be great if the classifications found happened to, or could be
 easily made to, be sensibly related to the classifications used for
 quite some time now:

I hardly read that as the classifications must be only what we
already have.

 Any discussion of taxonomy reminds me of grocery shopping on
 Sundays.

Well, I didn't start it :).

 Whoever does the taxonomies for Jewel and Dominick's seems to have
 no purpose in mind other than keeping me in the damned store as long
 as possible.  On the other hand Costco arranges stuff in reasonable
 categories.

Are you saying that we should design our taxonomy to get people off
ASLO as soon as possible?  If not, what?

 James Simmons

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread James Simmons


Martin,

I phrased that poorly.  A kid might care that James Simmons wrote Read 
Etexts.  He probably won't care if James Simmons is a part of Sugar 
Labs, or part of the community, or if it was part of GCompris, or if we 
consider Read Etexts part of Glucose, Sucrose, Fructose, etc.


If a kid accidentally removes the Moon Activity and wants it back he 
might look in Math and Science or he might look in Pre-Installed.  It 
should be listed in both places.


As far as Dominick's vs. Costco, I enjoy the time I spend at Costco and 
hate the time I spend at Dominick's.  A good taxonomy would encourage a 
kid to explore the site and see what's available.  A poor one would make 
him feel like I do on Sunday afternoons, wondering why canned tomatoes 
are in a totally different aisle than other canned vegetables, or why 
Pita bread isn't with the rest of the bread, or why Blue or Feta cheese 
isn't with the rest of the cheese in the Dairy section, etc.


James Simmons


Martin Dengler wrote:

Other than that, does any kid or teacher care who maintains an
Activity?



Clearly you view the answer as no (I think in general, the right
answer is not unless they can get something out of that person,
which is a distinct possibility in FOSS-land, so actually I think the
answer should be they should because it can help them).  I don't
know what point you're making, expect possibly we needn't care about
aslo's coherency for anyone other than 'learners'.
  


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Martin Dengler

I think we're in violent agreement: different taxonomies are great in
that they can serve different needs [and we don't want to confuse
anyone if we can help it].


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Aleksey Lim

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 07:08:45PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
 FWIW, I have tried and failed to understand fructose, glucose, honey,
 etc. When I get around to writing a little Activity I guess I'll climb
 that learning curve.
 
 I'm sure it's a useful classification system, but I don't think
 teachers, parents, or Learners need any level of system architecture
 detail. Simpler is better.
true, maybe Basic
I guess Preinstalled doesn't make sense as well
(for example in openSUSE we have ~40 preinstalled activities:)

 If tagging is possible for each Activity,
yup, it should work

 perhaps it would be better
 to do that? a simple search on fructose would return the list,
 right?
in current code there is a restriction of 3 simultaneously pinned tags
I guess in that case we should increase this limit :)

 
 Sean
 
 
 
 On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Aleksey Limalsr...@member.fsf.org wrote:
  On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 05:34:29PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
  I think that's a great idea - will be very helpful in identifying the
  classics.
  I've created Fructose(but not sure about name) category for that reason
 
 
  i don't mind trying to write the instructions if someone else can edit
   post them.
 
  thanks
 
  Sean
 
 
  On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 4:37 PM, James Simmonsjim.simm...@walgreens.com 
  wrote:
   Sean,
  
   I had another thought.  Activities can be included in up to three 
   categories
   on ASLO.  So, in addition to GCompris we could also have a Core 
   category
   (or Pre-Installed or some other agreed upon phrase) that would include 
   all
   the Activities that are installed by default.  This would showcase our 
   most
   essential Activities and also give people a place to download stuff they 
   may
   have removed by mistake.
  
   When I first got my XO I didn't have a wireless router, so I had to copy
   everything in using a thumb drive.  I agree that some simple instructions
   would be worthwhile.
  
   James Simmons
  
   Sean DALY wrote:
  
   Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
   I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
   it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
   alertly figure it out.
  
   Sean
  
  
 
 
  --
  Aleksey
 
 

-- 
Aleksey
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Gary C Martin

Hi James,

On 10 Jun 2009, at 17:48, James Simmons wrote:

 Martin,

 First and foremost ASLO has to make sense to grade school kids and  
 their teachers.  That's why I didn't care for GCompris as a  
 category.  Now since we can give an Activity up to three Categories  
 it might make sense to have one for the stuff that comes pre- 
 installed.  Other than that, does any kid or teacher care who  
 maintains an Activity?

As I said once before, I'm really not a fan of ontologies, it's all  
shades of grey for me, but I guess we should try and get agreement on  
some set. Can't be much worse than we have already! :-)

Here's the thread from back in March when we last tried to move on this:

http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-March/004715.html

 For ASLO we might want teachers to suggest categories based on  
 subjects taught.  For instance, instead of Documents we might have  
 Reading and Writing or Reading and Writing.  Instead of Media  
 Creation and Media Playing we could have Art and Music.

Not too much input from existing teachers unfortunately back then, but  
the list I was keeping track of ended up at something like the below:

Art
Communication
Games
Geography
Literacy
Maths
Music
Programming
Science
Utilities

How does this seem to folks, anything missing or could be better  
named? Was trying to keep the list reasonably short and non-technical.

Regards,
--Gary

 Among ourselves we can make any taxonomy we like, but for the public  
 face of Sugar Activities we have to remember the target audience.

 Any discussion of taxonomy reminds me of grocery shopping on  
 Sundays.  Whoever does the taxonomies for Jewel and Dominick's seems  
 to have no purpose in mind other than keeping me in the damned store  
 as long as possible.  On the other hand Costco arranges stuff in  
 reasonable categories.

 James Simmons


 Martin Dengler wrote:

 On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 05:34:29PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:

 I think that's a great idea - will be very helpful in identifying  
 the
 classics.


 It'd be great if the classifications found happened to, or could be
 easily made to, be sensibly related to the classifications used for
 quite some time now:

 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy

 Somthing like:

 SL-maintained / classics / core -- Fructose
 community-maintained / others -- Honey
 pre-installed [on SoaS] -- Starch/Cellulose

 I'm not saying the existing Taxonomy is the sexiest or
 most-comprehensible-to-the-outsider, but it's well-aligned with the
 development/deployment processes and if we promote a completely
 orthogonal categorization it may cause a troublesome impedence
 mismatch.


 thanks

 Sean


 Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Walter Bender

FWIW, the 100 or so GCompris activities have an internal organization as well:

maths
physics
puzzles
reading
amusements
strategy games
discovery
learn about the computer

-walter

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 6:53 PM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote:
 Hi James,

 On 10 Jun 2009, at 17:48, James Simmons wrote:

 Martin,

 First and foremost ASLO has to make sense to grade school kids and
 their teachers.  That's why I didn't care for GCompris as a
 category.  Now since we can give an Activity up to three Categories
 it might make sense to have one for the stuff that comes pre-
 installed.  Other than that, does any kid or teacher care who
 maintains an Activity?

 As I said once before, I'm really not a fan of ontologies, it's all
 shades of grey for me, but I guess we should try and get agreement on
 some set. Can't be much worse than we have already! :-)

 Here's the thread from back in March when we last tried to move on this:

        http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-March/004715.html

 For ASLO we might want teachers to suggest categories based on
 subjects taught.  For instance, instead of Documents we might have
 Reading and Writing or Reading and Writing.  Instead of Media
 Creation and Media Playing we could have Art and Music.

 Not too much input from existing teachers unfortunately back then, but
 the list I was keeping track of ended up at something like the below:

 Art
 Communication
 Games
 Geography
 Literacy
 Maths
 Music
 Programming
 Science
 Utilities

 How does this seem to folks, anything missing or could be better
 named? Was trying to keep the list reasonably short and non-technical.

 Regards,
 --Gary

 Among ourselves we can make any taxonomy we like, but for the public
 face of Sugar Activities we have to remember the target audience.

 Any discussion of taxonomy reminds me of grocery shopping on
 Sundays.  Whoever does the taxonomies for Jewel and Dominick's seems
 to have no purpose in mind other than keeping me in the damned store
 as long as possible.  On the other hand Costco arranges stuff in
 reasonable categories.

 James Simmons


 Martin Dengler wrote:

 On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 05:34:29PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:

 I think that's a great idea - will be very helpful in identifying
 the
 classics.


 It'd be great if the classifications found happened to, or could be
 easily made to, be sensibly related to the classifications used for
 quite some time now:

 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy

 Somthing like:

 SL-maintained / classics / core -- Fructose
 community-maintained / others -- Honey
 pre-installed [on SoaS] -- Starch/Cellulose

 I'm not saying the existing Taxonomy is the sexiest or
 most-comprehensible-to-the-outsider, but it's well-aligned with the
 development/deployment processes and if we promote a completely
 orthogonal categorization it may cause a troublesome impedence
 mismatch.


 thanks

 Sean


 Martin


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

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-- 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-10 Thread Gary C Martin

On 10 Jun 2009, at 18:24, James Simmons wrote:

 Martin,

 I phrased that poorly.  A kid might care that James Simmons wrote  
 Read Etexts.  He probably won't care if James Simmons is a part of  
 Sugar Labs, or part of the community, or if it was part of GCompris,  
 or if we consider Read Etexts part of Glucose, Sucrose, Fructose, etc.

 If a kid accidentally removes the Moon Activity and wants it back he  
 might look in Math and Science or he might look in Pre-Installed.   
 It should be listed in both places.

I know what you meant about a core or pre-Installed category, but  
this is going to break so fast, actually already broken. Different  
distros are bundling different activities, some more some less, it's  
their call. I think David Van Assche mentioned getting 50+ Activities  
in the latest openSUSE image; and I'm sure school deployments will  
choose their own Activity sets.

--Gary

 As far as Dominick's vs. Costco, I enjoy the time I spend at Costco  
 and hate the time I spend at Dominick's.  A good taxonomy would  
 encourage a kid to explore the site and see what's available.  A  
 poor one would make him feel like I do on Sunday afternoons,  
 wondering why canned tomatoes are in a totally different aisle than  
 other canned vegetables, or why Pita bread isn't with the rest of  
 the bread, or why Blue or Feta cheese isn't with the rest of the  
 cheese in the Dairy section, etc.

 James Simmons


 Martin Dengler wrote:

 Other than that, does any kid or teacher care who maintains an
 Activity?


 Clearly you view the answer as no (I think in general, the right
 answer is not unless they can get something out of that person,
 which is a distinct possibility in FOSS-land, so actually I think the
 answer should be they should because it can help them).  I don't
 know what point you're making, expect possibly we needn't care about
 aslo's coherency for anyone other than 'learners'.


 ___
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 i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-09 Thread David Farning

I think the Recommended activities are still those which were uploaded
early just to test the the recommendations worked.

IIRC, for a long time search was more broken than recommendations
Thus, search got the love.

That being said, modifying and updating recommendations are handled
through a web interface by editors.  If you have the time and interest
recommendations could use some love from you:)

david


On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 9:50 AM, James Simmonsjim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
 The new style sheet for ASLO reminds me that something has bugged me
 about the design of the site from the beginning.  The site does not do a
 good job of showing just how much is available.  When you click on a
 category you see entries for three or four Activities, seemingly picked
 at random, and no indication that these Activities are not the only ones
 available in the category.  Yes, there is a link to show everything in
 the category.  It's not that you can't find anything if you really want
 to.  It's that the site doesn't do a good job of selling what it has.

 What I would suggest is to put totals for each category in a prominent
 place on the page.  When you first come into the site and no category is
 selected you should see something like 500 Great Activities
 Available!  Choose a category like Documents and the line would read
 10 Activities In This Category.

 The other thing that has bugged me is the Recommended Activities.  We
 need to put more thought into what gets recommended.  Currently one of
 the Activities that is recommended is Read.  Now an XO owner or SoaS
 user already has Read, so why recommend it?  Is there some reason I
 should remove the Read I already have and install this one?

 Recommended Activities should promote Sugar.  They should meet the
 following criteria:

 1).  Fairly robust.
 2).  Not included by default with anything.
 3).  Should do something interesting.  Think of the iPhone commercials
 that show all the apps that are available.  Why not recommend something
 like Food Force or Story Builder?

 I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities
 are related to each other, but the relationship would not be meaningful
 to a teacher or a student.

 A little salesmanship could go a long way in making this site better.

 James Simmons


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

Looking better all the time.

For the moment, the site suffers from being ghettoized from the rest
of the Sugar Labs site; you can get in, but you can't get out -
there's no Sugar Labs navigation. Direct links coming in mean the rest
of the site is invisible. To fix this (and the other sections too,
it's not a problem specific to Activities), Christian has promised me
he will have the sitewide persistent navbar soon, he's super-occupied
with the new baby :-)

As search is local, it's good the search bar indicates in explicitly.

I agree with most of what James said. I can add: the site actually
fulfills a marketing function, unrelated to downloads: it's a quick
way for someone checking out the project to see how much and what
kinds of content are available, if the ecosystem is active, and so on.
A few years ago, from reading magazines and blogs, I was aware that
Firefox had a vibrant add-on offer months before I ever downloaded
one. So yes, there should be a count somewhere which instantly
communicates the richness.

The non US-en bug is still in effect; French users and I suspect other
locales see no content whatsoever, which to my mind is a bigger
problem than which Activities to feature. There is a language selector
which allows magically populating the empty site, but it's practically
unfindable. I would suggest disabling the language selector if that
bug can't be easily fixed (upstream).

GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
will work in those Activities too.

I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent; a common
scenario could be replacing an Activity removed by a Learner. Forgive
my ignorance, but is the OLPC notion of a set applicable? is it
possible to tag some Activities as baseline, to have section for
them (can an Activity be in more than one section)? I agree though
that they shouldn't be featured unless a major upgrade is available.

As well, there are more than one reading Activities; the logical place
to locate them is here, but some parents or teachers on a Sugar
learning curve may believe that baseline Read needs to be
uninstalled to install Read eTexts. We need a short intro explaining
the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
besides me had volunteered to look at that

thanks.

Sean


On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Aleksey Limalsr...@member.fsf.org wrote:
 On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 12:09:56PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
 Aleksey,

 That will teach me to open my mouth.
 :)

 At the moment the only Activities
 I'm really familiar with are my own, Read, and your Library Activity
 which isn't finished (but would definitely be worthy otherwise).  I'll
 have to add some more Activities to my XO and give them a try.  Any
 suggestions on what might be worth a recommended status will be welcomed.
 well, we have not so much sugar activities on ASLO(I hope just for now)
 ..and I guess we should add some kind of filter to separate native sugar
 activities from GCompris, now we have 40 vs. 100 :)

 Your other ideas sound good, but I still think we need some highly
 visible counts in there.  As someone once said, You gotta tell 'em to
 sell 'em!
 the problem is - we depend on upstream AMO code, so patching ASLO code a lot
 will mean problems while merging new AMO commits (we can suggest our changes
 directly to AMO but thats another story).


 Thanks,

 James Simmons


 Aleksey Lim wrote:
 You are an editor now and can do the best on
 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/editors/featured ;)

 And after fixing #948 all featured activities will appear on main page
 and per category main pages.


 I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities
 are related to each other, but the relationship would not be
 meaningful to a teacher or a student.

 fixed

 --
 Aleksey
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-09 Thread James Simmons

Sean DALY wrote:
 GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
 elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
 credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
 been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
 very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
 will work in those Activities too.
   
OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else 
had either.
 I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;
   
I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm 
thinking that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link 
on the Browse start page and the featured items ought to be things he 
doesn't have yet.

I like the term Featured Activity better than We Recommend too.  We 
Recommend implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust 
we have, which limits what you can put in there.  Featured Activity 
implies nothing more than We think this is cool and worth a look.  For 
instance, I would not hesitate to put Story Builder or GCompris 3D 
Maze as a Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I 
recommend either of them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item 
every month or so.  That would make this site a bit more interesting to 
visit, and you wouldn't have people wondering why last month we 
recommended Read Etexts but this month we don't.
 We need a short intro explaining
 the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
 had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
 besides me had volunteered to look at that
I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets 
added to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways 
to install something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.

James Simmons


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
alertly figure it out.

After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.

I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
key from within Sugar :-)

Sean


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
Simmonsjim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
 Sean DALY wrote:

 GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
 elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
 credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
 been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
 very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
 will work in those Activities too.


 OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
 either.

 I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;


 I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
 that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the Browse
 start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.

 I like the term Featured Activity better than We Recommend too.  We
 Recommend implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
 have, which limits what you can put in there.  Featured Activity implies
 nothing more than We think this is cool and worth a look.  For instance, I
 would not hesitate to put Story Builder or GCompris 3D Maze as a
 Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either of
 them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you wouldn't
 have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
 month we don't.

 We need a short intro explaining
 the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
 had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
 besides me had volunteered to look at that

 I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
 to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
 something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.

 James Simmons



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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-09 Thread David Farning

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Sean DALYsdaly...@gmail.com wrote:
 Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
 I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
 it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
 alertly figure it out.

 After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
 Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
 also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
 side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
 course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.

Aslo is set up to handle automatic activity updates using the same
mechanism firefox uses to check for addon update.

david

 I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
 my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
 USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
 stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
 a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
 running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
 key from within Sugar :-)

 Sean


 On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
 Simmonsjim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
 Sean DALY wrote:

 GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
 elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
 credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
 been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
 very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
 will work in those Activities too.


 OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
 either.

 I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;


 I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
 that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the Browse
 start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.

 I like the term Featured Activity better than We Recommend too.  We
 Recommend implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
 have, which limits what you can put in there.  Featured Activity implies
 nothing more than We think this is cool and worth a look.  For instance, I
 would not hesitate to put Story Builder or GCompris 3D Maze as a
 Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either of
 them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you wouldn't
 have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
 month we don't.

 We need a short intro explaining
 the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
 had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
 besides me had volunteered to look at that

 I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
 to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
 something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.

 James Simmons



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

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

umm... I'm trying to understand how that assists in keeping Activities
up-to-date... what plays the role of the FF browser, phoning in for
version availability?

thanks

Sean


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:04 AM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote:
 On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Sean DALYsdaly...@gmail.com wrote:
 Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
 I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
 it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
 alertly figure it out.

 After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
 Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
 also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
 side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
 course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.

 Aslo is set up to handle automatic activity updates using the same
 mechanism firefox uses to check for addon update.

 david

 I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
 my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
 USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
 stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
 a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
 running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
 key from within Sugar :-)

 Sean


 On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
 Simmonsjim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
 Sean DALY wrote:

 GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
 elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
 credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
 been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
 very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
 will work in those Activities too.


 OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
 either.

 I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;


 I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
 that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the Browse
 start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.

 I like the term Featured Activity better than We Recommend too.  We
 Recommend implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
 have, which limits what you can put in there.  Featured Activity implies
 nothing more than We think this is cool and worth a look.  For instance, I
 would not hesitate to put Story Builder or GCompris 3D Maze as a
 Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either of
 them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you wouldn't
 have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
 month we don't.

 We need a short intro explaining
 the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
 had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
 besides me had volunteered to look at that

 I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
 to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
 something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.

 James Simmons



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


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-09 Thread David Farning

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Sean DALYsdaly...@gmail.com wrote:
 umm... I'm trying to understand how that assists in keeping Activities
 up-to-date... what plays the role of the FF browser, phoning in for
 version availability?

As far as FF goes, the FF updater ping the addons.mozilla.org
periodically with a list of installed addons and version numbers.  AMO
responds with a list of updateable addons.

The sugar updater would need to be extended to handle this additional
level of polling to activities.sugarlabs.org.

david

 thanks

 Sean


 On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:04 AM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote:
 On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Sean DALYsdaly...@gmail.com wrote:
 Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
 I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
 it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
 alertly figure it out.

 After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
 Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
 also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
 side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
 course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.

 Aslo is set up to handle automatic activity updates using the same
 mechanism firefox uses to check for addon update.

 david

 I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
 my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
 USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
 stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
 a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
 running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
 key from within Sugar :-)

 Sean


 On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
 Simmonsjim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
 Sean DALY wrote:

 GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
 elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
 credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
 been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
 very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
 will work in those Activities too.


 OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
 either.

 I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;


 I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
 that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the 
 Browse
 start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.

 I like the term Featured Activity better than We Recommend too.  We
 Recommend implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
 have, which limits what you can put in there.  Featured Activity implies
 nothing more than We think this is cool and worth a look.  For instance, 
 I
 would not hesitate to put Story Builder or GCompris 3D Maze as a
 Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either 
 of
 them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you 
 wouldn't
 have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
 month we don't.

 We need a short intro explaining
 the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
 had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
 besides me had volunteered to look at that

 I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
 to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
 something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.

 James Simmons



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



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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

many thanks Martin for finding that thread for me, I have so much
going on I'm having trouble remembering keywords to look things up

Actually what faked me out was the fine print about XO software
update: it won't update to the latest Activity version on ASLO, just
the latest OLPC supported Activity version. Which is of course
perfectly logical now that I think about it, but as Activity versions
are coming fast furious, I had lost confidence in the Your software
is up-to-date message... since I knew more recent versions were
available. Intuitively, I would expect ASLO to be polled by Sugar
machines... in clicking, I expect the machine to figure out all by
itself what it needs to be up to date... I guess the best way out of
that is to ask OLPC to title that page Search for OLPC updates?

Re USB: a brief little popup saying Your USB key is visible in the
Journal would be helpful I think.

Sean

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:22 AM, Martin Denglermar...@martindengler.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:58:39AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
alertly figure it out.

This is the email thread you may have been thinking of, with a couple
of phrases suggested:
http://n2.nabble.com/-Marketing--adding-or-updating-an-Activity:-two-typical-teacher-scenarios,-let%27s-%09lower-barrier-to-installation-td2981491.html
(ugh, that's a horrible link).

After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the
Control Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of
does, but also doesn't.

It does (check for activity updates that OLPC supports) on OLPC
builds. The Software Update extension in the Control Panel doesn't
exist (well, it's broken and hidden) on SoaS. So it either works as
designed, or isn't present.

I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
key from within Sugar :-)

How can this be made easier for newcomers to learn?

Sean

Martin

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

2009-06-09 Thread Martin Dengler

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 01:53:06AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
 Intuitively, I would expect ASLO to be polled by Sugar
 machines... in clicking, I expect the machine to figure out all by
 itself what it needs to be up to date...

Definitely, a good feature to have.  I was just talking about what
existed right now in SoaS (which is: no working updater, AFAIK).

 I guess the best way out of
 that is to ask OLPC to title that page Search for OLPC updates?

One could always change it and see if it got changed back :)

   I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
  key from within Sugar :-)
 
  How can this be made easier for newcomers to learn?

 Re USB: a brief little popup saying Your USB key is visible in the
 Journal would be helpful I think.

That sounds like a nice feature to me.  In an ideal world you would
have time to file a bug report, and in a slightly-less-ideal world I'd
have time to do it for you instead of pointing this out :).

 Sean

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion