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=page&page=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 be correct in assuming this? Or does OLPC prefer to identify "known good" version, the ones updated through the XO Control Panel? Google search ranks highly this 6-month-old page: http://www.spitting-image.com/OLPC/ , an indicator of the need for ASLO's rating system. By "Activity Pack" I mean a set of Activities. * Activity Set: clear and concise, but dullish. * Activity Pack: implies a "box" containing a bunch of chosen Activities; my favorite, because it sounds like you're getting something. * Activity Group: will be confused with Learners. * Activity Bundle: bundle clearly means something already, so that's out. I'm afraid I don't know what a "content bundle" is. * Activity Hive: fits with honey metaphor, but obscure. Activity packs can have a very useful role in promoting Sugar, e.g. "our updated Multimedia Pack is perfect for budding musicians and artists" or "our Games Pack has been specially selected for 2 or more player learning fun". As our Activity offer becomes richer, we encourage potential installers to jump through the hoops of downloading an ISO, installing VirtualBox or loading a USB stick, learning the new interface, etc. Echoing James' mail which started the thread, I agree Featured Activities will ideally be: * non- base install * interesting * different each month, encouraging return traffic In short, the place to go for "extras" beyond what you start out with. The "base install" grouping will be very useful to replace an accidentally deleted Activity or offer further information about an Activity with a learning curve (link to author's page etc). A parent or teacher who successfully installs Sugar and then successfully upgrades and adds to its Activities will fully understand the key advantages of the platform's openness and extensibility. Does this seem like a good path? thanks Sean On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Bert Freudenberg<b...@freudenbergs.de> wrote: > > On 11.06.2009, at 09:51, Sean DALY wrote: > >> ultimately, the question is: are there (or not) Activities common to >> every, or nearly every instance of Sugar? >> >> Browse >> Read >> Write >> etc. > > > At least the Fructose activities should always be there: > > http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/fructose/ > > - Bert - > > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > i...@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel