[IAEP] Fwd: [sugar] Narrative

[Walter Bender]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 2:06 PM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> This takes us back to the collaboration server discussions from last week.
>
> Rather than attempting to organizing content it may be preferable to improve
> the tools which help users self organize into communities.
>
> Last night I got into a discussion about the value of the Neighborhood view
> with my 2nd grade niece:)  She was pretty befuddled as to why she had to
> chose between belkin_019, linksys_1, meshview_11,....  From her perspective
> it made more sense to click on 'Mrs. Kings class' if she wanted to do her
> homework, or 'After school fun' if she wanted to talk with her friends.
>
> While the idea of APs and mesh networks is important to us as geeks and
> developers.  From a user point of view the idea of virtual communities or
> rooms seems clearer.
>
> Maybe it is my misunderstanding of the nature of a jabber sever.  A IRC
> server is pretty useless until the users can self select into channels.
>
> Possibly, the idea of manipulating narratives could be best handled by
> helping communities develop which can discover, share, and reflect on
> _their_own_ stories.
>
> thanks
> david
>
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> We need to add an its.an.education.project alias to this list...
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>> Date: Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:29 PM
>> Subject: Re: [sugar] Narrative
>> To: Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu>
>> Cc: Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com>, bens at alum.mit.edu, sugar
>> <sugar at lists.laptop.org>, "its. an. education. project"
>> <its.an.education.project at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>
>>
>> Each of us seems to have interpreted Michael's note differently, so
>> perhaps some more clarity of definitions is in order. In any case, my
>> focus was on the assertion that there are  "no excellent way to
>> manipulate narratives" within Sugar. Excellence is the standard we
>> should be striving for and I do agree we have a ways to go in terms of
>> developing tools for "manipulating" "narratives" within Sugar. But it
>> seems a funny dichotomy: manipulating narratives vs. modes for
>> discovery.
>>
>> When I think about Sugar, I think about its providing a scaffolding
>> for discovering, expressing, critiquing, and reflecting. Manipulating
>> narrative seems to cut across all of these area (as does
>> collaboration). We have a browser--the "discovery" platform du
>> jour--but also an ebook reader and media player, and various tools for
>> collecting and inspecting data (e.g, Measure and Distance). In terms
>> of expression, we have a wide variety of tools, including word
>> processing, rich media, programming, etc. Tools for critique and
>> reflection seems the least developed thus far: we have chat and we
>> have sharing and simple debugging tools, and we have the Journal, but
>> we don't yet support (natively) much in the way of organizing data to
>> make an analysis or argument. Is this the role Bryan expects Moodle to
>> play? If so, I don't really see how.  There are beginnings of tools
>> such as spreadsheets, mindmaps, etc. being "Sugarized". What else
>> should we add to this list? There is also a powerful presentation
>> toolkit built into Etoys--is it the lack of PowerPoint that Bryan is
>> missing?--but it is not very easy to find. Perhaps something more
>> wiki-like or HTML-based would be better. Having it available off-line
>> is probably as important as accessing an on-line system, such as is
>> already available in Moodle and in general on any GNU/Linux (or even
>> Windows) server. In terms of organizing school itself, Moodle and its
>> like certainly have an important role to play. Sugar is not intended
>> to be all things, but part of a learning ecosystem.
>>
>> There is certainly a paucity of lesson plans developed around Sugar:
>> how does one best leverage this collection of tools for learning. And
>> undoubtedly, a dearth of content readily packaged and categorized. But
>> I don't see these as fundamental design flaws in Sugar as much as a
>> place where more effort needs to be invested. Sugar is reaching a
>> point of maturity where such investments make sense.
>>
>> In any case, I'd love to hear Michael's "interesting ideas".
>>
>> -walter
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
>


I like your niece's model of the neighborhood view--maybe we can have
some way of generating aliases for the various APs based upon which
Jabber server you are on; the Jabber servers themselves could have
nicknames too, based on their intended constituency. But it skirts the
question of what tools communities use to organize content and
generate their narratives.

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org