[IAEP] segregated activities from the sugar platform

[Walter Bender]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:44 AM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 06:29, David Van Assche<dvanassche at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>   This may seem like a bit of a premature email, but it comes in
>> reference to questions I was asked at the guadalinex offices about
>> adding Sugar to their distribution. They mentioned there is a lot of
>> freedom as to what content and activitities/applications can be put
>> into the distro, but not so much freedom when it comes to marketing,
>> naming, base foundations, etc. Thats a shame because the name
>> guadalinex really sucks :p
>
> I actually like the name quite a bit ;)
>
>> but its great because they are genuinenly
>> interested in running sugar activities in guadalinex.
>
> That's great, but I'm not 100% sure that will benefit Sugar itself.
> But happy to give it a try.
>
>> I explained that
>> with the move to metacity this would be a possibility in the not too
>> distant future (I hope I did not speak out of tone.)
>
> Well, with the metacity move, activities that behave badly in terms of
> window sizing will be exposed and we'll be able to fix them. But I
> don't think that's one of the biggest issues when running Sugar
> activities out of Sugar.
>
> What we need right now is someone to give it a try with a very simple
> activity and report back. Then we can identify the first wave of
> issues and start working on that.

I had set up Turtle Art to be able to run outside of Sugar. It has a
.desktop file and should install under the Applications/Education menu
on the desktop. Or run it from the shell from turlteart.py.

It has its problems: no access to the toolbar and no access to the
journal or sharing. But it runs.

>> There is also the
>> very strong likeleyhood that they would use LTSP and iTalc as a method
>> of distribution and control. The team I saw was MUCH bigger than I
>> expected (a good 300 people working behind computers) and the
>> interview process was highly formal, modern and professional. It even
>> included a type of psych evaluation, although many of the questions
>> were related to my experience in the field (logical) and what kind of
>> tech we should be iImplementing today, so that in 5 years time we
>> would be in the right playing field. They asked where I saw the distro
>> and linux for education being in 5 years, which is an amazingly
>> difficult question to answer. In fact, I'd love to hear some of your
>> thoughts on that one...
>
> This is interesting, but would benefit from having it's own thread.
>
>> They also wondered how it was possible that I
>> would take such a job for so little money, so I guess its not totally
>> obvious to many people that tech in education is actually a lot of fun
>> and worth being paid less for, than doing some boring sysadmin job
>> that really does nothing more than fill the pockets of the company
>> being worked for. Anyway, I really hope I get a positive answer soon,
>> and when I do, the job they want me to take there is a kind of linux
>> ambassador... that is to say, someone who connects up with the
>> necesary folk and finds out whats happening and whats worth
>> implementing in the land of education and linux...
>
> That's awesome, I bet is hard to convince politicians to fund 300
> engineers and at the same time play the upstream/downstream game.
> Related interview:
>
> http://www.gnomejournal.org/article/72/working-with-upstream-an-interview-with-laszlo-peter
>
>> One thing is
>> relatively sure... Sugar will be running on these roughly 1 million
>> computers in one form or another.,.,., So the playing field just got a
>> whole lot bigger... in fact, it would mean the xo would suddenly be a
>> minority... lol For general information, though this is not very
>> known, in sheer numbers, they are the biggest edu linux initiative in
>> the world, and have been around for 6 years now. They seem to have
>> bypassed many hurdles other such initiatives had and they say their
>> schools are generally very happy. But, like all projects, they lack
>> content...
>
> We need to help these projects get into contact with each other and
> pool resources.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Tomeu
>
>>
>> kind regards,
>> David (nubae) Van Assche
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



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