[IAEP] aslo categories

[Gary C Martin]

On 18 Mar 2009, at 17:47, Walter Bender wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Gary C Martin  
> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>> So, summing up so far, this could give us something like:
>>
>>     Art
>>     Communication
>>     Games
>>     Geography
>>     Literacy
>>     Maths
>>     Music
>>     Programming
>>     Science
>>     Utilities
>
> I don't know what the solution is, but I have issues with the above  
> taxonomy.
>
> Is art music? Is music art? Where does synth lab fit it? Art, music,
> programming, science? Is a memorize a game when you are making math
> facts cards? Or is it geometry when you make a name that country game?
> Or is it English-language learning when you making pronunciation
> cards?Typing Tutor can be used for spelling, not just learning to
> type.

It's funny I've ended up on this one, I'm really not a fan of  
ontologies, it's all shades of grey for me :-) But at least the  
current ASLO system does allow more than one category per Activity to  
get to that slightly fuzzy feeling.

> Perhaps we can search on descriptions? And if reviewers could add a
> word or two description of what they used the activity for, and Gary
> generates an interactive SOM for the search...

Oh my, you are thinking big on this one, here was me thinking we just  
needed some refinement on the current ASLO process to keep us  
rolling :-) I'd be happy to see the categories UI go and have  
something tag cloud like instead, but that's more work for someone...

FWIW: I did start making SOM's using my Activity test results as the  
input feature vectors for each Activity, then marking the Activity  
icons on the resulting map. It was kind'a fun but I decided I should  
spend more time testing and less time messing with my SOM code :-) I  
could only sensibly collect about 5 test feature vectors per activity,  
without going nuts, but I guess the process would be interesting if we  
could pool formal results, perhaps from an automated Activity test rig  
(now I have jhbuild running, perhaps I should look at sugarbot again).

Regards,
--Gary

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