[IAEP] [SLOBS] Sugar Labs 2010 Goals Review

[Bernie Innocenti]

El Mon, 12-07-2010 a las 22:13 -0400, C. Scott Ananian escribió:

> Are iPad-class devices (such as the XO-3) or touchscreen devices (such
> as the XO-1.75) counted as "mobile devices"?
>
> There will shortly be a large number of iPad-style devices on the
> market.  The hackable ones will probably be running some version of
> Android (which may or may not mean that a "real" linux distro can be
> installed).

(I hope my next statement won't result in a flame-war on hardware)

My sense is that iPad-like devices with no physical keyboard may be good
for reading books and watching videos, not so good for creating content.
Hence, they may not support well the learn-by-doing philosophy that
Sugar promotes.

Perhaps advancements in touch screen technology, virtual keyboard design
and hand-writing recognition will change my mind one day. Presently, the
iPad is designed as an accessory for a real computer, and tablets
capable of fully replacing a computer are in fact regular laptops with a
display that can be rotated 360 degrees, like the XO-1.

BTW: who's using the XO-1 in tablet mode? Believe it or not, in 3 years
I have *never* seen anyone (adult or child) using it this way. Maybe a
touch screen would change everything? The Classmate 3 has a touchscreen.
Is it being used in tablet mode?


> Are developers using Sugar as their day-to-day development
> environment yet?

Certainly not me... I'm not even sure it will ever happen. Even
developers of Gnome and KDE are probably using the shell as their main
work environment for writing code and managing files. Many also use the
shell to read email and chat, thus covering over 90% of their computing
time.

However, I've seen many teachers using Sugar. Not just Browse. They also
use Write and Record.

Given a choice, many teachers started using Gnome. Some of them messed
up their systems, just like children.


> > In the past, we've been criticized for insufficient transparency. Does
> > anyone still have a problem with this?
> 
> "Open to critique" isn't quite the same as "responsive to critique".
> 
> From an outside perspective, it seems that frequently SugarLabs is
> just not listening to people who offer contrary opinions.  This is
> better than flaming them, but maybe not as good as it could be.
>
> For an end-of-year report, I'd like to see instances enumerated where
> SugarLabs actually internalized some outside critique and responded in
> a positive way -- some concrete change made to the UI, or Sugar, or to
> process.  That would be more convincing that simply stating, "we are
> now open to critique".

I think you're mostly correct, but this is endemic to how a community
works. One can't expect Sugar Labs to react to criticism like a business
would (would it?).

The most effective way to influence a community is becoming part of it
and leading the change from the inside. Aleksey and Sebastian are
excellent examples of people who arrived with their own ideas and made
Sugar Labs to develop them.

Sadly, it doesn't seem to work so well for non-technical folks. I can't
think of one good example of an educator or a businessman who came to
our community with a good proposal and could make it happen successfully
within Sugar Labs. This may explain why we don't have that many
educators in our community :-(

[Evangeline's portfolio is one notable exception. Her idea was quickly
implemented by Walter in Turtle Art. Perhaps it's not as easy to use as
she had envisioned, but it's nevertheless a powerful idea.]



> > We're definitely intimidating to non-technical people. At least, this is
> > what I sensed at the Realness Summit. OLE also seems to be doing a
> > better job at connecting with educators. I'm not completely sure what
> > corrective actions should be. We might need to do some work on the wiki,
> > maybe add web forums, which non-geeks tend to prefer...
> 
> I suspect that the answer to this problem does not involve installing
> additional software.

Installing software is the only thing I'm good at, so this is what I
propose :-)

Seriously, you're probably correct. Engaging the educators in our
community should be our highest priority today, but I have no idea where
to start from.

The Realness Summit [1] was quite a positive experience for me. Some
real educators came and offered their viewpoint. There was actually a
whole spectrum of viewpoints, ranging from the purely constructionist to
the purely instructionist. Unbelievably, the atmosphere remained clam
and productive. At the end of the meeting, participants were eager to
form some kind of un-organization to keep exchanging experience and
ideas on education technologies and one-to-one computing.

If the educators will not come to Sugar Labs, perhaps Sugar Labs could
go where the educators already are.


[1] http://realness.org/

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/