[IAEP] Alternative 'favorites view' as an intro to programming

[Walter Bender]

On 7/20/11, Christopher Lindgren <Chris.Lindgren at my.ndsu.edu> wrote:
> Hi, everyone,
>
> This is my first time emailing this list, but I've been reading for awhile
> now. I was wondering if I could request some help with an idea that I was
> thinking about doing with my SoaS project.
>
> I want to provide an engaging mini-lesson introducing the architecture of
> Sugar (python) to 4th and 5th graders. To do so, I thought that the
> favorites view modification would be a fun way to show them how there is
> code underneath this GUI, and you can change the code to change the WYSIWYG.
>
> Anyways, I am wondering how to go about this, using the latest mirabelle
> soas image? I have seen this wiki page:
> (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hacking_Sugar#Emulation_Images), but I do not
> know how to view this source file. I only know how to do the "View Source"
> for the activities in Sugar.
>
> Any help will be greatly appreciated!
>
> Best,
>
> Chris Lindgren | fargoxo.wordpress.com
>

FWIW:

(1) The instructions for modifying the home view in the Sugar manual
are a bit out of date, so please be sure to test them before exposing
kids.

(2) There is a patch to the Edit activity that would let kids edit
files outside of Sugar that may be of use. I am waiting for the
maintainer to pull it but I could provide it to you as well.

(3) There is a pending patch to View Source that shows the Sugar
Toolkit source as well as the activity source. We haven't decided on
the best place to show the Sugar desktop source, but once we do, it
will be easy enough to add that.

(4) An issue we haven't fully resolved is the best mechanism for
letting kids break Sugar without screwing up their systems. We can run
Sugar clones from places outside of the installed bits, but the
question is what triggers this? And how do you recover from a mistake?

I had in mind something along the lines of setting a flag to say you
wanted to reboot into a local copy of Sugar and having the flag
automatically disabled upon boot, so the reboot would be back to the
installed version by default, providing a simple way of recovering
(whether you want to our not). Still discussing the above with the
design team.

-walter

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