[IAEP] [support-gang] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro aprender Sugar / I cannot learn Sugar

[Kevin Mark]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 07:58:48PM -0700, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> This is a FYI... Carlos Rebassa, a Rap Ceibal volunteer many of us met in
> Uruguay has come up with a surprisingly critical complaint about Sugar.  He
> included a link to an English version, but did not send it to IAEP or the
> Support Gang lists.  I have no idea what prompted his criticisms nor can I
> figure out exactly what they are.  Carlos is fluent in English. He lived in New
> York and sold Real Estate there for many years.  If any of you want to reply,
> you can send it to the olpc-sur list or directly to Carlos.
> 
> Caryl

He points out Apple as a top-down company and the FLOSS folks as horizontal.
Its sort of might parallel Canonical vs Debian. Apple is more polished because
it pays experts and does lots of user testing. I'm sure if OLPC/Sugarlabs had
the same resources, it might do similar. I know that Sugar was pushed out into
the world with less than perfect feedback where kids could be observed in
school setting (or that is what I recall from the days of 656). And that the
South American deployments are a valuable source of feedback. And as soon as
that is added to Sugarlabs efforts, everyone will benefit.

As to the idea that other OS's that are Office-focused and are made by
companies that have spent lot on user testing and design, again, that is a
luxury that OLPC/Sugarlabs did not have. What they did produce was damn great
considering what they had to work with and it implemented an idea that was new
and revolutionary and targeted for kids.

People often forget their first time using new user interfaces and how they
stumbled with them until they got lots of help from other users or teachers.
And the basic elements for Windows, Mac and Linux are reasonable similar when
using it for office automation.

I know it took a bit of time to get some of the elements and it might be useful
to have a few video tutorials for both teachers and students for some of the
more confusing elements of Sugar (which is being improved with the valuable
feedback of many stateholder). 

I was not able to understand exactly what he was saying, he'd need to produce a
lists of specific things that Sugarlabs could address. And I'm sure they'd like
to add his ideas.

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We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which
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