[IAEP] evolution or revolution? .....android+sugar+doors => oui?

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Hi David

You have written a wide ranging piece which is difficult for me to respond to comprehensively, please permit me to respond to just a few points.

1) Working against school systems
Though Sugar/OLPC are unashamedly constructivist/constructionist, I don't think it is accurate to characterise them as "revolution (by working against them [school systems])", although comments like that may have been made at times by some. 

Constructiv(n)ist learning takes place within schools and continues outside of school. Many teachers and schools recognise its importance. Wanting schools to change their emphasis from instruction to more construction is evolutionary. Supporting the learning that takes place outside of school is not working against schools, its complimentary.

2) How to prevent/stem infection ... manage money
This is the kind of stuff that the most constructionist Activities, Etoys, Scratch, TurtleArt, really excell at. Have a look at some of their simulations. I am not sure what you are criticising here in OLPC/Sugar, but if its constructionism, I think the criticism is not well founded

3) Proposed OUI
I gather that you are not a supporter of the Home view and the tagged Journal. I have some reservations myself. It is limited in things like multiple file operations and mangling of file name extensions. The inclusion of Gnome in OLPC images is a good thing and neutralises my concerns about Sugar. Kids can migrate to Gnome once they become more sophisticated users, somewhere around the upper primary lower secondary years.

I would like to see Sugar Activities able to run in Gnome and vice versa. As far as I know, TurtleArt is the only one that does both. There are excellent Sugar Activities that should not be restricted to just the Sugar desktop.

When it comes to desktop metaphors, I don't much care. Kids are much less concerned with metaphors than we are, they will take an operating system as is. My problem with your OUI is that I can't see what problem it is solving. It may be better than the current Sugar desktop but I can't tell. Some screenshot mockups might help. Hosting the document as a wiki rather than a pdf would aid community input.

Thanks
Tony


> i see that olpc is responding to consumer demand and putting android as
> well as sugar on new xo3 machines.
> 
> perhaps this will become gladiatorial combat in which one will die, or
> perhaps it is an opportunity for conjugation by their respective developers
> to give birth to a new generation of interface that possesses the best
> features of each  ... it all depends on how the teams respond.
> 
> presumably, the original intent of olpc was to facilitate education;
> education in the broadest sense.
> 
> there are two strategies for that: evolution (by working with school
> systems) or revolution (by working against them).
> 
> perhaps i am wrong, but it looks to me that sugar has followed the latter
> route.  Papert's marvellous insights were seminal - and i seem to recall
> that there was talk of a revolution in the classroom - but perhaps that was
> just the heady language of the 1960s at work?  the electronic spreadsheet
> was another seminal development - and even more far-reaching, for it was
> the one that sparked the personal computer revolution in the first place,
> and one that has stood the test of time so far.
> 
> economic/social revolution worked in France, but its ideals never made it
> into USA political consciousness, except in the mouths of a few sanguine
> commentators like Noam Chomsky and less sanguine ones like Michael Moore.
> 
> yet the computer revolution still hasn't made a major impact on education -
> a minor one, to be sure, but the promise has yet to be fully realised.  it
> is possible that the people who like making software, being computer
> enthusiasts, forget that the average Joe child in whatever country has
> other, more urgent, more visceral, more real-world needs than making
> machines dance?  like knowing how to prevent/stem infection.  like knowing
> how to manage money.  etc etc.  computers could help them learn these vital
> things, if only that was where the technocrats' motivations lay...
> 
> in the long run, evolution is more persistent than revolution.  empires,
> having risen, eventually and fall.  but technology marches on and drags
> humankind (sometimes kicking and screaming) into new ways of thinking about
> things.
> 
> an interface, like a human language, is a means to an end, but
> (particularly in a monopoly market) there is always the risk of it becoming
> political territory, as with the Academie Francaise for example, fighting
> off the linguistic invasion of "l'Anglish".
> 
> but if evolution is truly inevitable, might it not be better to go with it
> than stick one's heels in against it?
> 
> aside from the surface interface issues of whether one should point with a
> finger or a mouse, or type on a screen or a keyboard (typing isn't going to
> go away anytime soon as reliable AI aural comprehension is still a long way
> off) - there are deeper issues; issues about the "deep interface" - issues
> about how the interface provides access to function.  Google has found a
> pretty good way of providing access to data - now users need one for
> providing obvious access pathways to function too, to make machines truly
> "user-friendly".
> 
> and a means of facilitating collaboration:  if there is one still green
> field waiting to be ploughed, it is the field of synchronous real-time
> collaborative creative activity extending beyond mere chat.  user
> collaboration takes place inside an application, but the screen management
> and filesystem support engineering needs to provide the props for that to
> occur smoothly, to assure data integrity, etc.  this is one of the stated
> design goals of sugar; i don't know whether it is also a design goal of
> android.
> 
> below is one suggestion on how desktop and playground metaphors of
> android/linux and sugar respectively could coalesce and evolve, so that the
> user interface gets out of the user's way and becomes merely a means to the
> end of facilitating interaction with the real educational (or other
> functional) content instead of (as in the case of sugar) shouting about
> itself in the user's face or (as in the case of linux) being awkwardly
> troublesome for the non-geek:
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/oui.pdf
> <div><span style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">i see that olpc is responding to consumer demand and putting android as well as sugar on new xo3 machines.</span><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">
> 
> <br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">perhaps this will become gladiatorial combat in which one will die, or perhaps it is an opportunity for conjugation by their respective developers to give birth to a new generation of interface that possesses the best features of each  ... it all depends on how the teams respond.</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">presumably, the original intent of olpc was to facilitate education; education in the broadest sense.</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">there are two strategies for that: evolution (by working with school systems) or revolution (by working against them).</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">perhaps i am wrong, but it looks to me that sugar has followed the latter route. Â Papert's marvellous insights were seminal - and i seem to recall that there was talk of a revolution in the classroom - but perhaps that was just the heady language of the 1960s at work? Â the electronic spreadsheet was another seminal development - and even more far-reaching, for it was the one that sparked the personal computer revolution in the first place, and one that has stood the test of time so far.</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">economic/social revolution worked in France, but its ideals never made it into USA political consciousness, except in the mouths of a few sanguine commentators like Noam Chomsky and less sanguine ones like Michael Moore. </div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">yet the computer revolution still hasn't made a major impact on education - a minor one, to be sure, but the promise has yet to be fully realised. Â it is possible that the people who like making software, being computer enthusiasts, forget that the average Joe child in whatever country has other, more urgent, more visceral, more real-world needs than making machines dance? Â like knowing how to prevent/stem infection. Â like knowing how to manage money. Â etc etc. Â computers could help them learn these vital things, if only that was where the technocrats' motivations lay...</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">in the long run, evolution is more persistent than revolution. Â empires, having risen, eventually and fall. Â but technology marches on and drags humankind (sometimes kicking and screaming) into new ways of thinking about things.</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">an interface, like a human language, is a means to an end, but (particularly in a monopoly market) there is always the risk of it becoming political territory, as with the Academie Francaise for example, fighting off the linguistic invasion of "l'Anglish".</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">but if evolution is truly inevitable, might it not be better to go with it than stick one's heels in against it?</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">aside from the surface interface issues of whether one should point with a finger or a mouse, or type on a screen or a keyboard (typing isn't going to go away anytime soon as reliable AI aural comprehension is still a long way off) - there are deeper issues; issues about the "deep interface" - issues about how the interface provides access to function. Â Google has found a pretty good way of providing access to data - now users need one for providing obvious access pathways to function too, to make machines truly "user-friendly".</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">and a means of facilitating collaboration: Â if there is one still green field waiting to be ploughed, it is the field of synchronous real-time collaborative creative activity extending beyond mere chat. Â user collaboration takes place inside an application, but the screen management and filesystem support engineering needs to provide the props for that to occur smoothly, to assure data integrity, etc. Â this is one of the stated design goals of sugar; i don't know whether it is also a design goal of android.</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px">below is one suggestion on how desktop and playground metaphors of android/linux and sugar respectively could coalesce and evolve, so that the user interface gets out of the user's way and becomes merely a means to the end of facilitating interaction with the real educational (or other functional) content instead of (as in the case of sugar) shouting about itself in the user's face or (as in the case of linux) being awkwardly troublesome for the non-geek:</div>
> 
> <div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><br></div><div style="vertical-align:baseline;margin:0px;border:0px;padding:0px"><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/oui.pdf" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;text-decoration:none;color:rgb(102,17,204)" target="_blank">https://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/oui.pdf</a></div>
> 
> 
> </div>
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