[Marketing] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacher scenarios, let's lower barrier to installation

[Sean DALY]

Indeed that worked with SoaS on a netbook, the Activity arrived at the
top of the favorites ring.

I'll try with VirtualBox tomorrow (travelling).

Who can update activities.sugarlabs.org with concise installation instructions?

I can provide copy if that's helpful.

thanks

Sean



On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Scenario 1:
>>
>> Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider
>> myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have
>> never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS,
>> loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my
>> PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other
>> Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited
>> www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by
>> section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've
>> clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them
>> on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and
>> colleagues send me.
>>
>>
>> Scenario 2:
>>
>> A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project.
>> I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit
>> www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the "teachers" section with
>> interest, I return to the homepage and click on "Try Sugar with a
>> child today", arriving on the page that advises how to install for
>> each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions
>> seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation
>> instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities
>> and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the
>> other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very
>> interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I
>> click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's
>> desktop.
>>
>>
>> ******************************
>> Questions:
>>
>> 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different
>> for these two scenarii?
>> * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-(
>> * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found
>> a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the
>> other one talks about a sandbox...
>> * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents
>> found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a
>> more recent one.
>>
>> 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse
>> under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or
>> for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... "automatic" if
>> connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the
>> list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in
>> that case
>>
>> 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in
>> a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations
>> daunting for many ordinary users
>>
>> 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public
>> sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are
>> those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or
>> installed if new versions, or merely "borrowed" during the session?
>>
>> 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous
>> version of an Activity?
>>
>> ******************************
>>
>> any info appreciated.
>
> I think the easiest thing to do is to (1) copy the .xo files onto a
> USB; (2) insert the USB into a system running Sugar; (3) open the USB
> in the Journal (tab at bottom of the page); and (4) click on the .xo
> file--it should autoinstall from there.
>
> -walter
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>