[SoaS] [Marketing] links from homepage to Downloads page

[Walter Bender]

On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Gerald Ardito <gmanb5 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sean,
>
> I appreciate your comments about teachers.
> As a teacher who has used Sugar and the XOs extensively, and has trained
> other teachers to do so as well, I can say that things can sometimes be very
> difficult.
>
> I sometimes feels like there is a middle layer missing in the process, a
> layer that would  let teachers be able to get some support with their
> intentions, but that doesn't necessary involve development.

It is somewhat apples and oranges, but when I was in Amazonas and
asked where the teachers hung out, they all say, with out hesitation,
Facebook. I didn't ask them to join the #sugar IRC channel to help
them over the inevitable bumps in the road, or to navigate the wiki,
but rather, we set up a Facebook page where they could get help with
those "middle" things. I'm 100% certain that US teachers use Facebook,
so we should too, if we want to engage them.

-walter
>
> Gerald
>
> On Sunday, February 3, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Sean DALY wrote:
>
> It's clear that anything other than pre-installed raises a barrier
> most teachers don't want to deal with. However, getting Sugar
> referenced with an OEM is far easier said than done. And Apple is not
> particularly motivated to encourage others to boot non-Apple OSes on
> their hardware.
>
> In the meantime, we have to make the difficult as simple as possible.
> This includes installers and documentation including videos.
>
> I don't want to underestimate teachers' motivation to find software
> for their students, either. I have found that Sugar's unbeatable price
> and nonprofit orientation are consistently appreciated by teachers.
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 2:06 PM, DancesWithCars <danceswithcars at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> do you all think installing a VM is easier than
> making a LiveCD, or SOAS and rebooting?
>
> Most Macs these days are Intel,
> it's the hardware compatibility to get something
> to boot from BIOS, and other issues, AFAICT...
>
> Of the kids and adults I've talked to, over the years
> (realizing most people here have more experience)
> they don't bother unless an XO-1.x or better is put
> before them... They fall in love with the hardware,
> the cuteness factor, and if it's on a regular machine
> (even the RPi I've tried a few on), it's a no go,
> generally...
>
> Not that it's not worth having, jhbuild, sweets, VMs, etc
> are all good, but most non technical people won't
> try it, AFAICT...
>
> ---
> odd nonstandard keyboard so who knows what I intended to type...
>
> On Feb 3, 2013 7:21 AM, "Thomas Gilliard" <satellit at bendbroadband.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> Sean;
>
> I just did a cleanup of the wiki pages covering Virtual Box and Importable
> appliances
> deleted a lot of obsolete information and their links [5]
>
> I updated:
> Downloads [1] [2]; Fedora_18 [3]; and Sugar_on_a_Stick [4] wiki pages
>
> Tom Gilliard
> satellit on #sugar freenode IRC
>
> [1]
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Downloads#Virtual_Machines_on_all_platforms
> Links to Virtual Box Appliances :
> [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Creation_Kit/VirtualBox
> Links to Soas-v8:
> [3]
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_18#Sugar_on_a_Stick_v8_.CA.BB.C5.8Chelo_.CA.BBai
> [4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick
> This page is still not updated, you have to scroll down to find SoaS-v8
> [5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Special:RecentChanges
>
>
>
> On 02/02/2013 04:14 PM, Sean DALY wrote:
>
>
> For the past couple of years, our homepage has linked the Sugar on a
> Stick (SoaS) badge to the SoaS page [1] and the "download" menu item
> and "Try it with a child today" link to the Downloads page [2].
>
> The downloads page rightly in my view orients visitors by platform,
> but the two largest market share desktop/laptop OSes (Windows & MacOS,
> 96% or so of market) only give instructions for Sugar on a Stick and
> the "Do you use a virtual machine?" link misses the excellent VMs
> available (in particular the VMs of... SoaS!).
>
> I think teachers will self-classify by OS and virtually none of them
> will self-classify as virtual machine users.
>
> Teachers will also expect pancake button 1-click installers (this was
> confirmed by Sloan Marketlab study), problematic with SoaS due to
> necessary USB stick manipulation and still a bit hairy on a Mac.
>
> I think Windows section and Mac section should both propose choice of
> SoaS and using VirtualBox with a SoaS VM, explaining benefits of each
> method in layman's terms.
>
> VMs are far less disruptive for trying Sugar, as a teacher can
> download to hard disk, install and run, keeping usual apps going
> (mail, browser, word processing) while experiencing Sugar.
>
> The downside is of course massive files to download, but that could be
> mitigated with torrents and/or mirrors.
>
> Comment please before we get into wiki editing of this crucial page
> thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick
> [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/DocumentationTeam/Try_Sugar
>
>
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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org