[sugar] Integration with web apps (and Moodle specifically!)

[Jim Gettys]

On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 17:15 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> 
>  - Are there school administration tools Moodle should communicate with?
> 

It is safe to say that right now, OLPC itself is not investing at all in
*school* admin tools, and has no plans to do so.  

There are a number of projects underway in that area elsewhere, and the
expertise and experience we have is focused on the younger, typically
un-served, kids that demographically dominate the school population
world-wide.  In many/most countries, children only get 5-6 years of
primary education. Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, Walter Bender and other
people involved in the project have deep experience of more than three
decades in the use of computers to help young children learn.

Having a 8 and 11 year old myself, I have observed first hand twice in
the last 5 years how badly typical UI environments (on any operating
system) serve these younger children who are in the process of learning
to read.  Windows, Mac, Gnome, KDE and other GUI's design are all
focused on adult knowledge workers, work sort of ok by the time children
can read really fluently, but miss the mark *entirely* for for kids
still learning to read, that are the majority of kids actually in school
in many parts of the world. Ergo the work Sugar; it is a key missing
piece of the puzzle.

We'd love it if people start pulling on the ores together on school
admin tools as well...  We certainly would like to see school
administration tools as part of the ecosystem.  Relieving teachers of
manual administration work gives them more time to work with students.
For example, in Extremadura, they have an application for taking
attendance that is faster and easier for the teachers and school
administrators to use than paper.
			Regards,
                           - Jim
                                          
-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child