[sugar] [Server-devel] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
Yamandu Ploskonka
yamaplos
Wed Oct 22 10:41:18 EDT 2008
Luke Faraone wrote:
> Not to mention, sugar should also target more developed nations, and
> one of the questions I _always_ get from teachers at talks I give is
> "Can I print?".
>
> -lf
There's a whole world of culture and ideology behind what you said, Luke.
Yes, there is a need to consider alternative "needs", different for
"haves" and "have nots".
So, when you talk with those teachers, you might talk with them about
what they think they _need_ to print. That might help them see how
their teaching kids about living with an environmental consciousness
also has to do with classroom work.
Print homework? No need, that can be seen digitally.
Yes, we do need to work on making this process more user friendly
especially for the teacher (this is in another thread somewhere).
Texts? likewise, being able to get back to your page at some later date
should fix this need. (a while back I was reading a book to my wife
every night, off the XO, it was rather uncomfortable after a while to
have to seek our page every time)
Report cards? OK, this is a good one, for now (eventually parents could
just get the report card on the XO). My fix is to have this done at the
server level.
It is not about lowering our standards to the "have nots" on a communist
spirit or something like that.
It is to be aware at some level that some "needs" actually are not such,
and maybe chose, on purpose, to have certain elements be "missing".
We make a BIG deal on how the XO is energy efficient,
resource-efficient, "green".
Why go on a paper printing rampage if we actually do not really _need_
to? Relying on printing would kill any proposal that is honest about
TCO and ROI. OK, I agree, in the "haves" nations, that is a non-issue.
Using the XO, moreover, _depending_ on the XO as _the_ tool requires a
change of mentality, a _deep_ change(1).
It is not happening yet. My current mantra is that many teachers do not
take anything as real unless it's on paper, and we need to help to see
the change.
It has been reported that currently many kids find a major use for their
XO to listen to music while they do their homework, by hand, on paper.
We need to work on that.
All in all, I am no Ludite. The more good stuff and features the XO can
offer, the better, because it will simply be a better machine, so let's
get printer support on, sure, but,
_please_
let's prioritize that the XO and the OLPC project and Sugar and the
activities be optimized to _require_ as little as possible beyond what
are the least expensive solutions.
Yama
(1)As is public record, I myself am quite far from some of the
constructivist fiats of our religion, but kicking and screaming I am
getting to see their ways are at least useful for some cases.
More information about the Sugar-devel
mailing list