[Sugar-devel] idea for GSoC project

[Bryan Berry]

I earlier advocated a framework called "Karma" for integrating flash
swfs into Sugar. I now believe that javascript + html5 is a much better
bet because it better adheres to our common belief in open-source and
allows "View Source." Also, there are far more javascript developers out
there than flash developers. This new rework of Karma could take
advantage of projects like jquery-UI and new javascript animation
libraries like processing.js and GX.

The GSoC mentee could recreate one of OLE Nepal's existing flash
activity with javascript + html5. You can access some of our flash
activities here:
http://www.pustakalaya.org/external-content/static/epaath/E-Paath-2.activity/activity/Activity/MenuStage.html

I have in mind that the GSoC participant would create this proof of
concept activity w/ the following features:

1. Embedded Audio and animation, possibly using the new <video> and
<audio> tags in html5
2. Has help menus, navigation, and embedded lesson plan
3. Works in a regular browser w/ a limited set of functionality
4. Works in sugar natively and takes advantage of Sugar's collaboration
features

I think it is really key that developers should be able to create basic
learning activities that can run anywhere but can easily be extended to
take advantage of Sugar's collaboration features and UI. However,
creating javascript-to-dbus bindings may be out-of-scope for a summer
project.

I am definitely be interested in serving as a mentor for such a project.
That said I am professionally a project manager and not a software
engineer. In fact, my software development skills are extremely limited
beyond writing broken python and bash scripts.


-- 
Bryan W. Berry
Technology Director
OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org