[Sugar-devel] Fwd: sugar ui + learning language

[David Brown]

comprehensive reply Edward, thanks.  and thanks Fred for sorting out my
wiki cursor for me.  but the cursor i'd really like users to be able to
personalise is the one on the sugaronastick ui.

re programming: i am not a programmer any more.  it was fun when i was 16
in 1965, but i breathed a sigh of relief in 1976 when i finished my PhD and
said to myself "thank goodness i dont have to write any more programs!"  as
it happens, i did write some Smalltalk (in Xerox's The Analyst) in 1988 and
some Nexpert and other stuff in 1994.

so you might say that i understand the lot of a programmer and wouldnt make
outrageous demands of developers, but i am unable/unwilling to contribute
to code myself.  rather, i would like to contribute ui design ideas and
some ideas on language learning aids/tools/methods.

on that subject, you mention, in regard to my comment about the ton of
language stuff already out there:

> Indeed, although we have generally found existing software not to be
> suited for schoolchildren.

i was referring not to software, but to videos and other materials.  i've
mentioned it elsewhere, but i reckon that to learn a language at any age
requires being able to speak to another human.  everyone starts learning
language from age 0  but xo is maybe suitable only for us once we have some
finger dexterity at around age 3 maybe... aibo would be a good vehicle for
language learning software, or an xo driven robot??...

re mailists; i think forums with threads are a better medium for
communication content retention

i will browse the links you provided Edward, and get back to you
individually on them later

curricula must change when computers radically
> change what schoolchildren are capable of learning


computers wont change what people are capable of learning (only evolution
can do that), but they can help people learn more quickly and internet
enables us to step beyond the mind of a schoolroom teacher.  but computer
use can also inhibit learning of other things if it becomes obsessive.  as
for curricula, i have radical
views<https://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/SCHOOLS.RTF?attredirects=0&d=1>about
that but olpc must work within the context of what civic authorities
set in order to benefit the kids who are the objects (not the subjects!) of
those authorities.  revolutions in education take centuries, not decades.
 a week is a long time in politics, but a century is a blink of the eye in
the evolution of social structures and their memes.

david

On 12 August 2012 11:36, <mokurai at earthtreasury.org> wrote:

> Welcome.
>
> On Thu, August 9, 2012 10:18 pm, David Brown wrote:
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: David Brown <djhbrown at gmail.com>
> > Date: 10 August 2012 12:13
> > Subject: sugar ui
> > To: Frederick Grose <fgrose at gmail.com>, xorduino at gmail.com,
> > volunteer at laptop.org
> >
> >
> > dear olpcers,
> >
> > i am a recently retired computer scientist who would like to contribute
> > design ideas to the project.   my cv is
> > here<https://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/CV.doc>
> > .
>
> Ah, another generalist. Excellent. I will want to ask you about the
> Alhambra tiling semiotics at some point. Some of my Sufi friends have
> mentioned that sort of thing in connection with NeoPlatonism.
>
> I see an item in Algol68, but you do not mention what other languages you
> have worked in. Sugar mainly uses Python, Logo, and Smalltalk, and I am
> trying to get a version of APL added that has been used for math
> textbooks, starting with elementary-school arithmetic.
>
> > having looked at the sugar interface, my first impression is that it
> needs
> > a complete rework.  i do not know what its users (kids) make of it
> though,
> > nor can i find any data on user experiences.
>
> I and others have documented some of the known issues in the Wiki at
>
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Undiscoverable
>
> I know of no research specifically on the UI in classrooms. We do have
> some classroom research on other aspects of the project.
>
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_research
>
> > i'm disappointed not to find any openly-published separately-produced k12
> > stuff on xo; perhaps it is all platform-dependent?
>
> Yes, Sugar is a platform with very specific features, such as
> collaboration and the Journal.
>
> See Make Your Own Sugar Activities
>
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/
>
> Sugar Activities are openly published at
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org//en-US/sugar/ and some have made their way
> into various Linux distributions.
>
> >  sugar is based on
> > fedora i believe, so would it run any app written for fedora?
>
> Yes. Recent XOs have enough room to run Gnome in addition to Sugar, so
> users can install any Fedora software that fits in storage and memory.
>
> > aside from that, i would be interested to contribute to an english
> > language learning project.
>
> Certainly. We can discuss getting such a project localized into as many as
> a hundred other languages.
>
> http://translate.sugarlabs.org/
>
> >  there is a ton of stuff already out there which could
> > be collected together, rather than reinvent the wheel.
>
> Indeed, although we have generally found existing software not to be
> suited for schoolchildren.
>
> > is there a software development management structure?  who makes the
> > release decisions?
>
> Yes, there is. I tend not to get involved directly. You can create and
> package an activity in an XO bundle, and get it onto the Activities site,
> without getting involved with the release process. You are also welcome to
> create Fedora and Debian bundles in the yum and apt formats, and submit
> them to the distributions. We have people converting those to bundles for
> a dozen or so other distributions.
>
> People on our Developer mailing list can give you much more detailed and
> specific information.
>
> > is there an olpc executive operations management structure?  why isnt
> olpc
> > in bed with national school curriculum/materials organisations?  or maybe
> > it is - but if so, why aren't xos available to schools who can afford to
> > buy them?
>
> There is a management structure aimed at getting XOs into schools around
> the world, but not the US. This is a decision by Nicholas Negroponte that
> I vehemently disagree with. The largest US deployment is 15,000 units in
> Birmingham, Alabama.
>
> There are several reasons why we are not working with existing curriculum
> organizations. To my mind the most important is that none of them takes
> seriously the notion that curricula must change when computers radically
> change what schoolchildren are capable of learning, and how they can do
> it. That in turn is based on the existing structure of standardized tests,
> where students are not allowed to use computers. But we will have to
> discuss that and related problems much more deeply.
>
> > what is the target age range of xo users?
>
> 2 years old to 6th grade for the small keyboard version, 7-12 for the
> large keyboard. We find that 2-year-olds like the camera, and that
> children take to games of various kinds at various ages. We do not yet
> know at what age we can expect to teach children literacy, although the
> Edison Talking Typewriter experiment by Omar Khayyam [sic] Moore says age
> 2 should be possible.
>
> > i like the notion of sugar network, but when i look at the screenshots on
> > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network/Tutorial i find it hard to
> > imagine what a child would do with it.  a screen full of coloured x's
> does
> > not convey any useful information other than the number of them... it
> > reads
> > as if it was made by unix enthusiasts for unix enthusiasts
>
> Not so. See
>
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Undiscoverable#Collaboration
>
> When you hover with the mouse over an XO (It is not an X) you will see the
> name of another user. Hover some more, or right-click, and you will be
> invited to invite that user to be a friend.
>
> The real use of that screen is for collaboration, which requires a few
> more steps.
>
> Case 1
>
> Open a sharable activity, such as Paint or Write, and go to the Sharing
> menu. It defaults to a circle with one dot inside. Select My Neighborhood,
> which gives you a circle containing a ring of dots. Now an icon for this
> activity will appear in your Neighborhood view, and anybody connected to
> you can see it and connect to it.
>
> Case 2
>
> If you see an activity icon appearing in your neighborhood view, you can
> open its menu and join the session.
>
> In either case both of you will be able to work in a shared workspace,
> each seeing what the other does. You may have two cursors in a document,
> or two paintbrushes on a canvas, or two musical instruments, and so on.
> More than two can join a session. When the initiator of the share quits,
> the session is saved in the Journal on each XO participating.
>
> > scott's blog mentions an effort last year to develop narrative interfaces
> > -
> > this sounds like a good idea, did anything come of it?  i looked at the
> > video by Angela Chang but couldn't find any contact info for her.  i
> > noticed the text she was displaying is not read out aloud at the time it
> > is
> > displayed, which i would have thought is vital for a language learning
> > tool.  she also seems to be of a mind that children would use it with
> > their
> > parents in attendance, but children need to be able to learn a foreign
> > language without their parents' help.
>
> I don't know about these things. We can undoubtedly get you into contact
> with somebody who does.
>
> > this raises a general point, surely xo needs to be an "obvious"
> > interface??
> > (ie users should not need any outside help to use it.  it should be
> "ready
> > to hand").
>
> Indeed, as I have been explaining. There is a project to put modified XOs
> into villages where there are no teachers at all, and no literate adults
> at all. We have some preliminary results, so we can discuss the how, what,
> and why in some depth.
>
> > david
> >
> > website <http://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/home>
> > +61(0)266537638
> > +61(0)488471949
> >
> > On 10 August 2012 01:58, Frederick Grose <fgrose at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 12:51 AM, David Brown <djhbrown at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> thanks for your comprehensive reply, Fred.  i have looked at the links
> >>> you cited.  i am surprised olpc is still using irc chat and mail lists
> >>> - is
> >>> there an operational reason for this?
>
> As opposed to?
>
> >> The hardware & software developers at OLPC and Sugar Labs are most
> >> comfortable with IRC and mailing lists as they are part of their current
> >> cultural tradition (they feel part
> >> of<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC:What_we_mean_by_free_and_open>the
> >> free/libre/open-source
> >> software
> >> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software>tradition).
> >> Many are loath to using alternative, especially commercial
> >> software.  The support staff and others at OLPC might be excepted from
> >> this
> >> characterization (in my estimation) as their work tools must align with
> >> standard business software.
> >>
> >> things like design require a lot of thought, and chat is not the best
> >> way
> >>> to provoke thought, as exemplified by the inanity of academic
> >>> department
> >>> meetings!.  chat is good for one-on-one socialising though.
> >>>
> >>> here is one basic principle i would advocate:the xo interface (which is
> >>> intendedly predicated upon activity and communication) needs to be good
> >>> enough (suitable) for xo developers to use it for their own group
> >>> communication.... it's clearly not as it stands.
> >>>
> >>> you mention "developers" and i read somewhere about "core developers".
> >>> i
> >>> imagine there is a team somewhere, probably in Miami, that drives the
> >>> development.  those are the people i would like to communicate with to
> >>> start with, to jointly come up with a better basic design than the
> >>> current
> >>> one.   then it could be implemented, bench tested and then beta tested
> >>> on
> >>> the user community.
> >>>
> >>
> >> The basic Sugar design came from
> >> Pentagram<
> http://new.pentagram.com/2006/12/new-work-one-laptop-per-child/>
> >> 's Lisa Strausfeld, Christian Marc Schmidt and Takaaki Okada
> >> collaborating with Walter Bender and Eben Eliason at OLPC.  Only Walter
> >> Bender is active with Sugar Labs or OLPC.
> >>
> >> C. Scott Ananian, Director of New Technologies at OLPC, has a
> >> blog<http://cananian.livejournal.com/>that tracks his thinking and
> work.
> >>  Other current design work centers on touch
> >> input <http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Sugar_Shell_Touch_Input
> >
> >> and
> >> community collaboration <http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network>.
> >>
> >>  i thought about subscribing to
> >>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/Sugar-devel but it is bound to
> >>> contain lots of emails about implementation details that do not
> >>> interest me
> >>> - my focus is solely on the user-level design style, principles,
> >>> purpose,
> >>> etc
> >>>
> >>
> >> The list will accept a non-subscriber submission (after a delay for
> >> moderation); or, you could use a Gmail filter, for example on [DESIGN],
> >> to
> >> limit your reading.
> >>
> >>  are you a "core developer"?  if home page design is a key interest of
> >>> yours, perhaps we could exchange ideas by email?
> >>>
> >>
> >> I am a volunteer, wiki coordinator for Sugar Labs, and work on Sugar on
> >> a
> >> Stick installation and replication scripts.
> >>
> >> Alternative ideas and designs for the Home view would best be shared in
> >> the wiki (such as on a personal page linked to the discussion
> >> page<http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Design_Team/Proposals/Home_View
> >)
> >> with an accompanying post to Sugar-devel.
> >>
> >> Thanks for your interest.         --Fred
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > website <http://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/home>
> > +61(0)266537638
> > +61(0)488471949
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sugar-devel mailing list
> > Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> >
>
>
> --
> Edward Mokurai
>
> (默雷/निशब्दगर्ज/نشبدگرج)
> Cherlin
> Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks
>
>
>


-- 
website <http://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/home>
+61(0)266537638
+61(0)488471949
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