[Sugar-devel] Zooming User Interface

[Christian Stroetmann]

Hi again

I forget to say something to your question related with the educational 
technology.

Firstly, I found the following statements on the webpage "What is 
Sugar?" in the section "About the Sugar Learning Platform" of Sugar 
([1]) that says:
" It is easy to approach and yet it doesn't put an upper bound on 
personal expression; one can peel away layers and go deeper and deeper, 
with no restrictions." and
"[...] in whatever realm the learner is exploring [...] they are able to 
drill deeper; they are not going to hit a wall, since they can, at every 
level, engage in debugging both their personal expression and the very 
tools that they use for that expression."

Hence, Sugar+ZUI supports the learning even with the related UI paradigm 
that reflects the general computer desktop metaphor as well as the 3rd 
characteristical attribute of Sugar.

Secondly, if the U.S. government supports this ZUI based Prezi software 
as part of a billion U.S. Dollar donation even if it does not comply 
with ADA and 508 actually, then there must be a very strong reason to 
include a ZUI based application in a framework of educational software. 
Sadly to say, I do not know the true reason actually, but my instinct 
gives me a very clear hint. For sure, I do know that these might not be 
convicting arguments.



Christian

[1] Sugar, What is Sugar?, About the Sugar Learning Plattform 
wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/What_is_Sugar

> Hi Sam
>
> Basically, I find this ZUI concept as attractive as the 
> multi-touchscreen and the mind mapping approach.
>
> Also, the foundational hierachical structure of Sugar with the views 
> you mentioned fits perfectly with a ZUI.
> The problem I have seen is that the screen gets more and more crowded 
> with icons when Sugar is used and collaborations are made. Also, 
> specific applications like the Journal suffer from this problem 
> respectively allow to present only a small list of documents and 
> activities at once. In this relation, I refer to some screenshots that 
> I have seen on the Sugar Labs website. A solution to this problem is a 
> ZUI functionality.
> Even better, due to the simple GUI metaphor of Sugar deliberately 
> designed for children, Sugar+ZUI should already run smoothly when a 
> user zooms in an out with actual hardware.
>
> The actual plan is to try to implement a prototyp of Sugar+ZUI, though 
> until now it is just a concept and a plan, and I wanted to ask the 
> other developers at first, if they are interested and if it is worth 
> to go in this direction at all.
>
>
>
> Christian
>
>> Totally forgot to reply all xD
>>
>> On Mar 1, 2014 9:10 PM, "Sam Parkinson" <sam.parkinson3 at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:sam.parkinson3 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi,
>>
>>     In sugar we currently have 'the views'. I think the vid on our
>>     site shows that.
>>
>>     The whole zui thing does look cool, but besides prezi I cannot
>>     see any clear use cases in edu tech. What do you have in mind?
>>
>>     Sam
>>
>>     On Mar 1, 2014 9:04 PM, "Christian Stroetmann"
>>     <stroetmann at ontolab.com <mailto:stroetmann at ontolab.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         Aloha
>>
>>         Since many years now I am looking at Sugar and the underlying
>>         basic software technologies. Besides this, I am also
>>         interested in the specific field of Graphical User Interfaces
>>         (GUI).
>>
>>         In this relation, I would like to present a concept that is
>>         an extension of the general GUI approach of the Sugar
>>         learning software with a Zooming User Interface (ZUI; [1]).
>>
>>         One inspiring moment was that recently the U.S.American
>>         government together with companiens like Adobe, Prezi,
>>         Microsoft and Apple announced to make software donationsto
>>         schools (related reports can be find in the web easily).
>>         One specific software is Prezi ([2]) that is developed in
>>         Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR, and built on top of Django (Python
>>         web framework). Surprisingly, Prezi is not compliant with the
>>         Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the
>>         Rehabilitation Act ([3] and [4])but used in education (see
>>         again [2]).
>>
>>         I looked around and found the software Eagle Mode ([5]; for a
>>         first impression see the videos on its website diretly).
>>
>>         Said this, I simply counted 1+1, Sugar+ZUI and Sugar+Eagle.
>>
>>         Such an UI approach has advantages and disadvantages that are
>>         discussed shortly on the website of Eagle Mode (see [6]). The
>>         point with the hardware requirements seems not to be
>>         relevant, because for example the hardware of the latest
>>         featurephones and featuretablets (simple smartphones and
>>         tablet computers) should be useable with a ZUI and are
>>         available for around 30 U.S. Dollar already.
>>
>>
>>
>>         Have fun
>>         Christian Stroetmann
>>
>>         [1] Wikipedia, ZUI
>>         en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface
>>         <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface>
>>         [2] Wikipedia, Prezi en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prezi
>>         <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prezi>
>>         [3] Wikipedia, Rehabilitation Act of
>>         1973en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Rehabilitation_Act
>>         <http://1973en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Rehabilitation_Act>
>>         [4] Wikipedia, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
>>         en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_of_the_Rehabilitation_Act
>>         <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_of_the_Rehabilitation_Act>
>>         [5] Eagle Mode eaglemode.sourceforge.net
>>         <http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net>
>>         [6] Eagle Mode, Project Philosoophy
>>         eaglemode.sourceforge.net/philosophy.html
>>         <http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/philosophy.html>
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>>
>>
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