[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Planning for the future (Samuel Greenfeld)

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi Folks…


Sorry I didn't put my 2 cents worth in sooner, but here are some questions/suggestions I have re: planning for the future….


Someone remarked that teachers don't like to use Sugar. If not,… why not?
Ask them!


Obviously, the teachers in Uruguay like it and use it. But not all of it.
So, do a survey of teachers who do use it and find the 10 or 20 top Activities and then concentrate on getting them ported to a more universal platform (e.g. Android). When I was there a few years back I did ask them… and the students. The hands-down winner was Labyrinth!


How important is collaboration? Ask the teachers!
Can collaboration be implemented on an Android platform? If not, is there an easy work around?


Could someone write an ebook similar to James Simmons' "Make Your Own Sugar Activities" but with instructions for adapting or creating Sugar Activities for Android or whatever other platform is chosen?


Is it possible to get the Activities to integrate like they do on the XO? i.e. be able to transfer a project from one Activity to another for further use.


Currently, I'm happily involved in an online course, Harvard's CS50, where I am learning C and will also be exposed to JavaScript, HTML (been there before) and CSS. My goal is to make my final project the adaptation of some Sugar Activity to IOS and maybe Android (although Lionel's group is beating me to it and doing a good job).


One other thing I should mention about some Sugar Activities… some of them really lack color. When you look at the typical "educational" software for children, it is always bright and colorful with very simple artwork… maybe too much so. It also often has cute little tunes playing in the background. Teachers, parents, and children have grown to expect this in educational software. Perhaps considering brightening up the screens a bit on some of the Activities would be something to experiment with. 


OK. 'Nuff said.


Caryl


> Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 10:40:01 +1100
> From: quozl at laptop.org
> To: me at jvonau.ca
> CC: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org; sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org; lionel at olpc-france.org; samuel at greenfeld.org
> Subject: Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Planning for the future (Samuel Greenfeld)
> 
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 03:31:50PM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 04:20:02PM -0600, Jerry Vonau wrote:
> > > > On February 25, 2015 at 3:09 PM James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 01:20:19PM -0600, Jerry Vonau wrote:
> > > > > I know this is not a sugar issue directly, more of an OLPC issue
> > > > > but since Fedora F12 the entire i686 platform's userland is
> > > > > being compiled with -mtune=atom which would use sse. This causes
> > > > > problems for some parts of sugar now that java is being used
> > > > > more and the XO-1 lacks sse.  Fixing one package that uses sse
> > > > > might fix one issue but this is really a distro wide setting and
> > > > > other issues may float to the top in other areas.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks, wasn't aware -mtune=atom was being used upstream.  It
> > > > explains a lot.  First build after Fedora 11 was 11.2.0 (os874)
> > > > using Fedora 14.  So if we rebuild everything there may be an
> > > > improvement?  That's probably something that can be set running as
> > > > a test.
> > > >
> > > 
> > > Wouldn't all the rpms used need to be recompiled to ensure mtune is
> > > set to match throughout the distro?
> > 
> > Don't think so.  Check my logic:
> > 
> > The GCC documentation you referenced described -mtune as "Tune to
> > cpu-type everything applicable about the generated code, except for
> > the ABI and the set of available instructions. "
> > 
> > -march is more significant, as "Generate instructions for the machine
> > type cpu-type. The choices for cpu-type are the same as for
> > -mtune. Moreover, specifying -march=cpu-type implies
> > -mtune=cpu-type. "
> > 
> > If the ABI were different between i586 and i686 arch, that would be
> > very interesting.
> > 
> > > Tall order IMHO, good luck
> > 
> > ;-)
> > 
> > For the moment, I'm doing a mock --rebuild of webkitgtk3 with
> > --arch=i586, and the logs so far show "-march=i586 -mtune=generic"
> > instead of "-march=i686 -mtune=atom":
> 
> This didn't change the problem, gdb core still showed SSE instructions
> used.
> 
> Daniel Drake's change to WebKit that fixed this before has since been
> lost in the current WebKit sources in git.  Patch is in the history,
> but some later patch removed the change.
> 
> > 
> > $ grep mtune build.log | grep i586 | wc --lines
> > 8564
> > $ grep mtune build.log | grep atom | wc --lines
> > 0
> > $ 
> > 
> > > Jerry
> > 
> > -- 
> > James Cameron
> > http://quozl.linux.org.au/
> 
> -- 
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
 		 	   		  
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