I am Peter Hewitt, a newbie Activities Developer from Australia. It's less than a year since I discovered the OLPC Project and decided to become an Activities Developer drawing on over 40 years of classroom and computing experience.
These are the guidelines I've established for my work:
- attractive appearance
- simplicity
- a reminder that a person is behind the activity
- consistency of function - eg the blue button always gives a new pattern or problem
- provision of levels of difficulty
- keep and display progress
- offer tablet mode if appropriate
- must run on any platform that supports Python
- no sound (my earlier work had sound effects but many teachers found this disruptive
- no words
The last is the most important because it ensures that all my activities can reach a global audience. What is missing, however, is multi-language versions of my notes at Sugar Labs. If you can assist, please contact me.
The hardest part of this undertaking has been the paucity of feedback, although I am encouraged by the large number of downloads recorded at Sugar Labs.
If you would like to know more about me and my work, check out my journal - at bottom left of each journal page is a link to my Home Page which contains my e-mail address. There is also a link to all my activities on the later pages.
Hi Peter - great to see you sharing here at OLPC News - surely 40 new Sugar activities in a year is some kind of record? I know they are being used at Doomadgee as we speak.
Sounds interesting, can you send me some links of your activities. I would love to translate them into different languages.
Jonathan,
To be fair ... it was 28 not 40 :o)
Rafikh,
Here is the link to all my activities at Sugar Labs where you'll find the notes that need translating.
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/user/2246
Peter