[OLPC Brasil] Why call tools "activities"?

[Bert Freudenberg]

On Apr 6, 2007, at 0:37 , Don Hopkins wrote:

> Albert Cahalan wrote:
>> The standard words in English are "app" and "program". Pick one.  
>> Either will be far less confusing than "activity".
> I think the whole point of using the word "activity" instead of  
> "application" or "program" was to purposefully AVOID the  
> unfortunate connotations of the well understood words for desktop  
> applications and programs. One of the goals of Sugar is for  
> monolithic "applications" to be broken down into reusable  
> components, and integrated into task oriented "activities" (like  
> eToys or HyperCard stacks), instead of requiring the user to switch  
> between monolithic single-purpose applications, like editing an  
> image in Photoshop, formatting text in Word, and composing images  
> and text them into a web page in Front Page. Of course there is a  
> text editor "activity" and a book reader "activity", but ideally  
> those are reusable Python components that can be integrated  
> together into other activities (eventually by the casual user, like  
> eToys and HyperCard), instead of locking them up into separate  
> "applications".

Well spoken, Don. Fully agree. "Activity" is far less demarcating  
than "application" or "program". Ideally, "activities" would just be  
different pre-arranged "views" into one and the same system that is  
made of freely interchangeable components.

- Bert -