[sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia

[Eben Eliason]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:17 PM,  <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
> mikus wrote:
>  >   -  First off, every Activity has a 'Name Field' in its top menu.
>  > When running any Activity, the user should enter there a short
>  > "Title" to identify the resulting Journal entry from all others.
>  >
>  >   -  Then, upon leaving that Activity, the user should "reflect" on
>  > what was done, and "update" the corresponding Journal entry to make
>  > it easier to find later.  This is particularly desirable if the
>  > "Title" is not meaningful enough by itself for later locating what
>  > the user is looking for:
>
> in a traditional system, when a user saves their work, they are
> pretty much forced to enter the (hopefully) useful name by which
> that work will be retrieved.
>
> if searching is the fundamental retrieval mechanism (which i think
> is fine), then my first reaction to mikus' advice is that
> activities and/or sugar should be more emphatic about asking for
> the descriptive information which be useful later.  i.e., adding
> search tags shouldn't be an optional extra step, but a "usual"
> step which must be explicitly skipped by the user.

Indeed.  I had brought this issue up in the past thinking it might
happen for 8.2, but it's definitely on the plate for 9.1. I have a few
ideas about how we can make this system better, and encourage names
and tags, without becoming a hassle.  We also, down the road, have
ideas about how to better expose the tagging system, and perhaps even
make it fun, so that describing things becomes a natural part of the
interface.  Kids learn to speak by describing things around them; we
should be able to tap into this to both help them learn and make the
Journal a useful and searchable space.

- Eben


> paul
> =---------------------
>  paul fox, pgf at laptop.org
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