• Moved to Sugar Labs
• Dedication
• Introduction
• I discovered this discovery
• Discovery: Preparation
• Discovery: Open your XO
• Discovery: Buttons and bits
• Discovery: Turn XO on, and observe
• Discovery: Turn XO on and start trying things
• Discovery: Button functions
• Discovery: Other bits of the XO
• Discovery: Icon Ring
• Discovery: List view
• Discovery: Help
• Discovery: Frame
• Discovery: Wireless networking
• Discovery: Browse
• Discovery: Good questions
• Discovery: Journal
• Discovery: Record
• Discovery: Paint
• Discovery: Write
• Discovery: Collaboration
• Discovery: Frame Again
• The Undiscoverable: Terminal
• Discovery: Utility Menu
• Pause
• Discovery: More Activities
• Discovery: Puzzles
• Discovery: Games
• Discovery: Turtle Art
• Discovery: Calculate
• Discovery: Measure
• Discovery: Etoys
• Discovery: Music
• What do I want to discover?
• Discovering childhood education
• Discovery: Hints
• Resources
• Discovery: Glossary

Discovery: Collaboration

Before we get started here, make a note to yourself that if you see the same icon in different views, you can try clicking it in one view and then going to another to see if there is a visible result. Make a list of icons that you can test this idea on, and see what happens. It works for Star icons, for example, in Home and List View, and also in the Journal as part of the Search toolbar function. We called Starred items "Favorites". It's up to you which are your favorite Activities and which are your favorite Journal entries.

I bring that up because we are going to take a step beyond that in this Discovery. We begin with some Undiscoverable bits.

You will need two XOs, or a friend with an XO, or an Internet connection to a Jabber server where others have signed in with their XOs.

Turn your XO on, or go to Home View, and open Write. Click the Actvity Tab. On the toolbar you will see a menu labeled Share with:. It is set to Private (Icon with one dot). Click to pull down the menu, and select My Neighborhood (Icon with a ring of dots). What do you observe? You can't select from that menu again, but that's it.

Now go to Neighborhood View. Notice anything? Point to the Write icon. The menu says Join. That just takes you back to Write.

Now look at the other XO. If all went well, you see the icon for the first XO along with a Write icon. Point at each icon. The Write icon menu looks just the same as on the other XO, with the same choice, Join. Try it. Now you see Write starting up. That's different. And now when Write is open, try typing on each XO. The typing is is different colors, and appears in different places. At first, if you start in an empty document, your typing will appear in different parts of the same line, but if you press enter a few times you can edit in different paragraphs.

Can your cursors get mixed up? What happens if you put them in the same place and both start typing?

Sharing in Write means that children can get together with other students and work on homework assignments together, writing different parts of a joint report. Among other things.

Where else does this work, and what else can you do with it?

Now you know how to share an Activity with a Friend, and you know at least one thing that you can do by sharing. Which of the Activities on your XO provide sharing? How can you tell? (Make a list, with notes and questions for each. How can you be sure to try all of the Activities on your XO?) Why do Activities provide sharing? How does it work differently in different Activities? Which do not have sharing? Why is that? Should they allow sharing?

Lots and lots of questions. We'll look at some activities in coming Discoveries, and give out some more hints, and tell you what we think is Undiscoverable.

Can you think of different ways of sharing an activity? Different reasons for sharing? Did you find some of them in other Activities? Should we know about an idea you had that isn't in Sugar?

Write down the ideas you get, but don't stop there. If you learn of another way to share later on, or another reason to share, you can make a note of it, and perhaps show it to others. Or perhaps you can think of a way to get them to discover it for themselves.

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EDIT