[Dextrose] Paraguay priorities and roadmap

[Anish Mangal]

Hi,

Since I have been in py, I've had valuable conversation with pyeduca
about the priorities re: dextrose and the xo deployment in general.
I'll summarize the key points which were discussed.

- - - - - - - -

= The tech side of things =

* Dextrose stability

This is *the* top-most priority as per to Roberto. It is just too much
workload for everyone to handle if the laptops are blowing up every
few minutes.

The formadores (teacher-trainers) are so overburdened by getting the
laptops to 'just work', they don't have any energy or time to give
useful feedback (which is not the same as a list of stuff which is
broken) to the educational or technical teams at pyeduca.

* Yum updater

This is something that is supposed to make life much easier for nearly
everyone here, so this is very high priority as well. One of the key
tasks for the tech team at pyeduca is to extensively test the updater
before deploying it in the field. Once the updater works reliably, we
can have different stable and testing repositories, which could be
useful for beta-testing the 'new & shiny'.

We plan to start testing the yum updater at the pyeduca office by this Monday

* Microformat updater

Follow similar release and testing schedule as the yum updater.

* More/better feedback from teachers and students
* Reducing the time between deploying software and discovering bugs.

Activity central is working hard to fix existing bugs and solve new
ones as and when they crop up. What, IMO, is equally important is to
reduce the time spent in discovering them. tch's notification system
would go a long way in addressing this. There is scope for creativity
here. Maybe an automated bug reporting tool?

- - - - - - - -

= Non tech = (most of the stuff here is for activity central and SL to
think about)

* How can the educational team participate in mainstream SL
pedagogical discussions.

It could potentially be very useful if they can participate and
discuss their deployment experiences with SL, since their feedback
would be based on a careful analysis of "what contributes to effective
learning", as compared with leaving that decision to us hackers.

* Think about collaboration between the educational teams at different
deployments. (This is just a placeholder. I actually need to discuss
this more with the edu team here before writing anything)

- - - - - - - -

= Facts =

* There are currently 4000 laptops presently deployed in py. It is
planned to deploy another 5000 by feb-march.

* Except bernie's school, the rest are all 0.84 which would be
upgraded to dextrose.

* There is one formador (teacher-trainer) per school (~1000 students),
a teacher per 40 students. xo laptops are currently deployed in 10
schools, and another 27 when the new laptops arrive.



-- 
Anish