[Dextrose] Paraguay priorities and roadmap

[Aleksey Lim]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 09:04:26PM -0300, Anish Mangal wrote:
> 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.

In my mind, the only useful thing in current situation is direct
contacts between thinkers(requesters) and doers... and make doers' work
useful w/o bureaucratic obstacles, i.e., something like [1].
(btw previously mentioned tech stuff like bug reporting is an essential
part of Doers Environment[2] which is a part of [1]).

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Alsroot/Sugar_Architecture#The_whole_picture
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Doers_environment

> * 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.
Thats really cool, what about having them all on IRC (if there is
language barrier, meeting bot might help a bit) to direct interaction
with, interested in helping, doers. (as well as users of these XOs).

-- 
Aleksey