[Dextrose] [AC UPDATE] tch's edition

[Bernie Innocenti]

BEST... UPDATE... EVER!

Really, you should republish it on Planet Sugar, minimum.


On Mon, 2011-02-07 at 22:56 -0300, Martin Abente wrote:
> As David mentioned today, every member will share with rest of the
> team an update report, so everyone can understand each other work
> context. I will be first, and I will talk a little bit of Paraguay
> Educa, their current status and how do we (AC) interact with them.
> 
> Paraguay Educa is starting officially the phase II of their OLPC
> project in which they will deliver 5000 XO 1.5 laptops in the city of
> Caacupe, where they already have approximately 4000 XO 1.0 laptops.
> 
> What does this means for the deployment? It means that they will be
> insanely busy dealing with:
> 
> * The communicational campaign. 
> * The coordination between Paraguay Educa and schools (Principals,
> Teachers, Parents and Students) for the events that come along with
> the laptops delivery day. Trust me, it is a very happy day for the
> community.
> * A huge and complex logistic schedule that requires moving the
> laptops from Asunción port  (50 kilometres) to rural and urban schools
> in Caacupe, while at the same time they keep track of every laptop
> until they arrive on the children's hands.
> 
> Anyone should be able to understand how critical is this time for
> them. They need to think and think again every detail of every task
> that is required in order to accomplish a successful delivery. Even
> though the delivery is only the beginning of this second phase, but
> this literally consumes all their human resources.
> 
> If that was not enough, they are also planning a massive software
> upgrade in Caacupe not only for the 5000 new XO 1.5 laptops, but also
> for the current 4000 XO 1.0 laptops. This means that in the next
> couple of months there will be 9000 childrens and teachers in the
> classrooms of Caacupe learning with Dextrose2. And here is where AC
> takes part in this colossal event.
> 
> In the last months we have been working really hard to identify the
> software requirements for the phase II, through constant and frecuent
> meetings with Paraguay Educa technology team. At the same time we were
> implementing the solutions to fulfil those requirements. Just to
> mentions some of them:
> 
> * Improved interaction between the system and the user (notification
> system).
> * Improved maintainability with a short and middle term updater
> (automatic yum updater).
> * Improved methods for gathering feedback from the user (automatic
> feedback system).
> * Many enhancements and bug fixes.
> 
> Still many people wonders: are these features what the childrens want?
> The answer is definitely no. What the children want is a playstation
> III, actually. But these features are certainly what this deployment
> need in order to improve this learning platform and turn it into
> something that every project needs: a stable and reliable platform
> that helps them in the challenge of improving the learning process of
> their children.
> 
> So, we are done? definitely no. A few weeks ago we started a critical
> phase for us: testing. This means that we are delivering our solutions
> to the people who is really using it everyday, so they can tell us if
> it really works for them, in this case the Formadores. For the ones
> who does not know the Formadores, I will explain.
> 
> The formadores are the ones who have the challenge to train the school
> teachers so they can the use sugar and its activities. After that,
> they visit the schools regularly to help and to encourage the teachers
> to use the laptop in the classroom. Teaching to teach is certainly a
> hard task, considering that most of these teachers have zero prior
> knowledge of how to use a computer. Personally I think the fact that
> they are able to successfully do it (in a relative short training
> course) speaks very well of Sugar and obviously, of the formadores
> itself.
> 
> We can see the formadores as the front line of the experienced sugar
> users in caacupe, which is perfect for our testing purposes. But we
> need to consider that they have their own agenda, not only preparing
> contents for the teachers and trainning but also doing a little bit of
> everything. Paraguay Educa is a very small team, and everyone does a
> little bit of everything, so the formadores will also have a
> protagonist role in all the tasks I mentioned before, prior to the
> delivery of the laptops. From flashing the laptops, helping with the
> logistic steps of the delivery, coordinating and presenting the
> events, etc.
> 
> That is why we need to put extra effort in the next couple of weeks to
> show them that we are also working hard to fix the bugs they report
> and to make sure dextrose2 can fulfil their and our expectations.
> 
> Hope this was enlightening as I intended it to be. :) 

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/