[IAEP] Volunteer-driven development of educational software

[David Farning]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Caroline Meeks
<caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 10:45 AM, Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, Caroline Meeks wrote:
>>
>>> World wide there are many programmers paid to create and maintain
>>> activities with strong pedagogical elements intended solely for kids.  Many
>>> of these activities are distributed without cost and some are open source.
>>> Some that I'm familiar with are NSDL, PBS Teachers Domain, Concord
>>> Consortium.
>>>
>>> I think one of the tasks of the Marketing Team, which I see you head, is
>>> to convince organizations that are already creating activities that they
>>> want to use Sugar as a Learning Platform to deliver their activities.  If we
>>> succeed in that then I think that many of these programmers will also
>>> contribute to maintaining and extending Sugar itself, because it will be
>>> code that they are using regularly for their jobs.  It will become their
>>> itch.
>>
>> Brilliant, Caroline.  I think you're exactly right.  One of our main
>> missions should be outreach to these developers.  I hope you can help here,
>> since you're clearly more familiar with the space than I am.  :)
>
> Well of course its easier said then done.  But my thinking is that NSF
> grants and many of the philanthropic grants require the grantee to say how
> they will disseminate what they are creating. We would ideally like Sugar to
> be a popular answer to that question, for both Grantors and Grantees.
>
> So what are the advantages Sugar has to offer activity creators?
>
> Brainstorming some of the advantages Sugar might offer activity creators.
>
> An installed base from XO installations
> Potential for deep integration with local servers.
> Built in collaboration features
> others?
>
> How do we communicate this to them?

Communicate the _Impact_ of their contributions.

This thread is leading up to some of the conversations for Sugar Camp
next week.  Over the coming months, we need to start including
'numbers' and 'stories' in our message.  The numbers might be kind of
fuzzy; How many kids use sugar?  The stories are going to have to be
concrete examples of how Sugar of the XO has positively change
individual lives.

As you and Greg have pointed out, we have several distinct groups to
which we will need to communicate:
1. Open source developers.
2. Education researchers and activists.
3. General philanthropy.
4. For profit organizations that want to build products or service on
top of Sugar.

thanks
david

> Maybe follow the money backwards and write letters to the Grant reviews.  It
> ought to be possible to figure out who reviewed the major funding for
> interesting activity creation, I don't think there is that much of it.
>
> -Caroline
>
>>
>>
>> --g
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
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