[IAEP] Teacher in Uruguay enchanted to see his ideas integrated into global Sugar update [pr mockup]

[Brian Jordan]

I thought a bit after the support gang meetings with Caryl et al,
about the past-of-least-effort to create a feedback activity...
(something that one entrepreneuring dev could create in <1hr)

Google Spreadsheets has a "form invitations" feature that lets you can create
a simple web form for people to contribute certain data to a
spreadsheet.

Example spreadsheet-based form:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=plBYBrldkf62b4WfB7s0BAw&email=true
Form invitations announcement:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-sharing-spreadsheets-start.html

If we are looking to solicit feedback from students and teachers at
deployments, this could be a simple and effective way to collect and
later analyze the information in a secure manner (at least, more
secure than any system we could implement that would require updating
software). This form/URL could easily be placed into a "Feedback"
activity (similarly to what I did this week in putting together the
Help activity), which means we could have a direct communications
channel from the XO (if we wanted).

Using the Help activity as a starting point and setting the starting
URL to the Google spreadsheet form, one would instantly have a vector
for feedback from the deployments formatted as a spreadsheet. One-way
forms could be created to rate activities, solicit suggestions for new
features or feedback on Sugar.

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 7:12 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure if this should be an integrated part of the OS, or a
> separate activity, but let me propose a view of the latter:
>
> Suppose we create a "Suggestion Box" activity, which offers a
> streamlined interface for providing suggestions.  Have the suggestions
> all get sent to, for instance, suggestion-box at lists.laptop.org.  Or,
> if you want to split based on language, suggestion-box.en at laptop.org.
> Then we'll have a repository of all the feedback and suggestions that
> come in readily accessible, archived, and searchable, and we can
> discuss them "in place" on the lists, and break things out into trac
> tickets as needed.
>

Using email as the input mechanism would work as well, and would
indeed allow us to create either (1) a volunteer RT queue to process
feedback or (2) a public mailing list with this feedback. Feeding this
information directly into a spreadsheet, though, would allow for (1)
tailoring the more closed-ended questions to solicit properly
formatted feedback on current issues and upcoming decisions and (2)
using number-based feedback to create graphs and other visualizations
of feedback from XOs (sortable by whatever fields we place in, such as
country, student/teacher/developer status, number of months using the
XO, etc). Of course, email would be preferable for
feedback-that-needs-feedback (like support tickets), requiring the
person to have access to an email account (unless we give them a way
to followup via the activity interface).

> As an addendum to this idea, I'd really like to see the Log activity
> gain similar support, so that in addition to offering a view of logs,
> it provided a way to send feedback reports, automatically including
> necessary data such as serial number, build number, hardware, etc.
> This would also make it really easy to attach logs to feedback.  It
> should be possible to send logs to the right people, according to a
> URL in the activity.info file for each.
>

Agreed.

> Finally, if people are really ambitious, what we really need is this:
> http://mydreamapp.com/contestants/view/kevincapizzi/idea/ .  Call it
> the "Discuss" activity. The idea is to create a simple streamlined
> interface through which to interact with any online forum you
> subscribe to.  We could pre-populate this with our support forum, and
> create forums for suggestions, logs, and other needs as well.  This, I
> feel, could be fantastic.
>

This would be great!

A simple web messageboard with proper page style to look nice on the
XO would integrate very simply into a Browse/Help-like activity.
Someone do!

> - Eben
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Christoph Derndorfer
> <e0425826 at student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>> Mmmm, I know I'm being the cranky one here today but I can't be the
>> only one thinking that IRC (or any activity based on it) isn't all
>> great a solution. Even for an immediate stop-gap solution it sucks. A
>> lot.
>>
>> As C.Scott mentioned we really need two solutions: a social one and a
>> technological one. For the social one we need to get people to
>> deployments. For the technical one we need to find the easiest possible
>> way for people to get comments, suggestions, ideas, rants from wherever
>> they are to this list and other appropiate places.
>>
>> Here's my current thinking:
>>
>> Screw the non-existant "Show me the code" functionality and turn this
>> into "kick a developer's ass" button;-)
>>
>> Seriously, also with regard to the recent Windows XP in Peru
>> announcement what we need to do is offer a competitive advantage to
>> such a solution. I know I
>> being a pain about a this but I truly believe that a well-established
>> feedback-loop between deployments and developers is one of the key USPs
>> here.
>>
>> At the end of the day this is of course a major decision in terms of
>> Sugar Labs' scope. Personally, I'm still a fan of a very early message
>> by Ivan K. which specifically asked for Sugar Labs to be more than
>> "just" a software outfit...
>>
>> Anyway, 'nuff said for a day,
>> Christoph
>>
>> Zitat von Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> All very good points. At the time, there were a number of issues we
>>> hadn't resolved: what channel to default to ; what to do at the back
>>> end in terms of manning the channel(s); what to do about language --
>>> not of the tool, but the discussion; (now that we have the Sugar
>>> Control Panel, some of these are all less of an issue) etc.
>>>
>>> -walter
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 4:21 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at laptop.org> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Walter Bender
>>>> <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> The XoIRC Activity was designed for exactly that.
>>>>
>>>> Can we dust it off and improve it then?  It's not translated, it
>>>> requires kids to type in obscure irc commands (/msg, etc), and there's
>>>> no way to 'leave a suggestion' that persists.  The title 'XoIRC'
>>>> doesn't mean 'go here to get help or make a suggestion' in any
>>>> language I know of.
>>>>  --scott
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>  ( http://cscott.net/ )
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Christoph Derndorfer
>> co-editor, olpcnews
>> url: www.olpcnews.com
>> e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
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