[IAEP] Fwd: (One Laptop Per Child News) New Comment on Experiencias Pedagogicas in OLPC Uruguay with Rosamel

[Walter Bender]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:  <yama at netoso.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 4:21 AM
Subject: (One Laptop Per Child News) New Comment on Experiencias
Pedagogicas in OLPC Uruguay with Rosamel
To: walter at sugarlabs.org


There's a new comment on 'Experiencias Pedagogicas in OLPC Uruguay
with Rosamel' :
http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/uruguay/experiencias_pedagogico_in_olp.html

From: mavrothal

?at Sugar Labs we are looking for concrete ways to enhance the level
of collaboration and communication between developers and teachers.
Any suggestions are welcome!!?
Then I?ll give it a try?

FOSS developers/project care about/listen to users that know how to
interface with the developer world. Teachers on the other hand can
tell you what they would like to teach and maybe how. In most cases
however, they are trained to follow strict guidelines on ?what? and a
specific tradition of ?how?, so may not even volunteer this
information. So if the initiative is left to the teachers and/or
developers, direct interface can only be limited and spotty at best.

What is needed is an ?interface team? that will go ASKING (groups of)
teachers what specifically they would like to teach, what kind of
material they could provide, what kind of defined goals or tests they
have for the class and if they have any idea on how a computer (or
Sugar in particular) may help them.
They must have the technical knowledge then to formulate ideas or
request in a language that developers can ?understand?. E.g. file bug
reports, or feature requests for existing activities or Sugar, or
draft activity proposals for a new activity/infrastructure in a
developer-friendly form and if possible adapt it to Sugar principles
(constructivism, collaboration etc).
They should NOT do the development themselves (it bias the user input)
but they should be able to do/help the alpha-testing.

This might exist in some form already but I think the _key issue_ is
that the initiative for the contact should lay in an ?interface team?
that should go ?hunting?, and not the teachers or the developers.
Should be local or on location and the interaction with the teachers
should be face to face (that?s the way teachers communicate best, by
trait).
Should try to organize meetings at school level, having a couple of
XOs and/or SoaS-enabled netbooks for an exhibition or visit
deployments, and have a predefine but unbiased questioning outline
that should trigger input.
Should be a group with characteristics from the Education-,
Deployment-, Marketing-, Design Team and Bug squad and certainly the
ability to communicate effectively with all of these teams.
Is short the goal of these team(s) is to extract/stimulate
user/putative-user input in personal contacts and direct it to the
appropriate channel for action. Like a front-desk that is not waiting
for the customers but it goes to them.

I guess the last point is how do you find the people for these teams
and how to you keep them active and productive. Here comes the work of
all the other teams. These people must have the sense that they can
make a difference. E.g. that their (the users?) suggestions will be
seriously considered, prioritized and implemented, otherwise they?ll
loose interest fast (unless you pay them ?:-).


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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org