[IAEP] (engineering) capacity building

[Caroline Meeks]

>
> As an aside, I don't believe too much in the "scratch your own itch"
> explanation for free software volunteer coding. If you go for example
> planet.gnome.org and skim through the posts there while asking to
> yourself why these people take the time to write free software instead
> of watching TV, I don't think you will find many cases of people who
> are hacking on things because they themselves need that feature in
> their app.
>
> I think that the itches they are scratching are more likely the desire
> to do something fun and interesting and to do something more
> significant than earning money in a bank by managing code monkeys or
> writing software that nobody they know will ever use.
>
> That's why I think that we can tune our message much better in order
> to reach those people, I don't see why the GNOME desktop would have
> more appeal to hack on it than Sugar.


I agree with Tomeu and I was thinking about it and decided just for fun to
try to restate what he said in education jargon.

I think people want to do projects that are authentic and within their zone
of proximal development.

Authentic = more significant then earning money in a bank. We help our
volunteers understand that their contributions are authentic by giving them
concrete usecase and feedback from actual kids using it in schools. I hope
we can also do it by having people able to go into schools with sticks and
have kids use Sugar and learn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentic_assessment#About

Zone of Proximal Development.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development#Development

This means a task that is neither to easy or to difficult but is optimal for
learning.  I think one of our challenges is to help potential volunteers
find tasks that they can learn from, but still do with tons of assistance.

We can also turn that around and take our most important tasks, and figure
out where could we find people for whom those tasks are within their ZPD.



>
> > Another release at our current development and growth rates and Sugar
> > will be pretty deployable.  Another release after that an it will be
> > pretty usable.
> >
> > As developers, the best way you can engage more developers is by
> > making Sugar great.  The most effective way for open source projects
> > to attract and retain contributors is to have a good base of code and
> > a healthy community.
>
> Yup, totally agreed.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
> > david
> >
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Tomeu
> >>
> >>> Sean
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> >> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > David Farning
> > Sugar Labs
> > www.sugarlabs.org
> >
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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