[IAEP] [Marketing] OLPCorps: an opportunity for Sugar feedback

[John Watlington]

On Mar 19, 2009, at 7:46 AM, Sean DALY wrote:

> Actually I agree with Mel, we could obtain extremely useful first-hand
> accounts which don't involve asking anyone what they like or not, but
> simply watching what they do.
>
> To discover how Sugar is not serving its users, we need lots of raw
> field data. And to make good use of it, we need that data to be
> structured. This is the bread and butter of consumer market surveys...
> just needs to be adjusted due to the young age and cultural
> differences of the users.

May I suggest the olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org ?
There are thousands of teachers in South America already using Sugar.
Many more than OLPCCorps will provide...

> Most kids I know get wise as every year passes and will try to answer
> what is expected... so the trick is to talk about stuff that interests
> them, and learn while they chat about it. Linguists are constantly
> faced with a similar problem: if you tell anyone they are to be
> interviewed by a linguist, s/he will put on the most educated accent
> they can muster; if you ask in a friendly way what their favorite
> football team is, or what kind of music they like, or about an
> important event in their life, you are guaranteed to get authentic
> linguistic results.
>
> A visiting OLPCorps student could tell us:
> * How do kids (& teachers) start their day with the XO - bright and
> early, or at a set time every day?
> * What Activities do they start with?
> * Which Activities do they spend time on in class? in free time? What
> do they seem to like the most / the least?
> * When and where are the XOs charging (=Sugar downtime)?
> * Are the XOs always / sometimes / never, open and in use outside  
> of class time?
> * Is anyone left out (i.e. without an XO due to breakage)?
> * Are kids helping each other when they get stuck on something?
> * Are the XOs used in the evening?
>
>
> Questions to kids can reveal very interesting information, without
> asking for detailed criticism:
> * "Show me some photos you took or drawings you made" -> how do they
> search and retrieve them?
> * "When did you take that photo?" -> Are they concerned about having
> enough space for photos, do they delete old ones if they run low? Do
> they get the age from the Journal, or just remembering?
> * "Do you have brothers and sisters? Do you let them look at your
> computer?" -> Kids will never hesitate to talk about siblings and the
> answer will reveal: Do the parents look at the computer too?
>
>
> We can spend a minimum of time and yet harvest incredible information
> by making reporting easy:
> * standardize a little list like this
> * ask OLPCorps volunteers to look at the list and print it out before
> departure, perhaps taking notes on the printed page during the short
> stay, but never in front of the kids
> * ask them to submit the little report upon return (or just before)
> through a friendly webform. Thank them!
>
>
> I am sure OLPC will already be doing something similar. Although the
> help these sickly students might bring to the sites might be minimal,
> the help they can bring to the OLPC and Sugar projects as "eyes and
> ears" using homogenized reporting, leading to usable consolidated
> results, is a golden opportunity I think to better know how Sugar is
> being used across cultures.
>
> thanks
>
> Sean
> Marketing Coordinator
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Bryan Berry <bryan at olenepal.org>  
> wrote:
>> I highly doubt that OLPCorps personnel will be useful to Sugarlabs.
>> Trying to work w/ them will just be a time sink.
>>
>> 1. Few of these folks will know anything about Sugar or really care,
>> otherwise they would already be active on the mailing lists.
>>
>> 2. They are going from microbe-free Europe/North America to central
>> Africa. I conservatively estimate that all of them will spend 1/3  
>> to 1/2
>> of their stay in Central Africa sick w/ malaria or intestinal  
>> problems.
>> I don't mean to judge Africa harshly here, if they came to rural  
>> Nepal
>> they would spend at least 1 month sick.
>>
>> 3. I doubt very few of these people will be able to communicate
>> effectively w/ the locals. This is not a language issue but a  
>> cultural
>> one. If I go to a rural school and ask the locals how they like  
>> Sugar,
>> they always respond "Yes, yes, it is fantastic. No complaints" If my
>> colleague Rabi karmacharya goes, they give him a long list of
>> complaints. Locals know not to complain to foreigners, because  
>> telling
>> foreigners what they might not want to hear usually leads  
>> foreigners to
>> stop giving money.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 2009-03-19 at 10:57 +0100, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 06:32, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:
>>>> I thought you folks might be interested in the conversation/ 
>>>> questions I
>>>> had with Paul Commons about the OLPCorps internship program  
>>>> tonight.
>>>> Paul's going to be moving discussions to the grassroots mailing  
>>>> list, so
>>>> please reply to Paul on that list if you're interested in the  
>>>> program
>>>> itself or the workings of it.
>>>>
>>>> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2009-March/001151.html
>>>>
>>>> What I /do/ want to discusson this list: given that all these  
>>>> pilots and
>>>> all these student internship teams are going to be using Sugar,  
>>>> it seems
>>>> like this is an awesome opportunity to...
>>>>
>>>> 1) get some Sugar feedback love from teachers through the  
>>>> OLPCorps teams
>>>>
>>>> 2) seed Sugar-savvy groups of university students (who can do  
>>>> things
>>>> like deploy SoaS back home right away - there's nothing like a  
>>>> local
>>>> deployment to work with to keep you engaged)
>>>>
>>>> 3) get some great Sugar use stories so we can hear about what  
>>>> our stuff
>>>> actually /does/ for kids.
>>>>
>>>> What do you folks think? How can we make this happen?
>>>
>>> I don't know that, but how we can help these groups of people to use
>>> Sugar more successfully?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Tomeu
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Marketing mailing list
>>> Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>> --
>> Bryan W. Berry
>> Technology Director
>> OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Marketing mailing list
>> Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>
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