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

[Sean DALY]

Thanks John

Do you think a third of the teachers would be willing to fill out a
webform like that?

Sean


On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:01 PM, John Watlington <wad at laptop.org> wrote:
>
> 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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>
>