[IAEP] [SLOBS]: Request for certifications of developing an activity

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Gonzalo,

having worked with a handful of student groups in Austria over the past
three years I agree with your observation.

With education students I feel it's hard to get them involved because
they're simply not used to tools such as mailing-lists, wikis, and IRC
which happen to be the places where most of the existing community hangs
out. While I always try to encourage them to participate or even simply
listen to the conversation especially here on IAEP it only seldomely
works out (e.g. the "OLPC in Science-Subjects --- NEED HELP!!!" mail
from one of the current students back in May or so:-). But more often
then not I end up being the gate-keeper and forwarding relevant mails to
them from the lists, etc. :-/

So while I know I'm beating a very dead horse here: Unless we change or
adapt our communication processes and tools I personally don't expect
many educators (students or not) to participate in the community.

With engineering students I thought that things would be easier however
unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case, at least here in
Austria. Again, there was a tiny bit of involvement at some points in
the past but when you see people updating source code via e-mail
attachments and Skype messages you realize that you generally have a
long way to go...

Here I feel that maybe having a separate sugar-students@ mailing list
might be a way forward. Ideally some experienced developers and
community people would closely monitor it and offer timely replies.
Everyone working with students should then encourage them to sign up
there. This way there'd be a space for them to collaborate, exchange
experiences, and discuss issues without being overwhelmed by the traffic
on IAEP and sugar-devel which can be very overwhelming at times,
particularly when you're just getting involved.

Last but not least we have to realize that many student projects operate
on a term-by-term basis. Still being a student myself I know how little
time that tends to leave for doing anything that doesn't directly affect
your grade... :-/

Cheers,
Christoph

Am 13.07.2011 12:27, schrieb Gonzalo Odiard:
> Yes.
> Also, we must recommend working more in the open, I don't know why,
> but in particular students in universities
> are very reluctant to integrate to the community, and are happy
> dropping a "finished" product without interaction.
>
> Gonzalo
>
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 5:37 AM, James Simmons <nicestep at gmail.com
> <mailto:nicestep at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I like the idea of giving certificates, but I think we should take
>     the opportunity to enforce some simple best practices, like
>     requiring a toolbar, requiring Share and Keep buttons to be hidden
>     if they aren't used, requiring a proper icon for the Activity, etc.
>
>     It might be nice to have two levels of certificate.  Since shared
>     Activities are more difficult to develop, maybe we have a separate
>     certificate for those.
>
>     James Simmons
>
>
>     On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 2:53 AM, Martin Dengler
>     <martin at martindengler.com <mailto:martin at martindengler.com>> wrote:
>
>         On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 06:11:31PM -0400, Chris Ball wrote:
>         > Hi,
>         >
>         > On Tue, Jul 12 2011, Walter Bender wrote:
>         > > Can we discuss this? I think it would be good to have a
>         certificate
>         > > program of some sort. I image that if we get sign-off by 2+
>         > > experienced developers, we should be willing to award some
>         sort of
>         > > certificate (perhaps we can get the design team to work
>         something up.)
>         >
>         > Perhaps we could tie the certificate-awarding to posting an
>         activity on
>         > ASLO and getting a review from someone on the Activity Team or
>         > something?
>
>         Perhaps even prominent reviewers on ASLO (are there any?).
>          Either way
>         it's more sustainable and honest than herding developers to
>         sign off
>         on certificates.
>
>         > Thanks,
>         >
>         > - Chris.
>
>         Martin
>
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>
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>
>
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-- 
Christoph Derndorfer
co-editor, www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com