[Grassroots-l] [sugar] G1G1 Pre-installed Activities Request for Help Testing

[Walter Bender]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 3:06 PM, rihoward1 at gmail.com
> <rihoward1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Sameer thanks for making the spreadsheet world  editable
>> By the way how are you defining the following terms:-
>>
>> Stability
>> Performance
>> Child Utility
>> Technical Utility
>> Grown-up utility
>> Lines of code
>
>
> I'm not. I just pulled out a few items that came to me. Ideally, the
> Sugar team should be making this list.
>
>
>>
>> Good definitions of these terms noted in the spreadsheet will reduce
>> ambiguity.
>
> Agreed. Like a good data dictionary.
>
> Sameer
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>
>
>> Nothing like ambiguity to cause misunderstanding.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 21, 2008, at 12:11 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 1:59 PM, rihoward1 at gmail.com
>>> <rihoward1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sep 21, 2008, at 11:12 AM, Sameer Verma wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 6:00 PM, Seth Woodworth <seth at laptop.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 12:46 PM, Walter Bender
>>>>>> <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In fact, there is a great deal of data from the field in the form of
>>>>>>> the activity packs that Peru, Uruguay, et al. developed. These
>>>>>>> collections have been vetted and tested extensively and have a
>>>>>>> built-in community of support. They are learning-centric collections,
>>>>>>> but presumably, those G1G1 purchasers who are interested in other
>>>>>>> pursuits will run Fedora/GNOME or XP.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -walter
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm not convinced that they are well-tested.  They included News
>>>>>> Reader,
>>>>>> which hasn't worked for the last several releases.  That doesn't
>>>>>> suggest
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> me that their activities went through any kind of extensive testing
>>>>>> before
>>>>>> deployment.   They have since been tested in the field by children.  I
>>>>>> *haven't* seen much feedback from kids yet.  At least not from South
>>>>>> American and not any broad spectrum.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ---Seth
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In an attempt to make the decision-making process more unbiased (or at
>>>>> least more multi-criteria) I've put up a basic spreadsheet for a
>>>>> scoring matrix at
>>>>> http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p_Xhb6KcXLyEViA50CnCaDg&hl=en
>>>>
>>>> Well I logged in to google docs, but I cannot edit this spreadsheet.  I
>>>> wanted to add Chat to the matrix as this activity is an extremely useful
>>>> communication tool for both children and adults.  I know G1G1 users that
>>>> spend at least 80% of their XO usage  with Chat and they have reported to
>>>> me
>>>> that they have observed children having a wonderful time using Chat to
>>>> communicate with their friends even when their friends  were in the same
>>>> room.
>>>
>>> I've made it world-editable. Alternatively, you can download the
>>> spreadsheet and play with it in Excel or OpenOffice.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Gmail activity seems redundant as Gmail is reachable from Browse.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, but it exists. Feel free to add as many activities as needed.
>>>
>>> Sameer
>>>>>
>>>>> In the spreadsheet, there are three main components. Column B has
>>>>> factors such as stability, performance, etc to assess against. I just
>>>>> made these up, but feel free to make your own. The weights (column C)
>>>>> essentially defines the importance of each factor as a percentage of a
>>>>> total of 100%. The rest of the columns are for each activity. Feel
>>>>> free to add your own. Score them on a scale of 1 to 10. Each score
>>>>> gets weighted and you'll see totals at the bottom. Sort for the totals
>>>>> in Descending order and skim off the top 10.
>>>>>
>>>>> There you have it. Multi-criteria decision-making made simple.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sameer
>>>>> --
>>>>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>>>>> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>>>>> San Francisco State University
>>>>> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>>>>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>>>>> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Devel mailing list
>>>>> Devel at lists.laptop.org
>>>>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>

These are the criteria for inclusion we developed for the original
G1G1 program... not really knowing the goals for the new campaign, it
is difficult to know if these are relevant... (From
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Creating_an_activity#Include_your_Activity_in_the_core.3F)
   1.  Epistemological impact—to what degree does this activity
positively impact learning? (This is of course the most important
criteria.)
   2. Fun—is it fun? engaging?
   3. Quality—is the activity sufficiently robust in its
implementation that it will not compromise the integrity or
supportability of the system? Is the overall quality of the
implementation adequate to meet our standards? Can the community be
engaged in the process of testing and "certifying" and maintaining the
activity?
   4. Sugarized—to what extent has the activity been integrated into
Sugar, including UI, Journal, security, internationalization, etc.?
Does the activity require the folding in of additional libraries and
resources? (This has impact on robustness—positive and
negative—support, bloat, and the overall usability, aesthetics, and
perception of quality of the machine.)
   5. FOSS—is the activity and all of its dependencies free and open?
   6. Extensible—is the activity something the community can extend?
Does it span multiple needs? (And does it have—or the potential of
having—an upstream community of support?)
   7. Uniqueness—does the activity add a unique feature to the core?
   8. Expectations—does the activity meet the expectations of
(children, teachers, parents, G1G1 audience, etc.)?
   9. Discoverable—is the core activity discoverable? (This is not to
say that it shouldn't be hard work to fully exploit the power of an
activity, but it should have a low barrier to entry.)

-walter

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