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

Sun Sep 21 20:05:37 EDT 2008

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 6:54 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

This list looks fine as a good starting point. The items are broad in
their reach. My list of items in the spreadsheet are only
"example/filler" items. Feel free to throw those out and start afresh.
In fact I would insist that we start afresh :-)

Whatever factors go into the weighted scoring, we should make sure
that we have a good way to quantify the score from something
observable (say, # of outstanding bugs) and not just gut feel.

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/