[OLPC library] Health Jam 2008

[Bryan Berry]

absolutely,  

Start w/ some simple goals for Health

1 activity for first aid
1 activity on nutrition
1 activity on the causes of disease

1 good pdf on the causes of disease

Then do some work on them to get started. After you have some prototypes
__then__ go look for help. The argument is "Here are our goals, here is
what we have so far, please help us improve what we have. However, if
you are think you could create better content yourself by starting from
scratch, please do so."

If you ask the larger community for help w/out having any existing
prototypes or precise goals, everyone goes off in different directions.

Martin Langhoff's e-mail motto sums it up quite well

"don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first"

Since you have an all-volunteer team on OLPC Health, you need projects
where folks can contribute a few hours a week. I recommend avoiding
architecturally complex or esoteric technical projects, it will be hard
for folks to put in the necessary time and for others not so acquainted
w/ that obscure platform to contribute. We are running into this problem
w/ EPaati since it is coded in Squeak.

If you could get some of Greg Smith's time, he could help you put
together a project plan. He has been very helpful to me. He is also
resident in Boston

hope this helps

On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 00:01 +0530, Arjun Sarwal wrote:
> >  Why didn't the Health Jam focus on getting folks to help w/ the
> >  development of these activities that you described?
> >
> >  Too many OLPC content projects are characterized by
> >  1) Lots of great ideas
> >  2) Lack of focus
> >  3) Lots of excitement, wiki pages, and e-mails
> >  4) Not much output in terms of finished activities or activity bundles.
> >
> >  Sorry to be blunt but we need to change this.
> >
> 
> Ideas on getting started with this change ?
> 
> (just trying to push the conversation forward in this direction as I
> agree with your point to some extent)
> 
> best
> Arjun
> 
> 
> From: Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Grassroots-l] Health Jam 2008
> To: Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>
> Cc: olpc-open <olpc-open at laptop.org>,   Games for the OLPC
>        <games at lists.laptop.org>, grassroots at lists.laptop.org
> Message-ID: <1209493566.7102.84.camel at dell.linuxdev.us.dell.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain
> 
> >There's no contradiction between activities that are fun, or with
> >complex ideas behind them, and those that teach the most basic health
> >and survival skills to children.
> 
> Teaching basic health and survival skills to kids is actually quite
> complex.
> 
> EKG's w/ the XO or the VistA healthcare suite are neat apps but not what
> is needed by most deployments.
> 
> When I refer to "complex" I more precisely mean problems that are
> technically interesting but not directly not related to education for
> kids ages 6-12, OLPC's primary focus.
> 
> Why didn't the Health Jam focus on getting folks to help w/ the
> development of these activities that you described?
> 
> Too many OLPC content projects are characterized by
> 1) Lots of great ideas
> 2) Lack of focus
> 3) Lots of excitement, wiki pages, and e-mails
> 4) Not much output in terms of finished activities or activity bundles.
> 
> Sorry to be blunt but we need to change this.
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 13:47 -0400, Samuel Klein wrote:
> > There's no contradiction between activities that are fun, or with
> > complex ideas behind them, and those that teach the most basic health
> > and survival skills to children.
> >
> > There are three health-related games being proposed and worked on at
> > the moment that are good examples; all of which could use further
> > specific input.  Food Force is closest to having something playable...
> > pehaps Muriel and Deepank can say a bit more about its recent status.
> >
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Water_Wonders
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Malnutrition
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Food_Force
> >
> > SJ
> >
> 
>