Re: [IAEP] What to report where - Was Re: Sugar on a Stick switches to a new Bug Tracker
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 16:03, Caroline Meekscarol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: hmm ok let me see if I understand. Teachers, parents etc. who may have a hard time understanding whether they are reporting a bug on Sugar, Sugar on a Stick or an activity should use GetSatisfaction. SoaS Development team will use launch pad. People doing QA should put bugs into dev unless its a sugar on a stick only issue. Are we sure about this? Some bugs won't be clear where do they really belong until a developer looks at it, and SoaS people may also like tracking sugar-only bugs on their bugtracker. For example, Ubuntu tracks Debian bugs on their bugtracker and Fedora tracks GNOME, X, etc. Also, normally a bug in a downstream is not closed when upstream fixes it, but when it gets into a release on that downstream. Which is the biggest reason for splitting bug trackers, IMO. Regards, Tomeu Is that a correct restatement of what you want? I wonder if all questions should just go to GetSatisfaction. Is there an advantage to the LaunchPad questions section? I wonder if we are doing the right thing, is GetSatsfaction solving enough problems for us to be worth it? Its nice but it is yet another site...Does Launchpad have a Spanish UI available? On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi Caroline, here's what I discussed with Luke over IRC. * Questions related to SoaS: Launchpad Answers Section * Issues encountered on SoaS (stressing issues here): Launchpad Bug Tracker (we can link a bug also to reports at other bug trackers!) * Feature Requests which target Sugar directly should go to dev.sugarlabs.org. Following this strategy, GetSatisfaction would be more intended for general end-user support, meaning people who run Sugar on no-matter-which-platform-or-distro. Launchpad should be SoaS-specific. I'll take some time today to put bugs into Launchpad and to migrate our feature list for v2 over there, too. --Sebastian Caroline Meeks wrote: Where do you want teachers interacting with you? Do you want me, and people I give clues to, to put questions into Launchpad or GetSatisfaction? Do you want me and others to try to guess if a bug is SoaS or Sugar or should we enter into Launchpad if we are using SoaS and let you decide to move it? What about activity related issues? What about activity related issues on SoaS, like an activity not scaling. Thanks! Caroline On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com mailto:sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi everybody, with the imminent release of the SoaS v2 Beta in just ten days, I would like to announce the switch to Launchpad as our bug tracker. We have been evaluating an instance Luke Faraone set us up with lately and are confident that it will fit our needs. The upcoming beta release is the first one intended to be used with this instance. More precisely, we will use it to track bugs, as well as new features. Note that this change only affects Sugar on a Stick, while the core Sugar bug tracker stays at dev.sugarlabs.org http://dev.sugarlabs.org. You can access and explore it here: https://launchpad.net/soas Thanks, --Your SoaS Team ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 19:45, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: There has been some confusion over the past several months about how SoaS fits into Sugar Labs. I have been getting the feeling that we are setting ourself up for confusion by not clearly abstracting SoaS from the Learning Platform. On the other hand, initiatives such as sugar on a stick are incredibly valuable to the over all mission of Sugar Labs. As such, I would like to propose that Sugar Labs create a separate category of initiatives, such as SoaS, called projects. The idea is based on apachs' and eclipses' effective use of projects. The premise behind 'projects' is that initiatives such as SoaS are vital to the overall success of the ecosystem. Yet, they are in several ways autonomous to the Learning Platform. Makes a lot of sense to me, which other such projects we would have for now? Physics, Karma, ...? Regards, Tomeu david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
Science is the process of trying to put what we can investigate and think about what's out there in as close a relation as possible with what we can represent in symbols. In practise this is a kind of coevolution. And I don't see why you don't do that with the Physics activity. For example, recently somebody posted a Physics screenshot that showed how to simulate an earthquake. Now do earthquakes really work like that? No, of course not, but it is a reasonable model that can lead to predictions and actual experiments. Most of the Physics we know now has been done by: -observation -ideation of models (usually simplified) -using the models to make predictions -experimentation I think that the Physics activity can help mainly in doing the transition between the ideation of models and the making of predictions. Usually this is done with complicated tools such as differential equations. Instead of working with an equation that represents a ball on a spring for example, we can work directly with the ball on the spring. Greetings, Asaf ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] What to report where - Was Re: Sugar on a Stick switches to a new Bug Tracker
i'm not sure if we have to split soas and sugar bug trackers yet, if is usability and a better performance we are looking, and if lauchpad is better for that purpose we can translate all our bug infrastructure there.. IMHO we shouldn't split bug trackers between sugar and it's projects. Rafael Ortiz On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 2:06 AM, Tomeu Vizosoto...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 16:03, Caroline Meekscarol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: hmm ok let me see if I understand. Teachers, parents etc. who may have a hard time understanding whether they are reporting a bug on Sugar, Sugar on a Stick or an activity should use GetSatisfaction. SoaS Development team will use launch pad. People doing QA should put bugs into dev unless its a sugar on a stick only issue. Are we sure about this? Some bugs won't be clear where do they really belong until a developer looks at it, and SoaS people may also like tracking sugar-only bugs on their bugtracker. For example, Ubuntu tracks Debian bugs on their bugtracker and Fedora tracks GNOME, X, etc. Also, normally a bug in a downstream is not closed when upstream fixes it, but when it gets into a release on that downstream. Which is the biggest reason for splitting bug trackers, IMO. Regards, Tomeu Is that a correct restatement of what you want? I wonder if all questions should just go to GetSatisfaction. Is there an advantage to the LaunchPad questions section? I wonder if we are doing the right thing, is GetSatsfaction solving enough problems for us to be worth it? Its nice but it is yet another site...Does Launchpad have a Spanish UI available? On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi Caroline, here's what I discussed with Luke over IRC. * Questions related to SoaS: Launchpad Answers Section * Issues encountered on SoaS (stressing issues here): Launchpad Bug Tracker (we can link a bug also to reports at other bug trackers!) * Feature Requests which target Sugar directly should go to dev.sugarlabs.org. Following this strategy, GetSatisfaction would be more intended for general end-user support, meaning people who run Sugar on no-matter-which-platform-or-distro. Launchpad should be SoaS-specific. I'll take some time today to put bugs into Launchpad and to migrate our feature list for v2 over there, too. --Sebastian Caroline Meeks wrote: Where do you want teachers interacting with you? Do you want me, and people I give clues to, to put questions into Launchpad or GetSatisfaction? Do you want me and others to try to guess if a bug is SoaS or Sugar or should we enter into Launchpad if we are using SoaS and let you decide to move it? What about activity related issues? What about activity related issues on SoaS, like an activity not scaling. Thanks! Caroline On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com mailto:sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi everybody, with the imminent release of the SoaS v2 Beta in just ten days, I would like to announce the switch to Launchpad as our bug tracker. We have been evaluating an instance Luke Faraone set us up with lately and are confident that it will fit our needs. The upcoming beta release is the first one intended to be used with this instance. More precisely, we will use it to track bugs, as well as new features. Note that this change only affects Sugar on a Stick, while the core Sugar bug tracker stays at dev.sugarlabs.org http://dev.sugarlabs.org. You can access and explore it here: https://launchpad.net/soas Thanks, --Your SoaS Team ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] What to report where - Was Re: Sugar on a Stick switches to a new Bug Tracker
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 05:11, Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero dir...@gmail.com wrote: and if lauchpad is better for that purpose we can translate all our bug infrastructure there.. IMHO we shouldn't split bug trackers between sugar and it's projects. Understood. SoaS is currently our guinea pig for Launchpad. After a few weeks (?) we/IAEP/the-sysadmin-team will evaluate it taking in feedback from teachers and end users, and we will consider a full migration. (other than code, as LP only hosts bzr repositories) -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] What to report where - Was Re: Sugar on a Stick switches to a new Bug Tracker
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 11:11, Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrerodir...@gmail.com wrote: i'm not sure if we have to split soas and sugar bug trackers yet, if is usability and a better performance we are looking, and if lauchpad is better for that purpose we can translate all our bug infrastructure there.. IMHO we shouldn't split bug trackers between sugar and it's projects. From my personal POV, the problem is that when I have to triage Sugar bugs, I have to wade through hundreds of non-Sugar bugs. And when people start using Sugar on other platforms than OLPC and SoaS, I don't really want to have to wade through these non-Sugar bugs for each of those platforms (broadcom or poulsbo driver support, for example). If each of our (sub)projects perform well at their core competences, each of them will be able to attract new contributos to deal with the overhead of separated process and infrastructure. But if we keep focusing responsibilities on the same small set of core people, we won't perform well and our contributor base won't expand. Regards, Tomeu Rafael Ortiz On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 2:06 AM, Tomeu Vizosoto...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 16:03, Caroline Meekscarol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: hmm ok let me see if I understand. Teachers, parents etc. who may have a hard time understanding whether they are reporting a bug on Sugar, Sugar on a Stick or an activity should use GetSatisfaction. SoaS Development team will use launch pad. People doing QA should put bugs into dev unless its a sugar on a stick only issue. Are we sure about this? Some bugs won't be clear where do they really belong until a developer looks at it, and SoaS people may also like tracking sugar-only bugs on their bugtracker. For example, Ubuntu tracks Debian bugs on their bugtracker and Fedora tracks GNOME, X, etc. Also, normally a bug in a downstream is not closed when upstream fixes it, but when it gets into a release on that downstream. Which is the biggest reason for splitting bug trackers, IMO. Regards, Tomeu Is that a correct restatement of what you want? I wonder if all questions should just go to GetSatisfaction. Is there an advantage to the LaunchPad questions section? I wonder if we are doing the right thing, is GetSatsfaction solving enough problems for us to be worth it? Its nice but it is yet another site...Does Launchpad have a Spanish UI available? On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi Caroline, here's what I discussed with Luke over IRC. * Questions related to SoaS: Launchpad Answers Section * Issues encountered on SoaS (stressing issues here): Launchpad Bug Tracker (we can link a bug also to reports at other bug trackers!) * Feature Requests which target Sugar directly should go to dev.sugarlabs.org. Following this strategy, GetSatisfaction would be more intended for general end-user support, meaning people who run Sugar on no-matter-which-platform-or-distro. Launchpad should be SoaS-specific. I'll take some time today to put bugs into Launchpad and to migrate our feature list for v2 over there, too. --Sebastian Caroline Meeks wrote: Where do you want teachers interacting with you? Do you want me, and people I give clues to, to put questions into Launchpad or GetSatisfaction? Do you want me and others to try to guess if a bug is SoaS or Sugar or should we enter into Launchpad if we are using SoaS and let you decide to move it? What about activity related issues? What about activity related issues on SoaS, like an activity not scaling. Thanks! Caroline On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com mailto:sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi everybody, with the imminent release of the SoaS v2 Beta in just ten days, I would like to announce the switch to Launchpad as our bug tracker. We have been evaluating an instance Luke Faraone set us up with lately and are confident that it will fit our needs. The upcoming beta release is the first one intended to be used with this instance. More precisely, we will use it to track bugs, as well as new features. Note that this change only affects Sugar on a Stick, while the core Sugar bug tracker stays at dev.sugarlabs.org http://dev.sugarlabs.org. You can access and explore it here: https://launchpad.net/soas Thanks, --Your SoaS Team ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a
Re: [IAEP] Read Etexts Videos available
Hi everyone, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com writes: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa8sat_read-etexts-sugar I think it could be better in a few ways. I can hardly watch screencast that are longer than 3 minutes. I think the everage is ~4.5 minutes. One way to improve this screencast might be to split it into several parts. 3. Have these captions available in different languages. If you have access to the source video file, you can use a tool called subtitleeditor (http://home.gna.org/subtitleeditor/) to add subtitles. It's only available for GNU/Linux, but there must be similar tool for Mac or Windows. We want a process that lets us distribute the work. For instance a developer might create the screen shots. A volunteer might add music, and a bunch of people might contribute to captions. That would be ideal, I don't know how far we are from that! Can you help us figure out an easy, efficient, free and when possible open source set of tools and processes? Let's start by doing things by hand, it will make us better understand what and why to automate/distribute. And let's not forget to document this on the wiki - http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Video_Using_Sugar Thanks, -- Bastien ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs Membership proposal
Hi, There was a recent discussion on IAEP with regards to the management of the upcoming election. Here is the proposed policy for this cycle: Before *September 1st, 2009*, new member requests can be sent to members at sugarlabs dot org if they are not listed on [[Sugar_Labs/Initial_Members_List]]http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Initial_Members_Listalready. It should contain the following: - Wiki/dev/irc username - Explanation of their contribution I am currently on vacation, and as such will probably not tend to existing requests until the above date. I (along with Sebastian, who has also agreed to volunteer) should have a current-election-cycle list out by September 12, 2009. (if either of the dates above should be adjusted, that's fine with me, later is better) Does this seem sensible? -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 08:41:40PM -0700, Alan Kay wrote: The important thing about what the computer does in this case -- repeated incremental additions -- is that the children can and do carry it out themselves. Well, perhaps gravity is an ideal topic to teach for this age group. However, I still believe that less than ideal pedagogical topics can contribute to an understanding of scientific inquiry. To me, it just doesn't seem black and white. There must be a whole spectrum of learning experiences of greater and lesser pedagogical value. -- American? Vote on the National Initiative for Democracy, http://votep2.us ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Google Sync enabled for users of mail.sugarlabs.org
Hello, I have eneabled the Google Sync feature on our Google Apps instance. If you want to use it, follow these instructions: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=enanswer=138652 -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
Joshua Pritikin wrote To me, it just doesn't seem black and white. There must be a whole spectrum of learning experiences of greater and lesser pedagogical value. There is indeed a spectrum, but what counts is where the threshold is drawn. An analogy can be found in music wrt (say) guitar playing. On one side are many kinds of actually playing the guitar and on the other are air guitar and guitar hero and some ways of dealing with a real guitar instrument that are below threshold for playing and learning real guitar. If we could get people to forget bad ideas and practices then this wouldn't be such a critical issue. Since this is really difficult in so many ways, it is really important to help them learn the real deal in ways that are as additive as possible and don't require extensive efforts to undo. Not that everything in cognitive learning is exactly parallel to physical learning ... but so much is that it is well worth it for all teachers to look at exemplary sports pedagogy and curriculum design, particularly in really difficult skills like hitting a baseball and serving in tennis. Outlooks are particularly difficult to dislodge once formed (and we have a lot of human biology that is very biased towards outlooks that are not harmonius with the scientific outlook). Best wishes, Alan From: Joshua N Pritikin jpriti...@pobox.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: iaep SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 8:13:08 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas? On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 08:41:40PM -0700, Alan Kay wrote: The important thing about what the computer does in this case -- repeated incremental additions -- is that the children can and do carry it out themselves. Well, perhaps gravity is an ideal topic to teach for this age group. However, I still believe that less than ideal pedagogical topics can contribute to an understanding of scientific inquiry. To me, it just doesn't seem black and white. There must be a whole spectrum of learning experiences of greater and lesser pedagogical value. -- American? Vote on the National Initiative for Democracy, http://votep2.us ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
Hi Asaf Among other things, our human brains are set up by nature to -- take the world as it seems -- want to learn the culture around us -- believe (and then try to justify our beliefs) -- especially believe our tribes, from family outwards -- think of most things in terms of stories -- disappear our beliefs into a normal which makes it difficult to think in other terms -- desire explanations, but be satisfied with stories as answers These are some of the reasons that it was hard for our species to invent real science. Francis Bacon wrote a good critique of us in the early 1600s. One of the difficulties of learning (teaching) science is that each and every one of the points above (and more) has to be gone against. We need something more like: -- the world is not as it seems -- our culture's views likely have nothing much to do with how the universe is set up -- think instead of believe -- especially be careful of our tribal pulls to believe like them -- most interesting things are not stories and can't be judged by story criteria -- have to fight the invisibility of normal -- we need to be super tough about what we provisionally accept as explanations for anything Most parents and teachers I've explained this to are shocked. It's so anti-social and rebellious! This is the last thing most of them want to help their children achieve. (And they are so successful.) I've mentioned this before, but every scientist has to fight every day to hang in on the second list as much as possible. This is because we are doing something more like adding some separate thinking-process-routines to our ways of thinking and knowing, rather than being able to really clean house and get all the bad thinking modules (some of which are good for other purposes) out of there. So it's a conflict. And (also mentioned before) there is such a large range and extent of good science results, that no scientist can repeat all the experiments, even though that is the only real way to deal with many of our human problems with this difficult pursuit. So most scientists think that a good ploy here is to start off doing real science involving real contact with nature dealing with interesting phenomena that are in the child's world, and doing the whole deal of speculating, measuring, modeling, comparing, predicting, reporting, etc. The documents that wind up through this process are superficially like documents produced by the processes of the first list, but have a completely different foundation and point of view. When scientists read results they expect that something really rigorous has actually been done (rather than just someone claiming that x y and z were done with results p q and r). However, scientists are human and some of them find reasons for cheating. The results of cheating look exactly like the real deal! This is why the process of science relies on scientists who can be more skeptical about the results of others than those who get entranced by their pet theories or decide to cheat for some reason. Feynmann: Science means you don't have to trust the experts! So ... What we *don't* want to do in the early stages of trying to teach children the point of view -- process, outlook, epistemology, etc. -- of science is to get expedient and try to teach from books (even if the book has really been vetted, and most aren't, this is not science). Or from computers (ditto). It's not someone else's results we are trying to get across first, it's how to get good results yourself! (A similar difference exists between learning to play music and taking a music appreciation class, but the outlook difference is much larger wrt real science and science appreciation.) This is not at all easy to do. Part of cultural learning is to take what the culture does on faith and apply it to the problems of survival and happiness. The application of ideas that have been found to work can be done lots of the time without any interesting understanding. That they work is just fine with most people. (In engineering jet engines, suspension bridges, it's a good idea to use what is known to work!) When math and then science got refined to the point of great departures from what we are set up by nature to do, the society still exerts a huge pull to remember and apply. But this is a very bad way to teach real math and real science. On the other hand we don't want to have to regress through every building block in order to do real thinking. One way that this is handled in both science and math is the idea of Stable Neighborhood of Foundation (SNOF), which is the idea of drawing boundary conditions around what you are going to treat as elementary and work outwards from there. This is done all the time in science, and more sneakily in math. So, for example, biologists have been in heaven since the 50s when they could really start to use chemistry as their SNOF. Chemistry is built on physics, but
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Asaf Among other things, our human brains are set up by nature to -- take the world as it seems -- want to learn the culture around us -- believe (and then try to justify our beliefs) -- especially believe our tribes, from family outwards -- think of most things in terms of stories -- disappear our beliefs into a normal which makes it difficult to think in other terms -- desire explanations, but be satisfied with stories as answers Early massive exposure to social media can reset some of these defaults. The main change is the shift from THE culture to hundreds and thousands of cultures, with corresponding meta-reflection on cultural beliefs. Kids in their tween years and older, especially more word-savvy girls, pick on differences in stories, worldviews and beliefs of different cultures in different social sites. They are very aware of differences in what is normal in different communities, and of abilities of outsiders or enemies to deconstruct mere stories for aggression (snark, flame wars) or simply for the fun of it. There are sophisticated vocabularies supporting these endeavors, lists of relevant concepts, acceptable and unacceptable argument techniques and so on. We need something more like: -- the world is not as it seems -- our culture's views likely have nothing much to do with how the universe is set up -- think instead of believe -- especially be careful of our tribal pulls to believe like them -- most interesting things are not stories and can't be judged by story criteria -- have to fight the invisibility of normal -- we need to be super tough about what we provisionally accept as explanations for anything Most parents and teachers I've explained this to are shocked. It's so anti-social and rebellious! This is the last thing most of them want to help their children achieve. (And they are so successful.) People who grow up with assumed social pluralism won't be as shocked, though. Science principles match the new social order of the massively multiplayer community scene pretty well. Cheers, Maria Droujkova Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/ Math 2.0 interest group ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
I created a project level on the wiki toolbar listing SoaS. david On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 2:51 AM, Tomeu Vizosoto...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 19:45, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: There has been some confusion over the past several months about how SoaS fits into Sugar Labs. I have been getting the feeling that we are setting ourself up for confusion by not clearly abstracting SoaS from the Learning Platform. On the other hand, initiatives such as sugar on a stick are incredibly valuable to the over all mission of Sugar Labs. As such, I would like to propose that Sugar Labs create a separate category of initiatives, such as SoaS, called projects. The idea is based on apachs' and eclipses' effective use of projects. The premise behind 'projects' is that initiatives such as SoaS are vital to the overall success of the ecosystem. Yet, they are in several ways autonomous to the Learning Platform. Makes a lot of sense to me, which other such projects we would have for now? Physics, Karma, ...? Regards, Tomeu david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
Hi Maria, You wrote People who grow up with assumed social pluralism won't be as shocked, though. Science principles match the new social order of the massively multiplayer community scene pretty well. I'd love to hear more about what you mean by this. Cheers, Alan From: Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: Asaf Paris Mandoki asa...@gmail.com; Sue VanHattum mathanthologyedi...@gmail.com; iaep SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Joshua N Pritikin jpriti...@pobox.com; Dmitri Droujkov drouj...@gmail.com Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:04:08 AM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas? On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Asaf Among other things, our human brains are set up by nature to -- take the world as it seems -- want to learn the culture around us -- believe (and then try to justify our beliefs) -- especially believe our tribes, from family outwards -- think of most things in terms of stories -- disappear our beliefs into a normal which makes it difficult to think in other terms -- desire explanations, but be satisfied with stories as answers Early massive exposure to social media can reset some of these defaults. The main change is the shift from THE culture to hundreds and thousands of cultures, with corresponding meta-reflection on cultural beliefs. Kids in their tween years and older, especially more word-savvy girls, pick on differences in stories, worldviews and beliefs of different cultures in different social sites. They are very aware of differences in what is normal in different communities, and of abilities of outsiders or enemies to deconstruct mere stories for aggression (snark, flame wars) or simply for the fun of it. There are sophisticated vocabularies supporting these endeavors, lists of relevant concepts, acceptable and unacceptable argument techniques and so on. We need something more like: -- the world is not as it seems -- our culture's views likely have nothing much to do with how the universe is set up -- think instead of believe -- especially be careful of our tribal pulls to believe like them -- most interesting things are not stories and can't be judged by story criteria -- have to fight the invisibility of normal -- we need to be super tough about what we provisionally accept as explanations for anything Most parents and teachers I've explained this to are shocked. It's so anti-social and rebellious! This is the last thing most of them want to help their children achieve. (And they are so successful.) People who grow up with assumed social pluralism won't be as shocked, though. Science principles match the new social order of the massively multiplayer community scene pretty well. Cheers, Maria Droujkova Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/ Math 2.0 interest group ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] SoaS install instructions on wiki
I'm not the target market for SoaS but I am a teacher and I know a little Linux and run Fedora11 and Ubuntu9.04 and XP. I hope to one day build a networked SoaS lab from used computers and teach Scratch and etc to my students. Install instructions for SoaS are a bit of a mess. Here is a page I wrote trying to follow installation instructions exactly from Ubuntu 9.04, with screencasts: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/One_tester%27s_attempt_at_installing_SoaS I spent 90 minutes doing my best to do as instructed but ended with failure. Teachers normally don't put in that kind of effort on strange technologies. I was not successful in my attempt to install SoaS on a USB stick even with support from the Sugar irc (which most users of Sugar/teachers don't use). This makes clears instructions on installation pages on the wiki all the more valuable. My request is simple: Sugar people please review the SoaS installation instructions for your distro on the Sugar labs wiki and try to follow the instructions exactly as written, as I did, to install Sugar on a USB stick and rewrite/clarify/document where possible. As my efforts to install failed, I'm not the best person to write about how it's done. Comments/ corrections/criticism welcome. With thanks to all for the generous support of the past and future! Dennis p.s. I would recommend that the Sugar project make a little more effort to get Ubuntu users who represent 4x as many users as Fedora (http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.php). Getting Ubuntu people to play more with Sugar would seem to be good for the project and for development. I do know that Sugar has a very close relationship with Fedora. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Possible introductory lab
Just want to bring two groups together for a quick idea. The two groups are Sugar Labs[1] and teaching open source[2]. On the TOS list we have seen a little bit of traffic about a course and co-op program the Rochester Institute of Technology offered last fall and will offer again this spring. One of the ideas that I have been trying to wrap my head around is how to provide a meaningful experience working with 'the community' in a very brief 10 week course. The first challenge is how to engage the students in the community. This doesn't look too hard. There appear to be several assignments or labs which can break the ice. The harder challenge is how to engage the community with the students. As a general rule in organizations which are volunteer based, it can be hard to get the attention of existing community members until one has something useful to offer. _Many_ newbie questions go unanswered. I have been looking at bug reporting as the initial communication channel. Once existing community members see a couple of high quality bug coming from someone they are much more willing to listen and help. But, filling good bug reports takes skill, practice, and experience. Since watching a Sugar on a Stick[3] release meeting this morning, I have been wondering about using a smoke test[4] as an introduction to a specific project. I am using OLPC and Sugar as examples, but any other project would work just as well. The idea would be for students to immerse themselves in a project by running through and reporting on a number of standard smoke test. For example when working with Sugar Labs a student might run through a series of tests which include: 1. Following a list of steps to create a SoaS USB key. 2. Boot their computer from the stick. 3. Log into sugar. 4. Test one or two activities. 5. Connect to server. 6. Test collaboration. 7. Provide feedback on 1-6 As a result of the session, the student would have a general understanding of a particular project, they would have interacted with 'the community' via established channels, and they would have started building their reputation as contributors. david 1. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Welcome_to_the_Sugar_Labs_wiki 2. http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Main_Page 3. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick 4. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/1_hour_smoke_test ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Wellington OLPC Friends in Testing
One more group that I would like to introduce The Wellington OLPC Friends in Testing have offered to help test upcoming SoaS releases! This presents us with yet another opportunity to create useful and effective feedback channels. One interesting piece about the Wellington testers is that they meet weekly! By interacting weekly we can gradually improve both the products and the tests. david On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 4:20 PM, Tabitha Rodertabi...@hrdnz.com wrote: Hi The Wellington testers group meet Saturday mornings NZ time at 10:30am for a few hours. Unfortunately the whenisgood options don't help us on this side of the world. :-( We are sleeping nearly all of the available hours on the site. We really would like to talk to people about SoaS as we are about to install on (hopefully) 150 USB keys and hand them out at Software Freedom Day (20 Sept) - we want the install process to be smooth and the right version so definitely want to talk to people who can advise and guide us. In hope that there are people around during our Saturday morning testing sessions, we will jump in IRC channels #olpc and #sugar just in case. Thanks Tabitha ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
El Sat, 22-08-2009 a las 12:45 -0500, David Farning escribió: There has been some confusion over the past several months about how SoaS fits into Sugar Labs. I have been getting the feeling that we are setting ourself up for confusion by not clearly abstracting SoaS from the Learning Platform. On the other hand, initiatives such as sugar on a stick are incredibly valuable to the over all mission of Sugar Labs. As such, I would like to propose that Sugar Labs create a separate category of initiatives, such as SoaS, called projects. The idea is based on apachs' and eclipses' effective use of projects. The premise behind 'projects' is that initiatives such as SoaS are vital to the overall success of the ecosystem. Yet, they are in several ways autonomous to the Learning Platform. Sounds like a very good idea, +1. Should we also identify a Project Leader for each project like we heave done for teams? I'm more concerned with the possibility of a project stalling without any clear leader than the case where leadership is being disputed among multiple individuals. Until we observe the latter situation in practice, we could probably live without an election process. Our time would be better spent writing a policy that would encourage Project Leaders to report their progress regularly (perhaps weekly) and step down responsibly when they no longer have the time and motivation to lead properly. The Fedora package maintainers are organized similarly; the relevant documentation in the Fedora wiki could be one source of inspiration for us to imitate, although project management in Apache and Eclipse seems like a better fit for what we're trying to achieve here. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Bernie Innocentiber...@codewiz.org wrote: El Sat, 22-08-2009 a las 12:45 -0500, David Farning escribió: There has been some confusion over the past several months about how SoaS fits into Sugar Labs. I have been getting the feeling that we are setting ourself up for confusion by not clearly abstracting SoaS from the Learning Platform. On the other hand, initiatives such as sugar on a stick are incredibly valuable to the over all mission of Sugar Labs. As such, I would like to propose that Sugar Labs create a separate category of initiatives, such as SoaS, called projects. The idea is based on apachs' and eclipses' effective use of projects. The premise behind 'projects' is that initiatives such as SoaS are vital to the overall success of the ecosystem. Yet, they are in several ways autonomous to the Learning Platform. Sounds like a very good idea, +1. Should we also identify a Project Leader for each project like we heave done for teams? I'm more concerned with the possibility of a project stalling without any clear leader than the case where leadership is being disputed among multiple individuals. Eclipse and Apache both have criteria for becoming a official projects. In fact, they have a several step incubator processes to help sub-project grow (or die grace fully.) This strikes me as a little heavy for Sugar Lab right now. Until we observe the latter situation in practice, we could probably live without an election process. Our time would be better spent writing a policy that would encourage Project Leaders to report their progress regularly (perhaps weekly) and step down responsibly when they no longer have the time and motivation to lead properly. Bernie, would you be interested in creating the project policy for Sugar Labs? There is a very good page at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Development_Resources . The 'Leads: Managing A Project' and guidelines sections are very valuable. If I were to work on the policy I would: 1. Take the Eclipse and Apache policies and strip them down to the bare minum. 2. Combine the Eclipse and Apache policies and modify them for Sugar Labs. 3. Identify two initial projects and make sure the policies work for both of them. 4. Present the project policy for feedback on iaep. 5. Post the draft policy to the wiki Something as significant as a project-policy will likely take several iterations through 1-5. david The Fedora package maintainers are organized similarly; the relevant documentation in the Fedora wiki could be one source of inspiration for us to imitate, although project management in Apache and Eclipse seems like a better fit for what we're trying to achieve here. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Membership proposal
El Sun, 23-08-2009 a las 10:59 -0400, Luke Faraone escribió: Hi, There was a recent discussion on IAEP with regards to the management of the upcoming election. Here is the proposed policy for this cycle: Before September 1st, 2009, new member requests can be sent to members at sugarlabs dot org if they are not listed on [[Sugar_Labs/Initial_Members_List]] already. It should contain the following: * Wiki/dev/irc username * Explanation of their contribution I am currently on vacation, and as such will probably not tend to existing requests until the above date. I (along with Sebastian, who has also agreed to volunteer) should have a current-election-cycle list out by September 12, 2009. (if either of the dates above should be adjusted, that's fine with me, later is better) Does this seem sensible? I like the general idea, but let me offer the following criticism: * We need to state clearly what the criteria for selection is. Our current membership policy [1] is located in an obscure place. It could be moved to a separate page and linked from relevant pages (members list, etc) [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Governance#Sugar_Labs_Membership * Can we state that anyone who writes to memb...@sugarlabs.org will receive an answer within X days? I'm concerned that potential members might be frustrated by silence. * Since two people (you and Sebastian) are volunteering for membership screening, how are they going to coordinate to avoid answering twice (or not at all)? Something like an RT queue would seem useful, but installing an RT instancy only for this purpose seems overkill. * I'm looking at last year's membership list and I'm seeing a lot of people who disappeared a long time ago. How are we going to clear old memberships? Wouldn't it be better if we asked people to confirm their membership every year? (asking for a small amount of money for membership would make the latter step more natural, but I'm not sure we want to do that at this time) * Is our wiki good enough as a membership management tool? Shouldn't we look at some specific application? I could ask the FSF what they're using to manage their members. * We're only giving one week of advance notice to potential contributors in a period when people are generally on vacation Why couldn't we extend the deadline for submission closer to Sep 12? I understand that there might be not enough time to address many of these suggestions, and the current lightweight process you have proposed might still be a good enough process for the present election. Certainly better than last year's bootstrap. BTW, thanks to you and Sebastian for coordinating this. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Possible introductory lab
David, Great idea! Good on you (as they somewhere on the planet)! Quote _Many_ newbie questions go unanswered. Unquote Getting bug reports and questions answered filled is a problem until you're wearing the 'dev' label. And once a dev, then you'll be expected to fix/anser it yourself, and fixing bugs isn't very much fun(from what I hear and have experienced and why they take a long time to get fixed). Don't take the non-fix/no answer personally, and tell this to your students! Devs are a lot smarter (in some ways) than I(us) will ever be. (And the devs at Sugar have been very patient with my incessant problems). And, FWIW, plenty of bugs in _lots_ of Open Source projects never get addressed at all because the fun is NOT in bug fixing, it's in scratching an itch to create something that (almost) works. Sugar only has a few devs and they are all volunteers (from what I understand). And, devs for the most part are all creative, problem solving, computational intelligent (geniuses some of them) humans, who want the same in their tasks. Rarely does bug fixing include that space. And you're absolutely right about 'quality bug reports' getting attention... train your students up on that... but perhaps focus on an activity first? Something with more devs and support? I'd say look at Scratch, if it runs on your current install. I would suggest you take a look at Scratch and the remixes happening there for a few reason... it's code and projects (albeit unsophisticated) in constant flow and correction. Cook up a difficult piece of a scratch project for your students and see how bug reporting and code correction works there... between your students. They can swap code and remix to come up with something truly interesting. The students will quickly ID who does and who doesn't. Their friends might be great at telling a joke but it's that guy that noone ever talks to that gets things done. They'll quickly see how things work between those who can and those who report bugs (ouch, that sounds awfully familiar to another saying!) Scratch also has lots of examples of code, lots of possible areas for error, and enormously large amount of forum/helpdesk activity. That, and your students will get to 'write' some code. Win-win. Then, once they've got the vagaries of forums/wikis/bug search/silence from unresponded bugs and bug reporting down then do a full 'smoke test' on Sugar. This is just a suggestion. with regards, Dennis ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Physics - Lesson plans ideas?
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Maria, You wrote People who grow up with assumed social pluralism won't be as shocked, though. Science principles match the new social order of the massively multiplayer community scene pretty well. I'd love to hear more about what you mean by this. Cheers, Alan Alan, I will tell some short stories to follow your list of principles. The general themes of the stories are plurality of worlds (cultures), and the resulting deconstruction of authoritarian approaches. -- the world is not as it seems On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog meme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog One can get used to the massive abilities of individuals and networks to self-represent in stories, often in ways that have nothing to do with reality, in any sense of the word. Also, various virtual worlds have significantly different laws of physics. For example, in World of Warcraft there are no collision mechanics among players, as characters can simply walk through one another, no acceleration due to gravity (things fall at a constant speed), and no inertia in movement or in flight. On the other hand, in Eve Online, a sci-fi space flight game, if I remember correctly, a significant portion of the gameplay is based on gravity and inertia (which you can cancel with some force fields, etc.) People are used to exploring, exploiting, and critiquing in-world laws on the basis of consistency, fun, convenience, and correspondences to the real world and to other virtual worlds. Much of this is not conscious or explicit, let alone worked out mathematically, but people are used to a wide variety of modeled worlds, and to the fact that world creators have full control over models. -- our culture's views likely have nothing much to do with how the universe is set up This one is tougher, and the Web version frequently is, THEIR culture's views are weird/inadequate/messed up. By being exposed to wildly contradicting cultural views daily, people's beliefs that there is The Right One can be eroded. All sides typically use both social and math/science stories to back up their views, leading to the general atmosphere of skepticism. 97% of all statistics are made up on the spot is a very old meme (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitle5kgfz6fn1lso) - what changed now is the amount of communities making their subcultures' views easily available online - for searching, categorizing, and also evaluating, comparing, tagging, and often being deconstructed by outsiders. In any case, our culture is replaced with multiple cultures in which I participate more, or less, centrally. Thus cultural views are to be chosen, critically evaluated, compared, and changed as needed. I do not know if the universe is lost in all of that, though. The physical world becomes less privileged among representational worlds, as they get increasingly more complex, appealing and sustainable as communication platforms. -- think instead of believe This principle is both strengthened and undermined by internet dynamics. It will probably have to evolve into something else because of this increasing tension. The way the internet strengthens the reliance on beliefs is the ability to congregate with people who share particular beliefs. If you are one in a million, there are a thousand of you online is the relevant meme. No matter what the beliefs are, there is a possibility to build an echo chamber (a support forum) for strengthening, developing, and exploring them, for creating involved vocabularies to talk about them, and for producing stories with these new languages. There are studies that show that communicating with a group of like-minded people makes (social) beliefs stronger and more radical and, one can also speculate, more entrenched. On the other hand, communication among people who believe differently may promote the language (and thus conceptual structures) of thinking rather than belief, as a lingua franca. For example, I definitely see thinking meta-values such as internal consistency applied across belief systems. -- especially be careful of our tribal pulls to believe like them Deconstruction of authority and multiple authorities address this. The move is from Our Tribe to my many tribes: the same person can belong to many, and share some of them with different subsets of people. Frequently, the same person belongs to multiple somewhat opposing online tribes using different avatars, or simply uses different avatars for different contexts. Children are especially prone to change online identities frequently and often, sometimes maintaining quite a few at a time. Also, social tools make constructing tribes easy and accessible, which in turns leads to lowered entry barriers as a whole lot of tribes are recruiting at once. People approach tribes as something they select or build, rather they something they are born into.
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Membership proposal
Bernie, On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 17:23, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org wrote: * We need to state clearly what the criteria for selection is. Our current membership policy [1] is located in an obscure place. It could be moved to a separate page and linked from relevant pages (members list, etc) Good idea. I'll see if I can get to that tomorrow. * Can we state that anyone who writes to memb...@sugarlabs.org will receive an answer within X days? I'm concerned that potential members might be frustrated by silence. Does two days seem reasonable? * Since two people (you and Sebastian) are volunteering for membership screening, how are they going to coordinate to avoid answering twice (or not at all)? Something like an RT queue would seem useful, but installing an RT instancy only for this purpose seems overkill. We've set up a collaborative worksheet, and are CCing each other on all replies we make. By the way, if anybody else wants to help out, feel free to raise your hand on/off list :) * I'm looking at last year's membership list and I'm seeing a lot of people who disappeared a long time ago. How are we going to clear old memberships? Wouldn't it be better if we asked people to confirm their membership every year? (asking for a small amount of money for membership would make the latter step more natural, but I'm not sure we want to do that at this time) I was planning on sending an initial hiya folks, you still around and interested? email on Sept 3th or 4th. If we don't get a reply in 7 days, we'll send another email. If we *still* don't get a yay/nay, we'll put them on a grey area list and remove them for next year if we don't get a reply by next time around. * Is our wiki good enough as a membership management tool? Shouldn't we look at some specific application? I could ask the FSF what they're using to manage their members. Well, assuming we eventually migrate to Launchpad, we can use that. (that's used to manage Ubuntu Members, among other things, and would be intergrated with everything else) In the interim, the IML page should be sufficient. * We're only giving one week of advance notice to potential contributors in a period when people are generally on vacation Why couldn't we extend the deadline for submission closer to Sep 12? Sure. Those were just dates I thought would be reasonable. When should they be changed to? Disclaimer: Sebastian and I are both running for SLOB slots in the upcoming election. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Membership proposal
El Sun, 23-08-2009 a las 18:10 -0400, Luke Faraone escribió: * Can we state that anyone who writes to memb...@sugarlabs.org will receive an answer within X days? I'm concerned that potential members might be frustrated by silence. Does two days seem reasonable? Yes. * Since two people (you and Sebastian) are volunteering for membership screening, how are they going to coordinate to avoid answering twice (or not at all)? Something like an RT queue would seem useful, but installing an RT instancy only for this purpose seems overkill. We've set up a collaborative worksheet, and are CCing each other on all replies we make. By the way, if anybody else wants to help out, feel free to raise your hand on/off list :) Thanks, but my hands are already quite full of stuff atm, I can't even rise a finger :-) * I'm looking at last year's membership list and I'm seeing a lot of people who disappeared a long time ago. How are we going to clear old memberships? Wouldn't it be better if we asked people to confirm their membership every year? (asking for a small amount of money for membership would make the latter step more natural, but I'm not sure we want to do that at this time) I was planning on sending an initial hiya folks, you still around and interested? email on Sept 3th or 4th. If we don't get a reply in 7 days, we'll send another email. If we *still* don't get a yay/nay, we'll put them on a grey area list and remove them for next year if we don't get a reply by next time around. Good idea. * Is our wiki good enough as a membership management tool? Shouldn't we look at some specific application? I could ask the FSF what they're using to manage their members. Well, assuming we eventually migrate to Launchpad, we can use that. (that's used to manage Ubuntu Members, among other things, and would be intergrated with everything else) In the interim, the IML page should be sufficient. What's stopping us from using Mediawiki to manage memberships? We could just use a group, although I'm not sure how we could achieve membership expiration with it. I like Launchpad myself and support migrating to it for our bug tracking needs, but I'd rather not rely on an external web service for core functionality of our community unless we could establish a close relationship with Canonical that would ensure the services we're using don't become restricted in the future, and we're able to customize things when we need to. * We're only giving one week of advance notice to potential contributors in a period when people are generally on vacation Why couldn't we extend the deadline for submission closer to Sep 12? Sure. Those were just dates I thought would be reasonable. When should they be changed to? I'd give 2 weeks to people for requesting membership, and advertise it a little during this period: a news item in the front page of the wiki, a couple of times on i...@... Perhaps we could use this opportunity to get some press coverage too? Linux Weekly News usually covers board elections of large free-software projects such as Gnome and KDE. Disclaimer: Sebastian and I are both running for SLOB slots in the upcoming election. HA! You're my political adversaries then! ;-) -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
