+1
OK Folks, let's take a look at this idea of "critical mass." There are 2 kinds
of critical mass we need to be thinking about here.
Developers, as has been said , are a given. But, even more important is the
critical mass of users... ie students and educators who are using Sugar in its
various forms on all sorts of computers.
It is like the chicken and egg. Which needs to come first? I maintain they are
equally important and that perhaps we have been been neglecting the user at the
expense of the developer. Are we putting all our chickens in the egg basket?
If you can get the users, the developers will follow. The reverse may not be
true. We need the really simple to use version that can be put on either a usb
drive or LiveCD by the average school tech person and used in the classroom by
the computer-shy teacher.
I appreciate all of the hints you folks have sent in response to my request for
a stable LiveCD version to take to Argentina this month. But I will have to
take a lot of time to figure it out and test it before I go. Time I have. I'm
pretty tech-savvy but not very PC saavy... I'm a Mac/XO person). A PC I don't
have. I guess that is a problem. I will have to go visit someone who has one
to try it. If it works right away...great. If not, not great.
What needs to happen to achieve that second part of the critical mass is the
educators need to have a place on our website, or somewhere. It needs be very
inviting, easy to understand, give links to the stable, easy to use version I
refer to above. It needs links to resources with ideas for using the software,
and to a place for them to share their ideas. This should be very easy to find
from a very friendly first page of the wiki (maybe a little schoolhouse icon?).
Strange how the more I write, the longer the paragraphs get! I gotta run to
the AgNeeds store now to get some iron for my unhappy orange trees. BBL.
Caryl/Carolina
P.S. A Sugar booth at SCaLE where we could really wow folks. If I could take
the same sort of great, easy to use LiveCD version to show at my OSSIE track
presentation on Feb 19 we would be reaching educators.
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