Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 20:17, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying... all I said was we need more data from the field Well, I also understood that you said that it wasn't obvious enough. Which surprised me after all the noise lately about getting feedback. Anyway, I'm seeing feedback coming right now and also efforts to organize feedback gathering. So, let's do it! Regards, Tomeu I am in no way blaming anyone for not getting feedback, on the contrary, I am frustrated that the calls for feediback are not being heard enoguh, and I am well aware of people's efforts to try and get this feedback. What I am saying is that the feedback is not coming through does this make sense? Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? regards, David On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 15:51, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: H... I have to agree with Christoph here. I didn't really see it as being dramatic at all, but quite factual in fact. The western small deployments really don't give us any useful stats on what is happening on a larger scale in the third world. Ok, but will give some other interesting information, or not at all? And its important to acknowledge the differences between these, which Christoph listed quite concretely. And isn't this stating the obvious? I think what may not have come across obviously enough was that we need way more data from the field, in places where Sugar is being used on a large scale, and this data is just not getting to us. I for one, would love to have some cold hard facts about Sugar as used in South America and Africa. I'm quite appalled by this, you don't read the mailing lists where we make regular calls for feedback? Short from taking a plane and visiting school by school, I don't see what else I can do to get that feedback. You understand Spanish, search the olpc-sur mailing list for posts by Walter and me and tell here again if we don't ask for feedback. It's really frustrating that we are here spending our savings and time on this project, and not only the people deploying our software don't want to talk to us despite our requests, but other people still think we don't want to know about them. Frustratedly yours, Tomeu kind Regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:21 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:42 AM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Sean DALY schrieb: IMHO, close study of small deployments makes them incredibly useful to all teachers and Learners. The observations and take-aways need to be triaged of course, starting with what can/should be done by Sugar Labs, but I am convinced many learnings will benefit large deployments. Until reliable means of sharing experiences and feedback (polls, questionnaires, council of deployers, etc.) can be put in place, microscopic study of a classroom using Sugar is well worth the effort, in particular for revealing blockers. I'm not sure I really agree with this statement... Christoph please keep the dramatic headlines to olpcnews. In the above paragraph, Walter notes that many lessons can be learned from controlled environments which can then be applied to larger scaled, less controlled environments. Please note, this does not _exclude_ anyone from providing feedback from large scale deployments. Nor does it _prevent_ anyone from creating small scale deployments anywhere in the world. _all_ it states is that it is often cost effective to start small and grow as lessons have been learned. And yes, Christoph I _am_ holding your writing to a higher standard. Several times, you have described yourself as the voice of the project. david Extrapolating the data and drawing conclusions based on observations in a trial that represents less than 0,01% of all current Sugar installations is a risky endeavor at best and a serious mistake at worst. Even more so when the environment between the trial (in this case GPA) and the global deployments really couldn't be more different in just about every way imaginable (SoaS vs. XO, summer classes vs. regular year-long classes, Boston connectivity vs. Rwanda connectivity, 25 installations in a school vs. 1000 installations in a school, US power infrastructure vs. Nepali power infrastructure, having a team consisting of Walter / Greg / Caroline supporting the efforts vs. being lucky to maybe have a single person who has used a computer before, 25 pupils in a classroom vs. 80 pupils in a classroom, users that were raised in urban North America vs. users who don't have electricity at home, and I could go on...). Yes, some of
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
Ok, I think what's happening here is a breakdown in communication. When I used the term obvious, I was talking about Christoph's email... I was stating that perhaps the message, as I understood it, was that we need more data from the field... and that _the message_ was not obvious enough in the email. I never meant that the feedback was not obvious enough... or that developers were not doing enough to keep us informed. I really hope this makes sense. I'm a little concerned that I have to be so careful about wording. I sort of get the feeling that should one make any type of constructive criticism, this is immediately construed as a threat, and the person writing the criticism is forced to walk on egg shells. I understand that talking about what can be done better, or what should have been done that wasnt, etc causes very emotional responses because of the time people have given to the project, but should we really just shut up about this stuff? Or is there value to hearing people's opinions on how things could be improved? And on that note, I'd like to hear how I can improve gathering feedback for our Autonomous region, based on methods currently in place elsewhere. What I'm asking for is links to documentation that show how this has been done till now in South America, Nepal and Asia, Africa, Europe. I've looked around, but there is not too much information on the web. My idea is to try and automate this as much as possible by creating a set of scripts, or plugins that can measure stats and then send these (probably via xmpp) Someone mentioned munin, but this doesn't really give user statistics much though... its more of a network tool for servers for measuring performance, resource usage, and graphing these. What I am talking about is digitising the current manual feedback that is happening elsewhere (how many users running which apps, lesson plans being used, languages, how many computers requiring repairs, general problems people are running into, and generally people's feelings on sugar usage, maybe even surveys) kind regards, David Van Assche On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 20:17, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying... all I said was we need more data from the field Well, I also understood that you said that it wasn't obvious enough. Which surprised me after all the noise lately about getting feedback. Anyway, I'm seeing feedback coming right now and also efforts to organize feedback gathering. So, let's do it! Regards, Tomeu I am in no way blaming anyone for not getting feedback, on the contrary, I am frustrated that the calls for feediback are not being heard enoguh, and I am well aware of people's efforts to try and get this feedback. What I am saying is that the feedback is not coming through does this make sense? Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? regards, David On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 15:51, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: H... I have to agree with Christoph here. I didn't really see it as being dramatic at all, but quite factual in fact. The western small deployments really don't give us any useful stats on what is happening on a larger scale in the third world. Ok, but will give some other interesting information, or not at all? And its important to acknowledge the differences between these, which Christoph listed quite concretely. And isn't this stating the obvious? I think what may not have come across obviously enough was that we need way more data from the field, in places where Sugar is being used on a large scale, and this data is just not getting to us. I for one, would love to have some cold hard facts about Sugar as used in South America and Africa. I'm quite appalled by this, you don't read the mailing lists where we make regular calls for feedback? Short from taking a plane and visiting school by school, I don't see what else I can do to get that feedback. You understand Spanish, search the olpc-sur mailing list for posts by Walter and me and tell here again if we don't ask for feedback. It's really frustrating that we are here spending our savings and time on this project, and not only the people deploying our software don't want to talk to us despite our requests, but other people still think we don't want to know about them. Frustratedly yours, Tomeu kind Regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:21 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:42 AM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Sean DALY schrieb: IMHO, close study of small deployments makes them incredibly useful to
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 17:12, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, I think what's happening here is a breakdown in communication. When I used the term obvious, I was talking about Christoph's email... I was stating that perhaps the message, as I understood it, was that we need more data from the field... and that _the message_ was not obvious enough in the email. I never meant that the feedback was not obvious enough... or that developers were not doing enough to keep us informed. Ok, I'm sorry about that. The thread was about feedback from GPA not being relevant for the 99.99% of Sugar users, in case that helps explain my reply. I really hope this makes sense. I'm a little concerned that I have to be so careful about wording. I sort of get the feeling that should one make any type of constructive criticism, this is immediately construed as a threat, and the person writing the criticism is forced to walk on egg shells. I understand that talking about what can be done better, or what should have been done that wasnt, etc causes very emotional responses because of the time people have given to the project, but should we really just shut up about this stuff? Or is there value to hearing people's opinions on how things could be improved? I think you are right in that criticism is very important and I didn't welcomed it properly, hope to improve on this. And on that note, I'd like to hear how I can improve gathering feedback for our Autonomous region, based on methods currently in place elsewhere. What I'm asking for is links to documentation that show how this has been done till now in South America, Nepal and Asia, Africa, Europe. I've looked around, but there is not too much information on the web. My idea is to try and automate this as much as possible by creating a set of scripts, or plugins that can measure stats and then send these (probably via xmpp) Someone mentioned munin, but this doesn't really give user statistics much though... its more of a network tool for servers for measuring performance, resource usage, and graphing these. What I am talking about is digitising the current manual feedback that is happening elsewhere (how many users running which apps, lesson plans being used, languages, how many computers requiring repairs, general problems people are running into, and generally people's feelings on sugar usage, maybe even surveys) I would start by listing the kind of parameters for which we could use quantitative data, then think about how we could gather it. I remember an interesting thread in olpc-sur about assessment of the plan ceibal, may be interesting to ask there for opinions. Regards, Tomeu kind regards, David Van Assche On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 20:17, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying... all I said was we need more data from the field Well, I also understood that you said that it wasn't obvious enough. Which surprised me after all the noise lately about getting feedback. Anyway, I'm seeing feedback coming right now and also efforts to organize feedback gathering. So, let's do it! Regards, Tomeu I am in no way blaming anyone for not getting feedback, on the contrary, I am frustrated that the calls for feediback are not being heard enoguh, and I am well aware of people's efforts to try and get this feedback. What I am saying is that the feedback is not coming through does this make sense? Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? regards, David On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 15:51, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: H... I have to agree with Christoph here. I didn't really see it as being dramatic at all, but quite factual in fact. The western small deployments really don't give us any useful stats on what is happening on a larger scale in the third world. Ok, but will give some other interesting information, or not at all? And its important to acknowledge the differences between these, which Christoph listed quite concretely. And isn't this stating the obvious? I think what may not have come across obviously enough was that we need way more data from the field, in places where Sugar is being used on a large scale, and this data is just not getting to us. I for one, would love to have some cold hard facts about Sugar as used in South America and Africa. I'm quite appalled by this, you don't read the mailing lists where we make regular calls for feedback? Short from taking a plane and visiting school by school, I don't see what else I can do to get that feedback. You understand Spanish, search the olpc-sur mailing list for posts by Walter and
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 15:06 -0400, Walter Bender wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! Perhaps a section in Sugar Digest with links to highlights of what went on in deployments during the week? Wearing a deployer-hat I must confess that we could (Paraguayan Deployment Team) do a better job filing tickets, giving feedback, etc. Will try to keep discipline from now on :-) ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:42 AM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Sean DALY schrieb: IMHO, close study of small deployments makes them incredibly useful to all teachers and Learners. The observations and take-aways need to be triaged of course, starting with what can/should be done by Sugar Labs, but I am convinced many learnings will benefit large deployments. Until reliable means of sharing experiences and feedback (polls, questionnaires, council of deployers, etc.) can be put in place, microscopic study of a classroom using Sugar is well worth the effort, in particular for revealing blockers. I'm not sure I really agree with this statement... Christoph please keep the dramatic headlines to olpcnews. In the above paragraph, Walter notes that many lessons can be learned from controlled environments which can then be applied to larger scaled, less controlled environments. Please note, this does not _exclude_ anyone from providing feedback from large scale deployments. Nor does it _prevent_ anyone from creating small scale deployments anywhere in the world. _all_ it states is that it is often cost effective to start small and grow as lessons have been learned. And yes, Christoph I _am_ holding your writing to a higher standard. Several times, you have described yourself as the voice of the project. david Extrapolating the data and drawing conclusions based on observations in a trial that represents less than 0,01% of all current Sugar installations is a risky endeavor at best and a serious mistake at worst. Even more so when the environment between the trial (in this case GPA) and the global deployments really couldn't be more different in just about every way imaginable (SoaS vs. XO, summer classes vs. regular year-long classes, Boston connectivity vs. Rwanda connectivity, 25 installations in a school vs. 1000 installations in a school, US power infrastructure vs. Nepali power infrastructure, having a team consisting of Walter / Greg / Caroline supporting the efforts vs. being lucky to maybe have a single person who has used a computer before, 25 pupils in a classroom vs. 80 pupils in a classroom, users that were raised in urban North America vs. users who don't have electricity at home, and I could go on...). Yes, some of the findings at GPA will indeed be of a broad and general nature and subsequent actions will benefit all Sugar users. Yes, projects like in Alabama, Austria, the UK and similar places will be able to learn many things from the GPA pilot. But let's not forget that the current million Sugar users and (if the reports are to be believed) also the next million Sugar users are much more likely to be found in Ancash, Kigali or Sichuan rather than Boston, London or Vienna. And I doubt that you'll find too many schools in those places that have a profile similar to GPA [1]. Just my 2 Nepali Rupees, Christoph [1] The Gardner Pilot Academy is the flagship full-service community school within the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The school's vision is to educate the minds and develop the characters of all students in partnership with families and community. To achieve this GPA provides high quality teaching along with a range of social, emotional and enrichment programs delivered by means of partnerships with an array of community organizations and individuals. Over the past twelve years, GPA has developed strong associations with four universities, several health and mental health agencies, the YMCA, and various organizations teaching visual and performing arts. As one of just 20 pilot schools in the BPS, GPA is exempt from district mandates. Therefore, GPA has autonomy in the areas of budget and personnel, along with the freedom to implement innovative curricula, assessments, and interventions. (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Gardner_Pilot_Academy) -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
H... I have to agree with Christoph here. I didn't really see it as being dramatic at all, but quite factual in fact. The western small deployments really don't give us any useful stats on what is happening on a larger scale in the third world. And its important to acknowledge the differences between these, which Christoph listed quite concretely. I think what may not have come across obviously enough was that we need way more data from the field, in places where Sugar is being used on a large scale, and this data is just not getting to us. I for one, would love to have some cold hard facts about Sugar as used in South America and Africa. kind Regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:21 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:42 AM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Sean DALY schrieb: IMHO, close study of small deployments makes them incredibly useful to all teachers and Learners. The observations and take-aways need to be triaged of course, starting with what can/should be done by Sugar Labs, but I am convinced many learnings will benefit large deployments. Until reliable means of sharing experiences and feedback (polls, questionnaires, council of deployers, etc.) can be put in place, microscopic study of a classroom using Sugar is well worth the effort, in particular for revealing blockers. I'm not sure I really agree with this statement... Christoph please keep the dramatic headlines to olpcnews. In the above paragraph, Walter notes that many lessons can be learned from controlled environments which can then be applied to larger scaled, less controlled environments. Please note, this does not _exclude_ anyone from providing feedback from large scale deployments. Nor does it _prevent_ anyone from creating small scale deployments anywhere in the world. _all_ it states is that it is often cost effective to start small and grow as lessons have been learned. And yes, Christoph I _am_ holding your writing to a higher standard. Several times, you have described yourself as the voice of the project. david Extrapolating the data and drawing conclusions based on observations in a trial that represents less than 0,01% of all current Sugar installations is a risky endeavor at best and a serious mistake at worst. Even more so when the environment between the trial (in this case GPA) and the global deployments really couldn't be more different in just about every way imaginable (SoaS vs. XO, summer classes vs. regular year-long classes, Boston connectivity vs. Rwanda connectivity, 25 installations in a school vs. 1000 installations in a school, US power infrastructure vs. Nepali power infrastructure, having a team consisting of Walter / Greg / Caroline supporting the efforts vs. being lucky to maybe have a single person who has used a computer before, 25 pupils in a classroom vs. 80 pupils in a classroom, users that were raised in urban North America vs. users who don't have electricity at home, and I could go on...). Yes, some of the findings at GPA will indeed be of a broad and general nature and subsequent actions will benefit all Sugar users. Yes, projects like in Alabama, Austria, the UK and similar places will be able to learn many things from the GPA pilot. But let's not forget that the current million Sugar users and (if the reports are to be believed) also the next million Sugar users are much more likely to be found in Ancash, Kigali or Sichuan rather than Boston, London or Vienna. And I doubt that you'll find too many schools in those places that have a profile similar to GPA [1]. Just my 2 Nepali Rupees, Christoph [1] The Gardner Pilot Academy is the flagship full-service community school within the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The school's vision is to educate the minds and develop the characters of all students in partnership with families and community. To achieve this GPA provides high quality teaching along with a range of social, emotional and enrichment programs delivered by means of partnerships with an array of community organizations and individuals. Over the past twelve years, GPA has developed strong associations with four universities, several health and mental health agencies, the YMCA, and various organizations teaching visual and performing arts. As one of just 20 pilot schools in the BPS, GPA is exempt from district mandates. Therefore, GPA has autonomy in the areas of budget and personnel, along with the freedom to implement innovative curricula, assessments, and interventions. ( http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Gardner_Pilot_Academy) -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 15:51, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: H... I have to agree with Christoph here. I didn't really see it as being dramatic at all, but quite factual in fact. The western small deployments really don't give us any useful stats on what is happening on a larger scale in the third world. Ok, but will give some other interesting information, or not at all? And its important to acknowledge the differences between these, which Christoph listed quite concretely. And isn't this stating the obvious? I think what may not have come across obviously enough was that we need way more data from the field, in places where Sugar is being used on a large scale, and this data is just not getting to us. I for one, would love to have some cold hard facts about Sugar as used in South America and Africa. I'm quite appalled by this, you don't read the mailing lists where we make regular calls for feedback? Short from taking a plane and visiting school by school, I don't see what else I can do to get that feedback. You understand Spanish, search the olpc-sur mailing list for posts by Walter and me and tell here again if we don't ask for feedback. It's really frustrating that we are here spending our savings and time on this project, and not only the people deploying our software don't want to talk to us despite our requests, but other people still think we don't want to know about them. Frustratedly yours, Tomeu kind Regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:21 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:42 AM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Sean DALY schrieb: IMHO, close study of small deployments makes them incredibly useful to all teachers and Learners. The observations and take-aways need to be triaged of course, starting with what can/should be done by Sugar Labs, but I am convinced many learnings will benefit large deployments. Until reliable means of sharing experiences and feedback (polls, questionnaires, council of deployers, etc.) can be put in place, microscopic study of a classroom using Sugar is well worth the effort, in particular for revealing blockers. I'm not sure I really agree with this statement... Christoph please keep the dramatic headlines to olpcnews. In the above paragraph, Walter notes that many lessons can be learned from controlled environments which can then be applied to larger scaled, less controlled environments. Please note, this does not _exclude_ anyone from providing feedback from large scale deployments. Nor does it _prevent_ anyone from creating small scale deployments anywhere in the world. _all_ it states is that it is often cost effective to start small and grow as lessons have been learned. And yes, Christoph I _am_ holding your writing to a higher standard. Several times, you have described yourself as the voice of the project. david Extrapolating the data and drawing conclusions based on observations in a trial that represents less than 0,01% of all current Sugar installations is a risky endeavor at best and a serious mistake at worst. Even more so when the environment between the trial (in this case GPA) and the global deployments really couldn't be more different in just about every way imaginable (SoaS vs. XO, summer classes vs. regular year-long classes, Boston connectivity vs. Rwanda connectivity, 25 installations in a school vs. 1000 installations in a school, US power infrastructure vs. Nepali power infrastructure, having a team consisting of Walter / Greg / Caroline supporting the efforts vs. being lucky to maybe have a single person who has used a computer before, 25 pupils in a classroom vs. 80 pupils in a classroom, users that were raised in urban North America vs. users who don't have electricity at home, and I could go on...). Yes, some of the findings at GPA will indeed be of a broad and general nature and subsequent actions will benefit all Sugar users. Yes, projects like in Alabama, Austria, the UK and similar places will be able to learn many things from the GPA pilot. But let's not forget that the current million Sugar users and (if the reports are to be believed) also the next million Sugar users are much more likely to be found in Ancash, Kigali or Sichuan rather than Boston, London or Vienna. And I doubt that you'll find too many schools in those places that have a profile similar to GPA [1]. Just my 2 Nepali Rupees, Christoph [1] The Gardner Pilot Academy is the flagship full-service community school within the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The school's vision is to educate the minds and develop the characters of all students in partnership with families and community. To achieve this GPA provides high quality teaching along with a range of social, emotional and enrichment programs delivered by means of partnerships with an
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying... all I said was we need more data from the field I am in no way blaming anyone for not getting feedback, on the contrary, I am frustrated that the calls for feediback are not being heard enoguh, and I am well aware of people's efforts to try and get this feedback. What I am saying is that the feedback is not coming through does this make sense? Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? regards, David On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 15:51, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: H... I have to agree with Christoph here. I didn't really see it as being dramatic at all, but quite factual in fact. The western small deployments really don't give us any useful stats on what is happening on a larger scale in the third world. Ok, but will give some other interesting information, or not at all? And its important to acknowledge the differences between these, which Christoph listed quite concretely. And isn't this stating the obvious? I think what may not have come across obviously enough was that we need way more data from the field, in places where Sugar is being used on a large scale, and this data is just not getting to us. I for one, would love to have some cold hard facts about Sugar as used in South America and Africa. I'm quite appalled by this, you don't read the mailing lists where we make regular calls for feedback? Short from taking a plane and visiting school by school, I don't see what else I can do to get that feedback. You understand Spanish, search the olpc-sur mailing list for posts by Walter and me and tell here again if we don't ask for feedback. It's really frustrating that we are here spending our savings and time on this project, and not only the people deploying our software don't want to talk to us despite our requests, but other people still think we don't want to know about them. Frustratedly yours, Tomeu kind Regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:21 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:42 AM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Sean DALY schrieb: IMHO, close study of small deployments makes them incredibly useful to all teachers and Learners. The observations and take-aways need to be triaged of course, starting with what can/should be done by Sugar Labs, but I am convinced many learnings will benefit large deployments. Until reliable means of sharing experiences and feedback (polls, questionnaires, council of deployers, etc.) can be put in place, microscopic study of a classroom using Sugar is well worth the effort, in particular for revealing blockers. I'm not sure I really agree with this statement... Christoph please keep the dramatic headlines to olpcnews. In the above paragraph, Walter notes that many lessons can be learned from controlled environments which can then be applied to larger scaled, less controlled environments. Please note, this does not _exclude_ anyone from providing feedback from large scale deployments. Nor does it _prevent_ anyone from creating small scale deployments anywhere in the world. _all_ it states is that it is often cost effective to start small and grow as lessons have been learned. And yes, Christoph I _am_ holding your writing to a higher standard. Several times, you have described yourself as the voice of the project. david Extrapolating the data and drawing conclusions based on observations in a trial that represents less than 0,01% of all current Sugar installations is a risky endeavor at best and a serious mistake at worst. Even more so when the environment between the trial (in this case GPA) and the global deployments really couldn't be more different in just about every way imaginable (SoaS vs. XO, summer classes vs. regular year-long classes, Boston connectivity vs. Rwanda connectivity, 25 installations in a school vs. 1000 installations in a school, US power infrastructure vs. Nepali power infrastructure, having a team consisting of Walter / Greg / Caroline supporting the efforts vs. being lucky to maybe have a single person who has used a computer before, 25 pupils in a classroom vs. 80 pupils in a classroom, users that were raised in urban North America vs. users who don't have electricity at home, and I could go on...). Yes, some of the findings at GPA will indeed be of a broad and general nature and subsequent actions will benefit all Sugar users. Yes, projects like in Alabama, Austria, the UK and similar places will be able to learn many things from the GPA pilot. But let's not forget that the current million Sugar users and (if the reports are to be believed) also the next million Sugar
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! -walter [snip] -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
From my end, I can offer extensive feedback on Sugar usage in Andalucian schools, when we ship our next release in September. As this is a pretty controlled environment, we should be able to get some automated statistics. I'd love to hear some ideas on this. What could we install on the client sugar sessions to track things... perhaps, programs being used, length of time used, internet connectivity or not, etc. What I'm saying is, we could build some kind of statistic tracking into the computers as long as its not efficiency damaging or privacy violating... kind regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! -walter [snip] -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Pablo Picassohttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pablo_picasso.html - Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
David, Thank you, that is exactly the direction that we need to head! david On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:11 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: From my end, I can offer extensive feedback on Sugar usage in Andalucian schools, when we ship our next release in September. As this is a pretty controlled environment, we should be able to get some automated statistics. I'd love to hear some ideas on this. What could we install on the client sugar sessions to track things... perhaps, programs being used, length of time used, internet connectivity or not, etc. What I'm saying is, we could build some kind of statistic tracking into the computers as long as its not efficiency damaging or privacy violating... kind regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! -walter [snip] -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Pablo Picasso - Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
Also please share your ideas on have to better this feedback on the deployment team, meetings and wiki-pages. as a side note. we need also more feedback from XO deployments with Sugar, are OLPC and Countries willing to help ?. or just passing all the responsibility to SugarLabs?. I know that many of you can't answer that question..because we don't know actually how is the actual state of XO deployments with sugar..or yes?. Because regarding SOAS and small trials with Classmates or pc's, run by little local labs we DO have more information. As an example SugarLabs Co [1], is documenting all it's process on the wiki and also Sugar labs Chile [2] is beginning to do so. [1]http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Pedagogia/Talleres [2] http://cl.sugarlabs.org/go/Propuesta_Municipalidad_Huechuraba i also see every day feedback on the GPA pilot..both on mailists and on trac What about Peru and Uruguay ?. Because teachers working with us on OLPC-sur are only volunteers that don't seem to have access to information of the status of the overall project or less participate about it's direction. cheers!. Rafael Ortiz On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:17 PM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: David, Thank you, that is exactly the direction that we need to head! david On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:11 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: From my end, I can offer extensive feedback on Sugar usage in Andalucian schools, when we ship our next release in September. As this is a pretty controlled environment, we should be able to get some automated statistics. I'd love to hear some ideas on this. What could we install on the client sugar sessions to track things... perhaps, programs being used, length of time used, internet connectivity or not, etc. What I'm saying is, we could build some kind of statistic tracking into the computers as long as its not efficiency damaging or privacy violating... kind regards, David Van Assche On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! -walter [snip] -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Pablo Picasso - Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
