Fwd: Buy a man a beer and he is idle for an hour...

[Jane Weideman]

Hi all,

Sorry about my relative silence recently - I was learning and absorbing
at SkoleLinux in Bergen (Norway).

I am slowly wading through the mass of mail I missed, and will respond
to it all in due course.

Paul I agree with what you have said - about needing a good (and
thorough) method of package evaluation, not about me getting bad
grades! ;)

Let's discuss this, and it will be on the agenda to be finalised and
actioned for the Edubuntu Summit.

regards
JaneW

On Mon, 2005-06-13 at 13:08 +0000, jelkner at divmod.com wrote:
> A lot of folks have joined this list, but there has been *very* little traffic (aside from the occasional posting asking why there isn't any traffic).
> 
> With the edubuntu summit only a few weeks away, we need to get things going.  I thought this message is a good place to start a discussion...
> 
> jeff elkner
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> > From: flint at flint.com
> > Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 08:38:41 -0400 (EDT)
> > To: Jane Weideman <janew at hbd.com>
> > Subject: Buy a man a beer and he is idle for an hour...
> > Reply-to: flint at flint.com
> > 
> > ...teach a man to brew and he is idle for a lifetime!
> >
> >Dear Jane,
> >
> >Hello all, just got back from visiting my daughter and sister at Rehoboth
> >beach, now one very sunburn person however much important has been thought
> >about in my absence...
> >
> >On Sun, 12 Jun 2005, Jane Weideman wrote:
> >>
> >> Oliver and I have also been discussing moving forward with the Edubuntu
> >> release for October. We need to start looking at the various packages
> >> available and evaluating them, as well as classifying them in 3-4
> >> categories such as Junior Primary (6-8), Senior Primary (9-11), Junior
> >> High (12-14) and Senior High (15-17) etc.
> >>
> >
> >This process of evaluation is critical.  As a member of the Arlington
> >County Public Schools Advisory Council on Instructional Technology, (ACI-
> >Tech) this is the most discussed need for the educational change agent.
> >
> >My own feeling is that rather than looking for packages and evaluating
> >them, it would be wiser and more effective to build a mechanism that
> >allows all the educators out there to evaluate packages and our job
> >becomes tabulating and displaying the evaluations.  This is a paramount
> >importance to the educational community, basically because all they really
> >do is to evaluate, it is the stuff of their daily lives (ever get a bad
> >grade? :^).  Essentially, no evaluation methodology, no edubuntu.
> >
> >What we may need is a mechanism similar to what has been built to evaluate
> >installs.  I talked some about this and I feel that this evaluation
> >capability should be somewhat user intrusive, but should allow three
> >general goals:
> >
> >1. You can tell it to buzz-off and you never see it again.
> >2. You can tell it what you think on a casual user basis.
> >3. You can get seriously medieval.
> >
> >The result can be a successful evaluation which is communicated in the
> >same way as the install evaluations.  The same mechanism is used (actually
> >re-used :^), to get this information back to the evaluation process which
> >in turn updates the evaluation web site (and yadda-yadda).
> >
> >As a favor Jane, please consider placing this idea of evaluation software
> >on the agenda.  This appears to be an extremely important user need.
> >
> >Kindest Regards,
> >
> >Paul Flint
> >
> 
-- 
JaneW
_____________
Jane Weideman
mobile: +27 83 779 7800
Canonical Ltd.