Ubuntu Training Community

[Matthew East]

Hi Billy,

Adding back the -doc list too. I'm reordering your email so that it quotes
properly, not to be snobbish about netiquette but because I feel that it's
important to get the context of this discussion. My response is below.

> Matthew East wrote:
>> Hi Torsten,
>>
>> Thanks for this. One further quick question for now, and perhaps we can
>> discuss it when Billy returns.
>>
>> * Torsten Spindler:
>>
>>> Hi Matt,
>>>
>>> On Mon, 2007-23-07 at 20:44 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
>>> ...
>>>
>>>> I'd be very keen to help ensure that the work being done by both teams
>>>> isn't duplicating effort: I would think that in many cases the content
>>>> should be the same as the system documentation - in what circumstances
>>>> would you envisage these differing?
>>>>
>>
>> {snip}
>>
>>
>>> The main difference is for me the focus of course material on being
>>> delivered by an instructor rather than the self-study path used for the
>>> documentation.
>>>
>>
>> I understood from Billy's email that there is a self-study (or
>> e-learning) component to the work, and that this material is part of
>> that too. So presumably the material produced has to work for both,
>> right?

> Hi Matthew & Torsten,
>
> Thanks for your feedback. To reiterate  what Torsten has written, I see
> the instructor led and web based training as complementing the
> documentation with much of the same content being reused in all 3. ie
> more or less same ingredients, different dish. The web based training
> will be interactive and  and provide a combination of reading material,
> audio visual, animation and online testing - so again, very different to
> wiki page layout.

Ok, this has definitely re-enforced my view that there should be a much
greater overlap between the documentation team and your project.

Just to clarify a couple of things first:

1. In my previous emails I haven't been referring to the documentation
wiki, but to the material avaialble in the Help System.
2. The question we need to address when discussing these issues is *not*
"is the intention for the Ubuntu training materials to look like the
existing Ubuntu documentation?" (which is the question you and Torsten
have answered with a convincing "no") but rather:

"Are there common objectives between these two projects?"

It sounds to me like the answer to this question is likely to be "yes".
Ok, your plans for the training materials (with audio visual, animation
etc) are more ambitious than the current Ubuntu system documentation, but
from what you've said so far I'm not sure how or why any of these ideas
aren't equally applicable to Ubuntu documentation. Essentially the goal of
both projects appears to be "how can we teach Ubuntu users how to use
their machines in the most efficient way".

My wife is a teacher, and I know that teaching materials often make a
distinction between "classroom led" and "self-help" materials. The Ubuntu
documentation falls into the latter category, while it sounds like you
envisage the training material to cover both categories. That results in a
pretty comprehensive overlap between the two projects.

This is borne out by the fact that the table of contents which you've
established for the training material is basically identical to the Help
System index.

So, to conclude, I think these projects should either be working directly
together, or alternatively communicating closely to avoid reinventing the
wheel and to share experience.

Matt
-- 
http://www.mdke.org/