Talk:Review squad

needs work! help welcome

• review squad app form - what data would be good to gather? computer experience, languages spoken, age, gender, grade?
• review form/template for young squad members - what should they be looking for, what makes a good rating?
• advice for testing
• how do we market this to parents and kids? can someone come up with a punchy paragraph that explains the olpc project and review squads to people?
• gallery of kid-produced art etc. it would be nice to have some place on the wiki where kids could upload the art, photos, high scores, etc. that they make while testing the games-- sort of a public journal of sorts...

potential fodder for template letter

Dadoggiedude and Rootbeer,

Ok! I've uploaded all your reviews. And now it's time for you to learn how to do it yourself the next time. :)

First of all, notice that you've joined the rosters! Category:Review squad members

If you look at your user pages, you will see that you're marked as review squad members there as well. You'll also see links to your reviews (when you write new ones, you should put links on your userpage to them also, so people can see all your reviews at once). Also, you can put things about yourself on your userpage - it's like having your own website. :)

• User:Dadoggiedude
• User:Rootbeer

You can also see all the reviews you've written. You can edit them, make them longer, or write completely new ones by making new pages on the wiki.

• Reviews/Blue Sky#Rootbeer
• Reviews/Hino Nacional Brasileiro#Rootbeer
• Reviews/Blue Sky#Dadoggiedude

These are also linked to from the Review squad page for the current Content release: Content package July 2007 review

Some of the things you reported were bugs (the files that didn't work), so I put them here.

• Content package July 2007 review#Bug list

Now that you've seen me do it, try and see if you can do more yourselves. If you want to set up another time to do this together (on the chat, where I'll be around if you have questions), we can do that - or if you feel ready to launch out on your own, you can do that too. :)

The wiki software takes a bit of getting used to - here's something that might be useful in finding your way around:

• http://www.wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial

Let me know if you have any questions, or if you'd like to do more. Woo Review Squad! You two are doing a great job.

(Once you're pretty comfortable doing this - which should take you maybe 2 more hours of trying stuff out, tops - your next project will be teaching other kids how to join the Squad and do the same thing. ;)

-Mel

PS: Also, a message from Julius Lucks, one of the developers who made Kuku - I told him about the trouble we had getting the game started, and this is what he said.

"I can imagine installing python and pygame would be pretty tricky - it still is for me!!! The best thing to do would be for us to get our act together and make some windows and mac universal binaries. We'll def look into it. Thanks for setting up all the testing, and let me know if I need to do anything else."

So the feedback you gave about how hard it was to set-up is causing some of the developers to make some software to fix the problem. Congratulations!

The state of review squad, July 16 2007

So... we have a place to direct interested kids, a place where people who want kids to help out can find them, and a procedure (such as it is) for reviewing content (in the non-technical sense). Most of the infrastructure was set up yesterday and today, and the above letter to the first two review squadders, the "alpha testers," gives a decent overview of what's going on.

Talk:Review squad#potential fodder for template letter

NOTE: This is not ready for wide-scale publicity & roll-out, but we can take older, perhaps age 10+, kids who have a reasonably tech/free-culture savvy enthusiast willing to closely mentor them through the process (or better yet, a kid of a developer), for the second round... like a beta.

If we get enough momentum, we may be able to do either a large beta or the full-scale "Pull out the press releases, we gots ourselves a Review Squad - sign up, kids!" launch for the 2nd content release. I think a beta for the Sept. release and a full-scale launch for the November one is more likely.

I've contacted the Art community about making a little icon we can use as a Review Squad logo, OBX, page banner, and that the kids can put on their websites if they have them (there'll be a "I'm a review squad member!" version for kids and a "join the olpc review squad!" version for adults). Lauren, look at Art Wanted to see what I did.

It'd be nice to get the content stamping work underway before too long, since it's much easier to migrate a tiny fledgling community to a new system wholescale than it is to transplant a Ginormous Mass Of People, which is what we will (hopefully) have 6 months from now. SJ, can we set up a call with Jackie and Ian this week?

Mchua 23:50, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Kenyah browne Mit 7th grade Hey this is a stem person in the program and this was a great experiment to look at the imformatal video on seseme street. It was great and i think that they should do more games to be able to learn competivness and sportsmanship the should also use games of the native contry

What we want to get out of a Review Squad sprint

This is a brainstorm list for collecting ideas - it is not a final list!

• A checklist of whether children are able to, without direction, exercise each of the major features of the latest release.
• A checklist of whether children are able to, without direction, teach someone else how to use (with collaboration, if applicable) several selected Activities.
• A checklist of whether children are successfully able to carry out and report results for one of a set of test cases (including some that are known unfixed bugs - tests that we know should pass or fail ahead of time).
• A checklist of whether children are able to, without direction, find answers to some common simple technical FAQs via any mode of communication they wish; google/wiki searching, forums, IRC (a private channel just for this test, with several willing developers and volunteers present).
• General usability observations for all of the above, if possible.

Current draft

Please edit!

(Note that the MIT Museum does not have wifi, so everything will be on mesh. They have 6 XOs.)

Instructions for testers
--------------------------

Thank you for helping us test!

The most important thing to do while you are testing 
is to tell your assistant what to write down. Think 
out loud so your assistant can record your thoughts. 
What are you trying to do? Before you click on something, 
tell them what you think will happen when you click it. 
(After you click it - were you surprised?)

Instructions for assistants
----------------------------

Thanks for volunteering to be a testers' assistant!
 We will be asking our testers to think out loud as 
they are using the computer, and your job is to write 
down what they're thining and how they try to do things. 
(What do they click on? When do they get frustrated?) 
There is no right or wrong answer; we're interested in 
finding out what a kid's first instincts are when they 
come across an XO. 

This means that if they can't figure something out, 
it's our fault, not theirs - and we're very thankful 
to them for pointing it out to us so we can fix it!

There are also three rules for Being An Assistant you 
should keep in mind.

Rule #1: Do not touch the computer. If you absolutely 
must, point at things - but try as hard as possible not 
to tell your tester what to do. If they get confused or 
lost, ask them what they are confused about, and what
they can do to start figuring out how to solve the problem.

You can switch off with your tester afterwards and 
test the XO yourself while he/she records you, but 
when you are an assistant, you should be watching 
your tester use the computer.

Rule #2: Capture everything you can. "Mistakes" are 
great, because they show us (the development team) 
what we need to fix - please write them down!

Rule #3: Ask your tester questions. What are they 
trying to do? What are they thinking about? Do they 
need to slow down and repeat something so you can 
write it down?

First impressions
------------------

Who do you think this computer is designed for?

What do you think the different buttons on the keyboard 
do? The different pictures on the screen? (Try them!) 
How can you type? Click on things?

Challenges
------------

Pick one or more of these challenges to try, or make 
up your own. There are no instruction books around; 
don't let a grown-up tell you what to do. Instead, 
see if you can figure out how to do them on your own, 
or by asking other kids around you - when these laptops 
go out to schools in the developing world, the students 
there have to help each other learn how to use the XO 
when their teachers are busy.

If you get stuck, try using the help chat system or 
searching on the wiki (see the "Ask About OLPC" station). 
Keep thinking out loud so your assistant can write things down!
 We are interested in finding out whether we have designed the 
computer so that kids can teach other kids how to do new 
things on it.

We call the software programs on the XO "Activities." There

Can you...

* Chat with another person across the room? (10 minutes)
* See what somebody else is typing in their Write document? 
(15 minutes)
* Write a poem or draw a picture and save it, close the Activity, 
and then open it up again? (15 minutes)
* Make the Turtle draw a star? (15 minutes)
* See a sound wave play across your screen? (10 minutes)
* Take a video of somebody using an exhibit on this floor? (5 minutes)
* Find and use things that other kids have written, drawn, photographed, 
and made on the XO before you started using it? (5 minutes)
* Make the screen black-and-white and put the XO in tablet mode so that 
it looks like this? (picture goes here) This mode is great for reading 
books. (5 minutes)

When you are done using the XO, please close/stop all the 
Activities you started, and then reboot the computer so 
the next tester can use it.

Stories and ideas
---------------------

Tell us a story about one of your favorite learning moments.
 How can we design the software on the XO to make the same 
kinds of moments happen for other kids?

Demographics (everything is optional)
-------------------------------------

Age:
Gender:
Do you use computers in school?
At home?
Have you ever seen an OLPC XO before?

Demographics to sort by

This is a brainstorm list for collecting ideas - it is not a final list!

• age
• computer experience
• XO-specific experience
• gender
• school district ranking