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?

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! http://wiki.laptop.org/go/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. :)

• http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Dadoggiedude
• http://wiki.laptop.org/go/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.

• http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Reviews/Blue_Sky#Rootbeer
• http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Reviews/Hino_Nacional_Brasileiro#Rootbeer
• http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Reviews/Blue_Sky#Dadoggiedude

These are also linked to from the Review squad page for the current Content release: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Content_package_July_2007_review

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

• http://wiki.laptop.org/go/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.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/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 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/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)