How To Manual

Summer of Content 2007 +/-

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The deadline for editing this proposal or adding yourself to the list is 11:59pm EST (GMT-5) on August 6, 2007.

Project description

(Samuel Klein asked me to put this page up; not sure what the mentor/mentee thing is but I'm Todd Kelsey, helping to put a manual together for the laptop. My email is tekelsey aaaaht gmail daahwt com.

What do you want to do > help put a how to guide together, basic core DNA like pictures, written material > have been working on getting an authoring CMS that some of the stuff could eventually be put into for scalability, updates, changes etc.--for now, just the basic how tos, for target age range, english spanish > principle, agree with christina xu, pictures should tell as much as possible

Why do you want to do it > understood that the opening sentence on http://wiki.laptop.org/go/documentation is "OLPC hardware and software is designed to be discoverable so that a user can figure things out by experimentation.", however, believe that some people, especially volunteers and in-country educators/potential adopters etc. will benefit from a learning style that will help them get acclimated sooner, especially those with limited time.

How will it happen? > a few people have expressed interest with various backgrounds, will need to connect everyone and break things down into modules, summer of content thing could be a brainstorming session, dynamic improv, like picking tasks, maybe even getting children involved, or watching a disney video and devolving temporarily or permanently to the child within, coming up with a sequence of pictures to storyboard the tasks of using the computer, trying to explain, seeing if kids understand, etc.

> text could be written, pictures could be taken. depending on skills available this could be edited/formatted, made nicer.

> video could be shot; trickier, could be experimental with just a video camera or camera phone or handheld digital camera, like storyboarding, seeing if little clips without words could help. if skills are there could edit put into a format for inclusion on laptop itself or a dvd/vcd.

> comic book, comic strip would seem to be a nice minimalist way to go

> if there's a comic book/illustrator, could discuss, brainstorm, text, experiment with a generic little personality -- this might introduce a nice fun factor

What kinds of people would be good at working on this? > writers, illustrators, product designers, teachers -- and by golly if there's a project manager out there who doesn't feel creative but knows how to get things done, maybe they could jump in.

> ah yes and if there are any bilingual, multilingual folks who know english and another language, that's helpful too.

How will you know if you've succeeded? > deliverables would be, depending on skill level/time available, either drafts, a report on what approach would work best, or actual finished content that could form the basis for an HTML manual, or printed quickstart guide affixed to the laptop itself -- should coordinate with Todd Kelsey to sync up on the authoring cms so content could be input for ease of localization

What similar things have been done before? > no idea

You can supplement (and should) your application with external links to helpful resources > um, not sure what to put here, but this is the url of the "how to manual mailing list" that will theoretically go out every sunday: http://lists.cftwinc.com/mailman/listinfo/olpc-manual

And here is that official wiki documentation page again: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/documentation

Of course my secret desire is to have members of the gerbil liberation front teach the kids how to use the laptop, but I suppose that is too insane:

http://www.toddkelsey.com/glf

Interested interns

Intern name

Contact information, why you'd be good for the job, any specific plans, variants, or details you would personally like to implement and why

Eduardo Silva hoboprimate haatt gmail doot com .

I'd be interested in a particular subset of such a How to Manual. It would be an howto oriented to kids, to the final XO owners, giving an overview of the inner software workings of Sugar. The target audience would be those kids which, by clicking and handling their XOs, have explored as far as they could on their own, and now need some hand-handling for further explorations. This would be the assumption of the book, to begin to peel off the Sugar mask: first through the Developer Console, then through a general overview of the OS, all the way up to developing an activity of their own (luckily with Develop which is still in development). It would all done be done with a friendly recurring character to illustrate the various concepts explained throughout the book. I would need assistance from a programmer and a educator, and the project would be an ongoing project until it fullfilled its objectives. A possible name for the ebook could be "Beyond the Sugar Coating". EDIT:I've been thinking about this, and it is maybe a too ambitious goal. I will have to think on a more achievable project, but on the same vein.

Interested mentors

Mentor name

Contact information, why you'd be good for the job, any specific plans, variants, or details you would personally like to implement and why

Other interested parties

Name

Contact information, what your interest is