Re: How should we evaluate user applications?
[Andreas B. Mundt]
> The "Gymnasium" in Germany takes at least 12 years and pupils start
> school at about 6 years age. There are many pupils which are up to 18
> or even 19 years old.
It is similar in Norway now. While I believe it would be fine to
extend our target group downwards from 7 to 6 years, I believe it is a
mistake to extend it upwards. Not because I would not love to be able
to cater for the needs of all schools teaching 16-19-year olds, but
because I believe we are simply not able to do so at this time.
As the pupils grow older, their needs on the computer side become more
and more specialized, and it is unlikely that we will be able to
provide all the tools needed by that the schools for 16-18 age group.
This is the reason why we have always focused on the age group up to
16, and not tried to spread our resources thinner. :)
> The opinion what the "best" tool is will probably differ from user
> to user, from country to country. But at least we can think about
> removing tools nobody considers "the best".
Sure it will differ. And that is why we need to be brave enough to
make a decision and stick to it by choosing which one we believe it
best, and drop other alternatives from the default installation.
The DVD is overfull, and options increase congintive strain for those
that need to select which tool to use and confuse those that want to
to use Debian Edu. Not making a choice is doing our users a
disservice.
> Usually pupils can choose a special subject within their career at
> school. In this subject, the stuff they learn and work on is quite
> some sort of 'advanced'. With respect to our project this would
> mean either learning the basics of system administration,
> programming/simulating or I could also imagine something like 3D
> modelling (blender). Do we want to provide some of the stuff needed
> to do these things out of the box too? A pupil not interested in
> computers will probably never need them.
Well, we do already include a 3D modeller (blender), and I suspect we
should continue to do so. But every package included come at a cost,
in DVD space, menu space, congintive strain, user confusion and disk
space. So we should evaluate each package and choose if it make sense
to include it in the default installation or not.
> If there is a good application, but missing some translations, we
> should try to add the missing translation. It would be a pity to
> remove great software only because some translation is missing.
I agree. But if we have several similar packages, I believe we should
go with the one with translations and drpo the ones without.
Happy hacking,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen
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