Re: Shift in emphasis to age 8 and under

[prytherch@talk21.com]

> by the
>time children are nine, they are perfectly capable of navigating around
>the "full" Debian menu so there is no need to cater to the nine-and-older
>age range. 
>It also came up earlier regarding logos.  There was some concern about
>children over eight not wishing to identify with anything "childish".

This is an issue that has come up for my project too. For primary school choldren (age 5 to 11) we are concerned more with how easy is the interface. For high school (age 11 to 18) - or from 9 upwards, as you say - we can concentrate on the niceties of the package, the right apps etc.


>So, although I am unwilling to abandon our original mandate to reach
"children aged 1 to 99" I must concede that for practical reasons our
"first product" needs to be focused on age eight and under.  That is not
>to say that older children won't also make use of or appreciate the work
>that goes into this initial effort.  But our *primary* audience will be
>this age range.

Of course you can have a package which assumes this by default but gives you other configuration options - either when you install it, or when you log in.


>  And after that, I'm not sure what to do for teens ... it
>seems that by this age, making a "version of Debian" for them would not be
>the primary work.  Not being a teen or parent of a teen, I'm having a
>harder time visualizing what "Debian for teens" would actually be.


and when you are a parent of a teen you still won't know what they want ;-)


>Once we have settled who our primary audience is, I expect it will be
>easier for us to produce something that is both coherent and limited
>enough in scope to be achievable in a reasonable period of time. 

I agree. There is nothing to stop this being adapted for other age groups at any time along the way, and we do need a clear focus.

Richard Smedley
www.sc.lug.org.uk/projects/schools.html



it's not a .sig, just the last line of the message.

--------------------
talk21 your FREE portable and private address on the net at http://www.talk21.com