Hi,
Note: I'm putting DebTags mailing list in CC in case someone is interested.
Context: We've had some meetings during DebConf and we decided to try to resurrect the project Debian Jr. My plan is to rename the project to Debian Kids
The first thing I would like to do is to classify the games that might be appropriate for kids of different ages, and based on that build the rest. Of course there are many different criteria for doing that, some objective, some subjective. In ay case, the result should be, in my opinion, a set of tags that should give different axis of information about the package, so that parents o whoever can decide based on that.
For starters, I would like to define a classification of the programs and games based on the evolutionary stage in which the person is [1]. I'm planning to take into account at least the cognitive stage of development, the sensimotor stage of development and the psychosocial stage of development at a certain age.
I'm still not sure if I want to separate that into different axis (which might benefit people with special needs at the cost of some more work) or keep it simple (kiss) and make it as simple as possible.
The stages of Cognitive Development according to Piaget are:
- Sensory Motor Stage (Birth - 2yrs)
- Preoperational Stage (2yrs - 7yrs)
- Concrete Operational Stage (7yrs - 11yrs)
- Formal Operations Stage (11yrs - 16yrs)
The stages in Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development are:
- Early Childhood: Achieving Autonomy (18 months to 3 years)
- Middle Childhood: Developing Initiative (ages 3 to 6)
- Late Childhood: Becoming Industrious (ages 7 to 11)
- Adolescence: Establishing Identity (ages 11 and upwards)
Somehow it seems that a good level of granularity might be 3 years, with some approximate boundaries at 2/3, 6, 9, and 11/12 years. So my initial idea is to define a set of tags with some name I can't currently figure out year, that would be like:
A) An average baby of 3 years old could use the program according to their cognitive, sensimotor and psychosocial stage of development.
B) An average child of 6 years old could use the program according to their cognitive, sensimotor and psychosocial stage of development.
C) An average kid of 9 years old could use the program according to their cognitive, sensimotor and psychosocial stage of development.
D) An average pre-teen of 12 years old could use the program according to their cognitive, sensimotor and psychosocial stage of development.
There's no sense in adding another tag for teens of about 15 years old, as their development characteristics would be too close to any adult.
The best thing about such a simple system is that it's quite easy to know, whoever has kids around know which programs they are able to manage, in both aspects of cognitive development ("the way they think"), sensorimotor development ("how complex and quick the managing of the program might be"), etc.
One thing I would like to decide is whether an objective classification of this kind should be generic enough (and be allowed to, and under which conditons) to be put into the standard debtag set (other tags, mostly subjective or culturally dependent ones should have to go into their own package), which will definitely bring a lot of benefits.
So, ideas? comments?
Greetings and thanks,
Miry