[kde-edu]: [Fwd: Advice in contributing to KDE-Edu]

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Hi, list. The purpose of this email is to introduce Leandro, Paulo and 
Tiago to the KDE Edu community. I had a very nice meeting with them last 
Friday here in Sao Paulo, and I think they can be a welcome addition to 
the efforts of our group.
I paste below some of our earlier correspondence from past week. But 
basically my suggestion to them is that we can start this collaboration 
on different fronts, and directly integrated into the project-wide 
policies. One of their ideas is to work on usability reviews for 
example, so I suggested that they join kde-usability and maybe start by 
conducting an usability study of one of our applications. Any volunteers?
The coding effort at first should probably happen via patches, branches 
or playground (for new applications that they might want to suggest.) 
For the applications that have maintainers, my advice is to use the list 
as the primary method of contact and exchange of information, and submit 
patches and suggestions directly. I must say that their main concern was 
how to participate in the project and not "step on anyone's toes" :) 
 From my experience with this group, and KDE Games, this should not be a 
problem. I think this integration will happen naturally, as KDE-Edu is a 
very warm community, and we can only benefit from having more people 
joining our group and dedicating time to improve our software.

One of the good things regarding this effort is the fact that their lab 
has sponsors and grants that guarantee that at least some projects might 
get completed in the time allocated for it, as opposed to our purely 
volunteer style of contribution. It could be interesting to see how 
these efforts can work together, something along the lines of what we 
already do with Kevin's students, or GSoC projects. I also asked them to 
consider attending Akademy, but I am not sure they will be able to do it 
this year, as there is not much time for travel arrangements.

Introductions made, now let's get to work! Guys, please join the list, 
and welcome.

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini

> 
>> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>> Betreff:     Advice in contributing to KDE-Edu
>> Datum:     Wed, 4 Jun 2008 17:16:36 -0300
>> Von:     Leandro Jekimim Goulart <leandro.jekimim at ltia.fc.unesp.br>
>> An:     <annma at kde.org>, <ps_ml at gmx.de>
>> CC:     'Tiago Porangaba' <tiago.porangaba at ltia.fc.unesp.br>, 'Paulo
>> Roberto Cattai' <paulo.cattai at ltia.fc.unesp.br>, 'Guilherme Moro'
>> <guilherme.moro at ltia.fc.unesp.br>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear Anne-Marie Mahfouf and Patrick Spendrin,
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m Project Office Manager at Applied Information Technology Lab (LTIA),
>> a laboratory inside the Computing Department at São Paulo State
>> University (UNESP) in Brazil. Since 1995 we develop several projects and
>> researches in interoperability, ubiquitous computing, system
>> optimization, usability, among others, applying them to education and
>> health scenarios with real customers and users.
>>
>>
>>
>> Over the last months we have done some experimentation with your
>> education apps suite (KDE-Edu) and we have appreciated them very much,
>> you have been doing a real good work and have really raised our
>> interest. We would like to put our team to make contributions to some
>> KDE-Edu apps and it would be great if you help us to know how to start 
>> this.
>>
>>
>>
>> We are aware of the information at the Get Involved page
>> (http://edu.kde.org/stuff/get_involved.php) and the mailing list, but we
>> particularly would like to develop contributions related to features
>> that are not yet part of the project’s roadmap. Right now we would like
>> to start usability analysis and interview with educators to help
>> improving your apps, and just to anticipate some changes we see that can
>> improve your apps (feedback from educators):
>>
>>     * Kauzium: improve information architecture and make it easier to
>>       find specific information;
>>     * KBruch and KPercentage: improve usability and educational
>>       opportunities of using this applications in classroom;
>>     * KSudoku: improve user interface;
>>
>>
>>
>> Conducting the researches (usability and interview) mentioned above we
>> can have solid foundations to propose new features to the roadmap of
>> this apps and discuss them with the entire KDE-Edu community, and
>> develop them. Since we are supported by private companies, at first we
>> cannot expand our effort beyond that 4 apps mentioned but we can
>> guarantee our team working on KDE-Edu over the next 6 months. Since KDE
>> Base is been ported to Windows, Microsoft is also supporting us in
>> having these features developed in that apps I mentioned above either in
>> Linux and Windows (since 2007 have some scholarship from Microsoft OSS
>> Lab in an initiative called Interoperability Center, where we develop
>> researched about how to make OSS and proprietary systems more
>> interoperable).
>>
>>
>>
>> After discussing the improvements we can suggest, it will be developed
>> by our team according your quality policies and sending every code and
>> design we develop to your official repository according KDE-Edu license
>> terms. We expect to conduct the work on these 4 apps and since we
>> achieve good results we can try to have our efforts been done in other
>> apps, or supporting the KDE-Edu apps in next years and developing new
>> apps according the researches we and other members from KDE-Edu are
>> conducting.
>>
>>
>>
>> We have people that can deal with design and user experience beyond
>> education in our team, so we believe we can make a good job in these
>> areas also. In CC are Paulo Cattai (User Experience Team Manager), Tiago
>> Porangaba (Computing Systems Team Manager) and Guilherme Moro, one of
>> our most experienced developers in Linux platform (he have worked in
>> educational app development in Linux and worked in Linux platform
>> customization/optimization). Their teams are going to be doing the LTIA
>> efforts.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank very much for your attentions and any advice about how we can
>> propose contributions and effectively make part of KDE-Edu in this way
>> will be very helpful.