[TOS] POSSE Worcester curriculum

Matthew Jadud mjadud at allegheny.edu
Fri Apr 23 09:56:43 UTC 2010


On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 23:45, Mel Chua <mel at redhat.com> wrote:
> The project that attendees will be working on that week (likely in pairs
> or small teams): get an Activity that isn't included in Sugar on a Stick
> (SoaS) to meet the inclusion criteria for SoaS - this involves a mix of
> coding, documenting, patching, merging, reviewing, testing, etc. (and
> requires community engagement throughout!) and we'll leave with our new

In the POSSE last year, we managed two well-organized activities:

1. Packaging a font, and
2. Making a small change in the Firefox codebase at the Javascript level.

These were well-planned activities that the instructors and support
could easily help us with. There was minimal/no community involvement
because there wasn't time, in four days, to "engage." (Besides... our
"engagement" time was spent getting to know each-other, which is
probably the most important reason for coming together at a common
location.)

Not seeing a timeline for the POSSE, I can't say whether or not you've
left enough time for the wide variety of activities that you've
planned, but one concern is that you will have a whole bunch of people
who won't be able to achieve the task you set for them. That was a
critical part of the experience last year: success. Or, more
specifically, experiencing that there are small parts to large
projects (thus overcoming the concern that these projects are "too
big" to use in the classroom). It sounds like you're going to show
them that there are large parts to large projects... which doesn't
bode well if you're trying to figure out how to work open source
projects into a highly constrained, 14-week semester.

I only briefly looked at the logs, and I think it is too ambitious to
expect people to code, merge, document, and package, in two/three
days, as well as have time to discuss, reflect, enjoy meals together,
and actually build community within the group.

My two cents, anyway. I could be very wrong. Good luck!

Cheers,
Matt



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