Re: Recommendations of LMS

[Jonathan Sandoval]

quiliro writes:

> Jonathan Sandoval <cloudneozero@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Techela-emacs was a nice discovery and I'll surely give it a try. But, I
>> think it wouldn't be a good fit for our use case.
>>
>> I think my message lacked some context. We're not a formal educational
>> institution. We're a community initiative. In an old house there was an
>> outdated healt post. Because of new regulations, it was too expensive
>> for the community to keep on mantaining that place, and there were other
>> options for them. It wasn't like that in the 90s when it was created.
>>
>> So, the community decided to transform the place in a cultural house. A
>> couple of years ago we started to teach contemporary dance because a
>> volunteer teacher appeared. Then, other teacher approached to teach
>> colombian salsa, and then other teacher offered himself to teach guitar
>> and so on.
>>
>> We now have spaces for dance, teather, guitar, a library, and some
>> computers were donated recently. I proposed them to use free software,
>> and talked to them about it and they agreed. I choose Trisquel and was
>> in the process. I started my own project too; a science club with kids.
>>
>> Because of COVID-19, our activites halted. As I mentioned, the people of
>> the cultural house are a mix of academics from univerties, but common
>> people without formal education and not much knowledge on computing. We
>> have a teacher of agroecology who is knowleadgeable about that topic,
>> but not much in computers.
>>
>> I taught them to use Jitsi Meet and BigBlueButton. It was not
>> easy. Jitsi was a little simpler, but not everyone could use BBB. I
>> suspect the reason is an old cellphone, but the preventive isolation
>> does not allow me to really diagnose the problem. It's an example. Other
>> guys have really slow computers and most of them have Windows. We're
>> just beginning with free software and I haven't had the opportunity to
>> make an installation festival. And other problems have arisen.
>>
>> So, expecting them to learn emacs, in Windows and Git does not sound
>> like a very good idea. For them, accesing a site with their browsers is
>> more natural, because all of them at least have an e-mail account. I
>> doubt 30 minutes are enough for learning emacs (I recently tried to show
>> the basics to a friend who's a programmer and is used to VSCode and he
>> seemed really confused and kind of gave up).
>>
>> The other reasons is that our focus are not assignments. We want to
>> create educational resources for our classes.
>>
>> Thanks again for your suggestions and ideas.
>
> Thank you for such a beatiful story. Nevertheless, I guess that you do
> not believe me that Emacs can be made very easy to learn by adding
> buttons to it. Maybe I will learn to add them and show you a snapshot. I
> am not sure if I will have time, though. I am sorry if I might not make
> it.
>

Hehe, thanks. I do believe it because I've seen it, for example, in
customize and other packages. Maybe I'm underestimating the other
teachers. I'll make some experimentation, and, maybe, we could use
something simpler eventually.

Sometimes it's a matter of getting used to a different way of doing
things. The usage of a browser is not neccesarily better, it's just a
more familiar interface for most people because most people use it for
other stuff. I like default keybindings in emacs, but some people prefer
and even think those keybindings are unfamiliar and unwelcome to
newcomers (so, they recommend CUA mode). Those who come from vim may use
evil.

I've been trying to make baby steps with them. Because of our community
principles, we believe in free software, but, in practice, not many of
them have switched from Chrome yet, for example, even if they accept the
implications of using it, and even if there is a clear alternative in
Firefox. It's a resistance to change. The same has happened with Jitsi
Meet and BBB (but we've used them exclusively): some people are used to
the layout of Zoom, and they resist an slightly different layout, even
if it's a better one, or if it's not such a big deal.

Anyway, I'll keep on trying. Thanks for your interesting comments,
everyone.

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