[FM Discuss] Dream School manual in English, Finnish and Swedish

[Tomi Toivio]

Hi,

We have been planning this three language manual project, but I don't
think I have mentioned it on the mailing list yet. We need to think
about how to write a manual in three languages: Finnish, Swedish and
English. Or actually I would say it will be written in English and
Finnish and translated into Swedish. Has anybody ever even started to
translate a manual into Swedish?

This is a little bit of an offshoot of a current writing project. We
have been writing a manual with the Finnish Ministry of Education
about how Finnish schools can migrate into Open Source / Linux. So
basically it will be the Official FLOSS Manual for schools in Finland.
It is more about how to migrate into FLOSS rather than about the
technology itself. During this process we realized that we really need
another manual for the most important technological innovation coming
out of the FLOSS in schools scene.

One of the most important systems for schools is the Dream School or
Unelmakoulu (http://www.dreamschool.eu/). It was created by three
different schools in the city of Kauniainen. It is a completely
grass-roots project, which was basically built bit by bit based on the
ideas of the teachers of those schools. It is not easy to explain
without access to the demonstration version. Actually in the city of
Kauniainen all Finnish-speaking schools use it, and all
Swedish-speaking schools use closed source. Which probably explains
why the Swedish version will be a translation.

Dream is basically an open source cloud service for thin clients,
which means you can use any old computer, mobile device or tablet to
access it. Teachers and students have all of the services they need
available with a single login. So it can be used from anywhere. For
schools it means that the costs are greatly reduced and the
administration of the system is extremely easy. For the students it
means that they have everything in a single service that can be
accessed from anywhere.

Dream platform is a remote desktop. It has the basic components that
are needed in schools like a suitcase where you store your homework,
email and an embedded Moodle. It also has some more special components
like a game factory for making games and a video service which is like
a You Tube without adult trolls. And teachers have the admin rights to
give school assignments. Since it already has Moodle I am wondering if
it would even be hard to make a customized version with the kind of
services you would need for working on FLOSS Manuals or other open
source projects.

Now the Finnish FLOSS Manuals and the Dream team are starting a Dream
manual project. The first goal is to recycle all existing
documentation, write and publish the first version of the manual as
fast as possible, and then we can think about how to proceed in order
to write version two. I think that the second version should be
written with teachers from the schools using the Dream platform, so it
would become more like a manual for schools instead of a generic
software manual.

So I think that this Dream manual is the biggest possible priority for
the Finnish FLOSS Manuals. First of all the platform makes transition
into FLOSS an extremely easy, cheap and attractive possibility for
schools. The second point is that we need FLOSS alternatives to cloud
services. The third point is that this platform is likely to become a
global project, so this is the first time it actually makes sense to
translate a Finnish manual into English instead of the other way
around. The fourth point is that there are not so many possibilities
to even collaborate directly with local software projects, since most
of them are not local any more when they reach the stage of thinking
about writing manuals. Which is why most of the collaboration is with
educational organizations instead of software projects.

The manual will be available in Finnish, English and Swedish. So we
need to set up the English and Swedish versions on the English site
and the Finnish version on the Finnish site. I think that many
chapters in the first version would be written in English in order to
avoid translating the existing documentation twice. Finnish
translation can be done simultaneously, but Swedish translation would
be started when the manual is completed. But this will be a manual in
three languages. I hope there will be several more languages soon.

It will be published on the Dream web site as well as FLOSS Manuals,
but there is probably a need to make an additional customized
Bookipublisher Lite version like some of the books have. The Dream
team has a lot of video tutorials available, so there should be a
special version of the manual with lots of embedded video, and that is
not possible on the FM sites.

It might be similar to OLPC/Sugar manuals in the sense that it is used
by children at school. So I would say a lot of it would be simple
procedures with lots of screenshots, and then there would be a
separate part two for teachers in the end. And possibly a short third
part of technical stuff. Maybe OLPC/Sugar people can give advice about
what a FLOSS Manual for children should be like. But this is why I
think that the second version should be done with teachers. I cannot
really go and tell the teachers they want to write a computer manual,
but showing them the first version and asking them how it would be
more useful in a school setting might work a lot better.

-- 
Best Regards
Tomi Toivio
Open Source Coordinator
http://fi.flossmanuals.net/
tomi at flossmanuals.net
+358453536625