Debtags for defining the minimal age that a program can generally be used

Benjamin Mesing bensmail at gmx.net
Sat Sep 21 09:41:33 UTC 2013


Hi,

as a semi-active member of the debtags project I am more involved in the
technical side. But generally I like your idea. 

I would suggest to add those tags to the "junior::" facet. I would also
suggest to limit the age-classification not to games but generally to
software targeted for kids (e.g. tuxpaint). 

When you've reached consensus about whether to have such tags and which
ones to use, please start a new thread ony debtags-devel and list the
tags you would like us to add. We will then add the tags to the
vocabulary. 

Best regards

Ben



On Thu, 2013-09-05 at 23:00 +0200, Miriam Ruiz wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> [1] https://wiki.debian.org/Kids/Classification
> 
> 
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