I wanted to thank Caroline and Walter for doing the presentation at
FOSSed.
Caroline was very generous with her time and we had many questions!
The level of remote support was very impressive. Despite some of the
roadblocks encountered during the presentation, I left the conference
with enough understanding and software to get a classroom using Sugar.
The demo done as we were trying to boot up was helpful. An orientation
prior to that would also have been helpful.
Laura Johns
Middle School Math&Science
Penobscot ME
[email protected]
Begin forwarded message:
From: Caroline Meeks <[email protected]>
Date: June 26, 2009 8:19:11 PM EDT
To: iaep <[email protected]>
Subject: [IAEP] Reflections on giving a Sugar Demo
First off it went well. The teacher's loved Sugar, saw a lot of
possibilities and are motivated to help us go forward. People talked
with me about it the entire conference.
That said, I learned a lot of lessons and there are things I would
do differently.
Always bring an AP. Don't use existing wireless.
When I tested before class the wireless seemed great. We packed the
room. The wireless network got very flacky. Next time I'm going to
bring an AP and just try to collaborate locally. I'm thinking of
getting one of the open-mesh $29.00 units and seeing how that works.
Either get USB sticks to boot OR teach about Sugar, don't try to do
both at once.
The class was packed and although most of the computers finally
booted to sugar it took a lot of time. Until we really get things
down I think I'm going to hand out LiveCDs then after wards tell
people I'll work with them one-on-one to get it to boot from USB.
We need to create a list of Sugar Basics that we cover before we
turn people loose to explore.
This is the Home Screen.
This icon represents you and its your colors
Here is how you get to the frame.
This is the Neighborhood view. You can get there from the frame or
from F1.
Here is how you connect to the AP. More color in the circle means
stronger signal (Someone told me that he thought he should go for
the empty ones cause it meant they had more room)
This the your group view. Your friends will show up here.
This is the Journal where your work is saved.
To do something go to your Home screen and click on any of these
icons. They are the activities.
We didn't do this and people got frustrated needlessly. We want them
to explore but I think we need to figure out what people need to
oriented too before they explore. I wonder if showing the demo
movie would have been a good way to cover this.
We didn't get to the lesson plan I created because we had so many
people and so many problems booting. Luckily Walter can do a Sugar
and Turtle Art presentation in his sleep.
One thing we should have done, and would have gotten to if we had
been able to follow our plan, is to demo Write and peer editing.
This is a big deal for teachers. We need to remember to do it early
in the presentation, before we get sucked into playing with the cute
turtle.
--
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
[email protected]
617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax _______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
[email protected]
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
[email protected]
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
