Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] interesting article on evaluation
Walter, I agree with your position about this. I often think of it in these terms: we want to talk about depth of learning and not just proficiency in regards to skills and content. To do that, we need to offer al alternative world to the one that argues for more and more high stakes testing. The tools you propose seem really consistent with that. And thanks for sharing the article. Gerald On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Amidst all the discussion about the future of Sugar, it would be good to keep in mind what more we can do in terms of analyitics and evaluation. We have a pretty decent mechanism (wrtiten by Martin) for data gathering about what kids do; the portfolio for assessing what they have done; and a few rubrics for tying together some of these data. The ideas expressed in [1] suggest we could do more. regards. -walter [1] http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/02/26/things-every-kid-should-master/uM72LGr63zeaStOp9zGyrJ/story.html -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Fun-Sized Sugar… Why Not?
Caryl, I am really intrigued by this idea, and am interested in participating in the project. I would encourage that you add Turtle Blocks to the scope of work. Thanks. Gerald On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 12:42 AM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.comwrote: Hi Folks… First I would like to state that I fully support the maintenance and expansion of Sugar for the XO family and believe that should be one of the main goals of Sugar Labs as we move into the future. That said, I want to speak out in favor of developing a different version of Sugar that could be distributed worldwide, either (1) to the many Android tablets and phones that are or will be in the hands of children and teachers, in the form of an app available free at the PlayStore or, (2) on its own new website where students could create projects., much like that of Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tip_bar=getStarted). My reasons for advocating this approach are several, including such things as: The large number of devices already in use that could utilize Sugar in this way The large number of new users that could be continuously added (unlike for the XO) There are probably any more people are able to create and work in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript than can program Sugar Activities in Python. Of course, this would necessitate starting most of these from scratch, but the project could be started with a small set of key Activities that would allow users to have the Sugar experience and begin using it for Project Based Learning. I have put together a small mind-map (attached) showing what this might include for starters. There would be a set of resource Activities (such as the 4 shown on the map) and a set of creating Activities (like the 4 on the map) that would use some or all of the resource Activities to create curriculum based projects. As time goes on, more Activities could be added to updates. Recruiting for this project could reach out to new volunteers at places like SCaLE and Linux Users Groups. I would love to help work with a small team to recruit and organize this effort. I am just a beginner at HTML, but understand a lot about Sugar and how to use it for learning. Caryl ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] Sugar oversight board meeting
Walter, I will be at the meeting, and expect to arrive late. Gerald On Sunday, November 3, 2013, Walter Bender wrote: We have a SLOB meeting scheduled for Monday, 4 November at 9AM EST (2PM GMT). Please join us on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting (chat.sugarlabs.org) Tenemos una reunión SLOB programada para el lunes, 4 de noviembre a 09 a.m. EST (14:00 GMT). Por favor, únase a nosotros en irc.freenode.net #-sugar-meeting (chat.sugarlabs.org) Topics: (1) election (2) ambassadors (3) tech/learning meetups (4) status of Trip Advisor grant (5) Google Code In (6) your topic here... -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org javascript:; http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar 0.100.0 (stable)
This is really impressive. Congratulations! Gerald On Oct 31, 2013 8:45 PM, Daniel Narvaez dwnarv...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, we are proud to announce the release of Sugar 0.100.0. A lot is new for both users and developers, see the release notes http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.100/Notes Sources: http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-datastore/sugar-datastore-0.100.0.tar.xz http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-artwork/sugar-artwork-0.100.0.tar.xz http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-runner/sugar-runner-0.100.0.tar.xz http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar/sugar-0.100.1.tar.xz http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-toolkit-gtk3/sugar-toolkit-gtk3-0.100.0.tar.xz Thanks to everyone that contributed with code, translations and testing! -- Daniel Narvaez ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2013-10-22
Walter, This is very inspiring work. Thank you. Gerald On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: == Sugar Digest == Free software gives the license. Sugar provides the means. 1. I'm back from a week in Paraguay and Uruguay to celebrate Turtle Art Days in Caacupé and Montevideo. Turtle Art Day Caacupé exceeded my expectations. 275 students, their parents, and 77 teachers joined educators and Sugar developers from eight countries throughout the Americas and as far away as Australia (Tony Forster). Brian Silverman and Artemis Papert, the co-creators of Turtle Art, led workshops to a room full entralled children. Martin Abente, Andres Aguirre, and Alan Aguiar similarly led Butiá/Juky robots workshops, using TurtleBots. Claudia Urrea and I led workshops using Turtle Blocks, where the emphasis was on sensors and mutlimedia. Tony led a seminar with teachers on pedagogical framework for Turtle Art. We were assisted by Evolution children, youth leaders in Caacupé who attend school in the morning, teach in the afternoon, and on weekends supply technical support to school programs (I hope we are able to recruit many of them to participate in Google Code In, should Sugar Labs be chosen to participate again this year). While I have come to expect that children will deeply engage with Turtle Art, the fact that they maintained intense focus for three consecutive two-hour workshops, 70 to room, with only short breaks, was unexpected. Many thanks to Mary Gomez, Pacita Pena, Cecilia Alcala, and the Paraguay Educa team for all of the work they did behind the scenes (and in the classrooms) to make the day a success. Turtle Art Day Montevideo was teacher-focused rather than child-focused. Organized by José Miguel García, it attracted 70 teachers to ANEP for a series of workshops. Claudia and I began the day with a short lecture on pedagogy. The workshop themes included sensors (led by Guzman Trindad), robots (led by Andres and the Butiá team), advanced blocks, and turtle mathematics. During the robots workshop, we implemented inter-robot communication by taking advantage of some new collaboration blocks in Turtle Blocks (ported to TurtleBots): we mapped the accelerometer from one machine to the motors of another to make a remote-control steering wheel. In discussions the following day with Mariana Herrera, who works with children with severe physical disabilities, we came up with a simple adaptation that may enable her students to program Butiá using some buttons embedded in pillows. Sdenka Zobeida Salas Pilco and the children at an Aymara-speaking school organized a Turtle Art Day in Puno as well: Children and I organized quickly this event, they provided some ideas for celebrating, it was their idea to arrange the classroom and sticking balloons to the walls. Girls asked me to were the traditional local clothes. They helped me a lot. Also, they prepared a song, a poetry and riddles in Spanish and Aymara language. Finally, the little ones worked some codes, 4th graders were exploring the activity, and 6th graders organized the event. Other Turtle Art Days are following: in Costa Rica, Malaysia, and possibly Singapore. While the primary purpose of these Turtle Art Days is to promote children learning through programming, an important secondary goal was also achieved: programming is not just in service of geometry (what Papert called Mathland) but also in service of whatever passion drives the child. (Artemis refers to the work she and Brian do as Artland. Work with sensors, robots, multimedia, etc., offer many mountains to climb.) 2. Other activities in Paraguay and Uruguay this week included EduJam in Asuncion, a Sugar Hackfest, a meeting with Pablo Flores and the Python Jóven, a Butiá workshop, and a Ceibal event for educators in Montevideo. Leticia Romero organized the first EduJam to be held regionally, at the National University of Asuncion. (I handed out 100 copies of Sugar on a Stick to interested attendees thanks to the generosity of Nexcopy [1].) It was well attended by educators and engineers from Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, et al. The hackfest was also well attended. It included testing of Sugar 100 in a session orchestrated by Gonzalo Odiard (a number of bugs were discovered and fixed), an introduction to the new HTML5/Javascript by Manuel Quiñones, and a discussion of a proposal Brian to use an embedded Logo environment in the Arduino brains of the various robots programmed with TurtleBots. The Butiá workshop was an opportunity for me to observe how children use TurtleBots in programming their robots -- a few of my observations led to some fine-tuning of the UI in TurtleBlocks-192. And a chance to get direct feedback from teachers who use Turtle Blocks in a wide range of activities. Eye-opening. We discussed the ongoing challenge of providing both a low floor and a high ceiling.
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Strange, Slightly Unsanitary Solution To Jumpy Curser Problem
Caryl, You can also just put a post it over the middle trackpad. Gerald On Apr 26, 2013 4:36 PM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi All, Some of the XO-1s I am prepping for use in an elementary school in a women't shelter here in LA have jumpy cursers. My personal G1G1 machine shares this problem. I was getting tired of doing the 4-finger salute so I tried something else... I licked my index finger. Voila! The problem was solved! Of course, after a time I had to do it again as my finger dried. So... I am wondering (haven't had time to test it yet), would dipping the finger into another liquid (maybe a slightly saline solution?) work just as well? Would wiping the touch pad with some type of liquid work just as well? Maybe with a sanitizing wipe? Do people with naturally sweaty fingers have fewer problems with a jumpy cursor? Food for thought... any suggestions? Ideas? Caryl ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Turtle Art question
One of my students had a question about Turtle Art that I couldn't answer: is it possible to have a sensing event kick off a program instead of a user action? Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs in GSoC 2013
This is really great news! On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: Sugar Labs has been accepted in Google Summer of Code 2013. Thanks to everyone in the community who contributed to our application. Now it is time to recruit students. More details coming your way soon. regards. -walter On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Manuel Quiñones ma...@laptop.org wrote: 2013/4/9 Kalpa Welivitigoda callka...@gmail.com: Hi all, I am really happy and impressed to see Sugar Labs listed in accepted organizations for Google Code of Summer 2013. Great news! This comunity is giving a boost :) -- .. manuq .. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Google Summer of Code project ideas
Walter, I am looking over this list. I am wondering about the requirements for a mentor. Thanks. Gerald On Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Walter Bender wrote: We have been accumulating project ideas for Google Summer of Code 2013 [1]. Please take a few minutes to add a favorite project or sign on as a co-mentor to an existing project. Also, feel free to help us refine the descriptions on the pages. (I've added a bit of text to the end of each project, describing how it benefits both Sugar and the student working on the project. These blurbs need some refining. The deadline is the 29th of this month, so please act in the next day or two. -walter [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2013 -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2013-03-03
Walter, The homework service you described would be incredibly useful. I would be happy to help test, I'd needed. Gerald On Mar 3, 2013 12:15 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: == Sugar Digest == 1. It has been crazy busy. With the upcoming XO4 launch, Sugar with touch support will be making its debut. The developer team has done a great job but we are lagging behind a bit on the activity level: Activities that use keyboard input need to be modified to use the on-screen keyboard; and now that tablet mode will be used more often, we need to better attend to the issue of screen rotation. In order to adapt to the on-screen keyboard, there are two adjustments that need to be made: (1) use either a GTK Entry or TextView instead of directly querying the keyboard; and (2) make sure that the Entry is visible when the keyboard is visible. To address both issues, I have been mostly using GTK Fixed in order to re-position the Entry appropriately. But also, I have been using a strategy of moving the Entry to the top of the activity. There are two issues with dealing with landscape vs portrait mode. One is to make sure that the work area of an activity accommodates the change in size and aspect ration. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is simply to define a square work are inside of a scrolling window. There are times when this strategy won't work, such as with Paint, but for the most part, it is a simple solution. The toolbars are another matter. It is often the case that not all of the elements fit when in portrait mode. The default behavior of Sugar, to make a list on a palette that displays on the edge of the screen is somewhat lacking, both in that many toolbar items are either not shown or inoperable in that form. And aesthetically, it is not very Sugar-like. I've been experimenting with some different approaches to generating palettes, and also moving some toolbar elements around (e.g., moving some buttons to secondary toolbars). Alas, none of these solutions are idea or completely generalizable. But I think there are harbingers of a solution. Another issue with touch is that Gtk2 ComboBoxes don't work. The problem has been fixed in the Gtk3 version of the Sugar tool-kit, but, not being a fan of Combo Boxes to begin with, I see it as an opportunity to minimize their use. For example, using bigger/smaller buttons is arguably an easier way to adjust font size using touch. Ultimately, we'll want to add more gesture support as well. Many activities could readily support panning and zooming. And a long press can replace the un-Sugar-like reliance of right-click that some activities are using. I've packaged many of these ideas into some experimental (and production) versions of some activities (Please see [1-7]). Feedback most welcome. 2. It occurred to me that the Web Services framework that Raul and I developed a few weeks ago might make a nice home for a simple classroom service: handing in homework assignments and receiving back comments from the teacher and fellow students. Such a service could be dropped right into the same framework we built for Facebook, so in the Journal, there would be a Share with (or Copy to) Teacher and comments would appear in the Journal detail view (and be directly integrated in the Portfolio). Simple, but potentially quite useful. === Tech Talk === 3. Adam Holt reported on the School Server Hack Sprint held in Toronto (See [8]). 4. Daniel Narvaez has been making great progress on Agora, his attempt to achieve the goals of the Sugar Learning Platform using the web technologies (See [9]). === Sugar Labs === Visit our planet [10] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments. -walter --- [1] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Abacus-47.1.xo [2] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chart-9.1.xo [3] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chat-78.1.xo [4] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Labyrinth-14.4.xo [5] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Portfolio-41.2.xo [6] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Speak-44.6.xo [7] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4027#version-173 (TurtleBlocks-173.xo) [8] http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2013-February/006258.html [9] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-February/041847.html [10] http://planet.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2013-03-03
Stephen, Feel free to have Justin get in touch with me if we can help. Gerald On Mar 3, 2013 12:41 PM, STEPHEN JACOBS itprofjac...@gmail.com wrote: new round of the RIT HFOSS Class begins tomorrow. While I'm not teaching it Justin Sherrill, included in on it, will be. It might be possible to have those students test such a homework service as well. On Mar 3, 2013, at 12:19 PM, Gerald Ardito wrote: Walter, The homework service you described would be incredibly useful. I would be happy to help test, I'd needed. Gerald On Mar 3, 2013 12:15 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: == Sugar Digest == 1. It has been crazy busy. With the upcoming XO4 launch, Sugar with touch support will be making its debut. The developer team has done a great job but we are lagging behind a bit on the activity level: Activities that use keyboard input need to be modified to use the on-screen keyboard; and now that tablet mode will be used more often, we need to better attend to the issue of screen rotation. In order to adapt to the on-screen keyboard, there are two adjustments that need to be made: (1) use either a GTK Entry or TextView instead of directly querying the keyboard; and (2) make sure that the Entry is visible when the keyboard is visible. To address both issues, I have been mostly using GTK Fixed in order to re-position the Entry appropriately. But also, I have been using a strategy of moving the Entry to the top of the activity. There are two issues with dealing with landscape vs portrait mode. One is to make sure that the work area of an activity accommodates the change in size and aspect ration. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is simply to define a square work are inside of a scrolling window. There are times when this strategy won't work, such as with Paint, but for the most part, it is a simple solution. The toolbars are another matter. It is often the case that not all of the elements fit when in portrait mode. The default behavior of Sugar, to make a list on a palette that displays on the edge of the screen is somewhat lacking, both in that many toolbar items are either not shown or inoperable in that form. And aesthetically, it is not very Sugar-like. I've been experimenting with some different approaches to generating palettes, and also moving some toolbar elements around (e.g., moving some buttons to secondary toolbars). Alas, none of these solutions are idea or completely generalizable. But I think there are harbingers of a solution. Another issue with touch is that Gtk2 ComboBoxes don't work. The problem has been fixed in the Gtk3 version of the Sugar tool-kit, but, not being a fan of Combo Boxes to begin with, I see it as an opportunity to minimize their use. For example, using bigger/smaller buttons is arguably an easier way to adjust font size using touch. Ultimately, we'll want to add more gesture support as well. Many activities could readily support panning and zooming. And a long press can replace the un-Sugar-like reliance of right-click that some activities are using. I've packaged many of these ideas into some experimental (and production) versions of some activities (Please see [1-7]). Feedback most welcome. 2. It occurred to me that the Web Services framework that Raul and I developed a few weeks ago might make a nice home for a simple classroom service: handing in homework assignments and receiving back comments from the teacher and fellow students. Such a service could be dropped right into the same framework we built for Facebook, so in the Journal, there would be a Share with (or Copy to) Teacher and comments would appear in the Journal detail view (and be directly integrated in the Portfolio). Simple, but potentially quite useful. === Tech Talk === 3. Adam Holt reported on the School Server Hack Sprint held in Toronto (See [8]). 4. Daniel Narvaez has been making great progress on Agora, his attempt to achieve the goals of the Sugar Learning Platform using the web technologies (See [9]). === Sugar Labs === Visit our planet [10] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments. -walter --- [1] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Abacus-47.1.xo [2] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chart-9.1.xo [3] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chat-78.1.xo [4] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Labyrinth-14.4.xo [5] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Portfolio-41.2.xo [6] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Speak-44.6.xo [7] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4027#version-173 (TurtleBlocks-173.xohttp://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4027#version-173(TurtleBlocks-173.xo ) [8] http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2013-February/006258.html [9] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-February/041847.html [10] http://planet.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] About to teach Python programming
Stephen, Thanks for the checking in and for the resource. I look forward to playing with it. The course is going well. I have designed it as a discovery experience, just like when I have taught Scratch and Etoys and TurtleArt. And, Walter, I have to say that my students with prior Scratch and/or TurtleArt experience are doing the best (which is a totally unsurprising finding). I will be blogging about the course when I have a chance to catch up. Thanks. Gerald On Friday, February 8, 2013 at 1:56 AM, Steve Thomas wrote: Gerald, Hope the course is going well. Another resource I just found which you might find useful is Project Euler (http://projecteuler.net/). I am considering using it as extra credit problems. It depends on the the kids in your class. The problems are geared towards math/programming geeks. Here are some examples: If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23. Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000. --- A palindromic number reads the same both ways. The largest palindrome made from the product of two 2-digit numbers is 9009 = 91 99. Find the largest palindrome made from the product of two 3-digit numbers. What we really need (for those who are not mathematical/logical types) are some nice libraries that allow kids to play with images and sounds. Two really fun examples (in Scratch 2.0) are You've been Framed (http://beta.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10036009/) by JJROCKER and Round (http://beta.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10036112/) by Jens Mönig If we had a simple interface to the TamTam instruments you could do something like Jens' Round. Also if we had a way to simple way to reference each pixel (R, G and B values) in an image and modify them, kids could do some fun mods on You've been Framed. There is a great course from Cousera CS101 (https://www.coursera.org/course/cs101) image manipulation (using JavaScript). If we had a similar library to the JavaScript one used in the course, it would be a lot of fun for the kids. Cheers, Stephen On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 10:14 PM, Mike Rehner babareh...@gmail.com (mailto:babareh...@gmail.com) wrote: Here is a list of Python resources if that would help- http://www.babarehner.com/ewrench1011/Python/index.html Cheers, Mike On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com (mailto:gma...@gmail.com) wrote: Stephen, I am starting two weeks from tomorrow. I am still trying to wrap my head about the key goals and projects. It would be great to share ideas. Gerald On Monday, January 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Steve Thomas wrote: On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 9:58 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au (mailto:fors...@ozonline.com.au) wrote: Hi As a beginner, I found creating a Sugar Activity difficult. More difficult than creating a program to run from Terminal or Pippy. You might get better value using Pygame and writing something that can run from Pippy. The goal could be to create more Pippy built in samples. If you are going to write an Activity, you could give them a 'hello world' template and get them to build on that rather than starting from the beginning. Your 'hello world' template could have the basics:a text box for text entry/display, a canvas for graphical display and an example of keyboard and mouse capture. Agreed. Having a template to build on for an Activity would make things much simpler. Good luck. Please ask if you need help. Ditto. When will you start the class? I am also teaching Python to some kids now, and interested sharing ideas. Stephen Tony gerald.ard...@gmail.com (mailto:gerald.ard...@gmail.com) wrote: Hello. I have been asked by my school district to teach a one semester course on computer programming to some of our high school students. I was already settled on Python. In my planning, I thought it would be great if the students built an application for Sugar/XO Laptop. I have, as I think you know, been using them in our school for a few years, I think the transition from consumer to producer would be great. I am not a Python programmer, although I understand the basic concepts and can muddle my way through. So,here's my question -- what should the students know/be able to do in Python before they are able to write an Activity? Beyond the basics, understanding the concept of classes and inheritance is pretty essential. Some GTK stuff, but that is pretty straightforward. -walter I hope this makes sense. And I appreciate your time. Best, Gerald Ardito ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] About to teach Python programming
Mike, This is great. Thanks. Gerald On Monday, January 14, 2013 at 10:14 PM, Mike Rehner wrote: Here is a list of Python resources if that would help- http://www.babarehner.com/ewrench1011/Python/index.html Cheers, Mike On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com (mailto:gma...@gmail.com) wrote: Stephen, I am starting two weeks from tomorrow. I am still trying to wrap my head about the key goals and projects. It would be great to share ideas. Gerald On Monday, January 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Steve Thomas wrote: On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 9:58 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au (mailto:fors...@ozonline.com.au) wrote: Hi As a beginner, I found creating a Sugar Activity difficult. More difficult than creating a program to run from Terminal or Pippy. You might get better value using Pygame and writing something that can run from Pippy. The goal could be to create more Pippy built in samples. If you are going to write an Activity, you could give them a 'hello world' template and get them to build on that rather than starting from the beginning. Your 'hello world' template could have the basics:a text box for text entry/display, a canvas for graphical display and an example of keyboard and mouse capture. Agreed. Having a template to build on for an Activity would make things much simpler. Good luck. Please ask if you need help. Ditto. When will you start the class? I am also teaching Python to some kids now, and interested sharing ideas. Stephen Tony gerald.ard...@gmail.com (mailto:gerald.ard...@gmail.com) wrote: Hello. I have been asked by my school district to teach a one semester course on computer programming to some of our high school students. I was already settled on Python. In my planning, I thought it would be great if the students built an application for Sugar/XO Laptop. I have, as I think you know, been using them in our school for a few years, I think the transition from consumer to producer would be great. I am not a Python programmer, although I understand the basic concepts and can muddle my way through. So,here's my question -- what should the students know/be able to do in Python before they are able to write an Activity? Beyond the basics, understanding the concept of classes and inheritance is pretty essential. Some GTK stuff, but that is pretty straightforward. -walter I hope this makes sense. And I appreciate your time. Best, Gerald Ardito ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Mike Rehner Groveport (Columbus) OH 43125 USA 614 497 9774 www.e-wrench.com (http://www.e-wrench.com) aldebaran.dnsdojo.org (http://aldebaran.dnsdojo.org) (Moodle test server) www.youtube.com/user/babarehner (http://www.youtube.com/user/babarehner) (YouTube Channel) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] About to teach Python programming
Stephen, I am starting two weeks from tomorrow. I am still trying to wrap my head about the key goals and projects. It would be great to share ideas. Gerald On Monday, January 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Steve Thomas wrote: On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 9:58 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au (mailto:fors...@ozonline.com.au) wrote: Hi As a beginner, I found creating a Sugar Activity difficult. More difficult than creating a program to run from Terminal or Pippy. You might get better value using Pygame and writing something that can run from Pippy. The goal could be to create more Pippy built in samples. If you are going to write an Activity, you could give them a 'hello world' template and get them to build on that rather than starting from the beginning. Your 'hello world' template could have the basics:a text box for text entry/display, a canvas for graphical display and an example of keyboard and mouse capture. Agreed. Having a template to build on for an Activity would make things much simpler. Good luck. Please ask if you need help. Ditto. When will you start the class? I am also teaching Python to some kids now, and interested sharing ideas. Stephen Tony gerald.ard...@gmail.com (mailto:gerald.ard...@gmail.com) wrote: Hello. I have been asked by my school district to teach a one semester course on computer programming to some of our high school students. I was already settled on Python. In my planning, I thought it would be great if the students built an application for Sugar/XO Laptop. I have, as I think you know, been using them in our school for a few years, I think the transition from consumer to producer would be great. I am not a Python programmer, although I understand the basic concepts and can muddle my way through. So,here's my question -- what should the students know/be able to do in Python before they are able to write an Activity? Beyond the basics, understanding the concept of classes and inheritance is pretty essential. Some GTK stuff, but that is pretty straightforward. -walter I hope this makes sense. And I appreciate your time. Best, Gerald Ardito ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org (mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org) http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] About to teach Python programming
Hello. I have been asked by my school district to teach a one semester course on computer programming to some of our high school students. I was already settled on Python. In my planning, I thought it would be great if the students built an application for Sugar/XO Laptop. I have, as I think you know, been using them in our school for a few years, I think the transition from consumer to producer would be great. I am not a Python programmer, although I understand the basic concepts and can muddle my way through. So,here's my question -- what should the students know/be able to do in Python before they are able to write an Activity? I hope this makes sense. And I appreciate your time. Best, Gerald Ardito ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] It's a book!
Rita, et. al. Thanks for this great work! Gerald On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Rita Freudenberg r...@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote: A New Etoys Book is available: Learning with Etoys Imagine, Invent, Insprire After participating in a Doc Camp at Google, the Etoys EducationTeam is happy to announce a new book. Read It: Learn various ways Etoys can be used in the classroom. Use It: Adapt it for your learners. Share It: Tell others about it and help us spread the word. Available for download at: http://wiki.squeakland.org/index.php/LearningWithEtoysI3 We would love your feedback or your contributions to our next volume. The Etoys Education Team Rita Freudenberg r...@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Robot runs on MSP430 + OLPC XO - QA and updated bundle request
Thanks, Yama. Nice job with the circuit diagram. Looking forward to answerJerry! Gerald On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 12:48 AM, Yama Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you for the interest, Gerald. I have uploaded a circuit diagram, and will be working on explaining what's what there BTW, I did the drawing on an XO 1, using Inkscape in Gnome. Slower than the quad core, but works! http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Bouncy_Robot_Linux_code let's ask Jerry (no pun: his website is http://askjerry.info) for the frame design - he has also a nifty tractor body design there. Hey Jerry! do you have handy the blueprint of the tricycle that we may share it with the friends here? Thanks! On 11/25/2012 08:32 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: Yama, This is really great. And thanks for updating the wiki (sorry about the cold, though). Can you provide specifics on the hardware/frame for the robot? Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 9:20 PM, Yama Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.comwrote: Bouncy robot powered by mspgcc+olpc/Sugar+msp430 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-jrNkWtavM So far mspdebug Linux tools work in OLPC's XO computer using the directions in http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 (major overhaul today, courtesy of a cold/flu) 1) I beg mspdebug people to vet excessive heresies this noob might have introduced in the How-To in that page. So far I am managing without -mcu - or -gdb. I actually have no idea what those are for, or if their unavailability explains my so far failure to UART, or if we should care... (for many things, it ain't broken...) 2) Fedora packaging people: any way to package mspdebug msp430-libc msp430-binutils msp430-gcc msp430mcu msp430-gdb ? What gets downloaded through yum channels in the XO is very, very outdated, and conflicts (cf. mcu and libc). Please feel free to forward, as I have no access to real Fedora people - don't even know where to look for them without making a nuisance of myself and undue noise, and certainly do not know who could maybe make a package(?) usable for the XO. Will this be fixable for the next OLPC OS? Daniel? 3) Robotics, Science, Sensors OLPC, IAEP people, please, if you could test the GCC toolchain? You do not need to have a Launchpad on hand. I am trying to catch bugs and usability issues. Are the instructions clear? as much as possible figuring out snags so it's easier for kids and normal people. *robot* The brains of this bouncy are an MSP430 microcontroller (a lowly g2152) controlling a L293 dual H bridge, senses two switches. Its brawn a couple geared DC motors on 9V PWM in an askjerry tricycle frame. Not counting shipping, less than USD $10 total. Coded in an XO-1 all the way. Enormous thanks to the mspgcc folks that helped me figure things like how to use more than one switch... ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ support-gang mailing listsupport-gang@lists.laptop.orghttp://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Robot runs on MSP430 + OLPC XO - QA and updated bundle request
Yama, This is really great. And thanks for updating the wiki (sorry about the cold, though). Can you provide specifics on the hardware/frame for the robot? Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 9:20 PM, Yama Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.com wrote: Bouncy robot powered by mspgcc+olpc/Sugar+msp430 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-jrNkWtavM So far mspdebug Linux tools work in OLPC's XO computer using the directions in http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 (major overhaul today, courtesy of a cold/flu) 1) I beg mspdebug people to vet excessive heresies this noob might have introduced in the How-To in that page. So far I am managing without -mcu - or -gdb. I actually have no idea what those are for, or if their unavailability explains my so far failure to UART, or if we should care... (for many things, it ain't broken...) 2) Fedora packaging people: any way to package mspdebug msp430-libc msp430-binutils msp430-gcc msp430mcu msp430-gdb ? What gets downloaded through yum channels in the XO is very, very outdated, and conflicts (cf. mcu and libc). Please feel free to forward, as I have no access to real Fedora people - don't even know where to look for them without making a nuisance of myself and undue noise, and certainly do not know who could maybe make a package(?) usable for the XO. Will this be fixable for the next OLPC OS? Daniel? 3) Robotics, Science, Sensors OLPC, IAEP people, please, if you could test the GCC toolchain? You do not need to have a Launchpad on hand. I am trying to catch bugs and usability issues. Are the instructions clear? as much as possible figuring out snags so it's easier for kids and normal people. *robot* The brains of this bouncy are an MSP430 microcontroller (a lowly g2152) controlling a L293 dual H bridge, senses two switches. Its brawn a couple geared DC motors on 9V PWM in an askjerry tricycle frame. Not counting shipping, less than USD $10 total. Coded in an XO-1 all the way. Enormous thanks to the mspgcc folks that helped me figure things like how to use more than one switch... ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Server-devel] gathering use cases
Sameer, Thanks for doing this work. Here are some thoughts In the deployment I have been managing we have used the server in two ways: 1. As a jabber server only. We have about 140 XO-1s, and without the jabber server, the cross-talk slowed down the devices dramatically when more than about 30 were running simultaneously. 2. As a wireless network access point. This was especially important in the dark times before our school reconfigured our wireless network to work properly with the XOs. When we began, Moodle was less important to us, but now that I have been Moodle with my 7th and 8th grade students (who are not using the XOs), I can see the benefit of using it with an XO deployment. I hope this is helpful. Thanks again. Gerald On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 12:07 AM, Chris Leonard cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.comwrote: Sameer, You should talk to SomosAzucar and Aleksey Lim about the use case for Sugar Network being developed for a pilot in LimaNorte. cjl On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: There are several use cases that may or may not get addressed when designing a particular software stack to address a requirement. The XS 0.7 is designed to be a single image install and comes with Moodle. Given that I work with Moodle everyday, I see the pros and cons of it being central on the XS. I am in fact fairly happy with its current design, but also realize that it was built for a specific use case or three that OLPC needed at the time. There is also an effort (currently dubbed XS Community Edition) that is attempting to address certain other use cases where Moodle and other services could possibly become optional. We saw this at the OLPC SF Community Summit. I hope it will grow up to be the next XS (but that's another thread). My concern is that perhaps, if we don't do our homework right, we will once again build something that will fail to address a use case or two. Can one design address all use cases? Maybe not. But it's good to know what those use cases are. To this end, I would like to collect data on different possible use cases from all kinds of deployments. I have a student (cc'd) who is working on this project currently. She will gather data from various deployments (suitcase, boutique, MoE etc) as much as possible (with the cooperation of projects, of course) and write a report on what we see out there. We'll gladly make the report available once it is done. Is this useful? What should the scope be? Initially I had thought of the server side, but that may be limiting. What should we gather? Location, school, size, personnel, skills, electricity, Internet access, language, sugar version, ... Feedback? cheers, Sameer -- Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Professor, Information Systems San Francisco State University http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://commons.sfsu.edu/ http://olpcsf.org/ http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/ ___ Devel mailing list de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] It's Time to Sign Up For Sensors!
Walter, How great it is that? Thanks. I don't think you included the link to the bits. Gerald On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 11:42 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: Slightly off topic, but I got my hands on a USB microscope the other day and could not resist writing the Turtle Art plugin for it. (Isn't part of a release yet, but the bits are available [1]). -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org [1] http://git.sugarlabs.org/turtleart/mainline/commit/e5b4cffe8976d7193a6cb3f8c1e6fd377433d67d ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Hello all. Thanks for all the support with this project. At Tony's suggestion, I downgraded the XO-1 to build 883 (11.3.0), and the the We Do works fine in TurtleBots. Walter shared his new We Do plug in, which worked fine with Turtle Art 160. Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, I have been testing it out this afternoon. It works really well. I only have one We Do here, so I can't test out if it sees different devices. There is one quirky thing. When the script is running a motor, the Stop icon disappears. Then, if you use ctrl-s to stop the script, the blocks disappear. You could just keep a motor=0 block around... I suppose I could auto-stop the motor when the program stops executing, but I think that might limit the utility somewhat. (The Stop Button is for the Turtle Art program, not the WeDo motor.) And a question, how do you reverse the direction of the motor? Should reverse with a negative number. enjoy. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 11:46 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 1:27 AM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: I think that you cannot check what sensor is connected.. Butia have hotplug and show instantly that a sensor is connect. Lego not have that, and the only check possible: get a value, if no gives errors, maybe there are a sensor of that type connected.. The usual approach would be to add a device input to the blocks... device 1, device 2, device 3 That can works, but I don't like it taking into consideration that you have put the port where each sensor/motor is connected. I think in a special block that sets the brick that you want to use. For example: - you have 2 bricks connected -if you want to: read color sensor from brick 1 in port 1 -turn motor in port b of brcik 2 with power 100 The code will be: select brick (1) read sensor (color, port 1) select brcik (2) turn motor (port b, 100) See that all the blocks no have changes, only uses the select brick to set in the system, which brick get the next functions. The important of this change: when you have only 1 brick, the code no have changes! Opinions? Regards! Alan From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 14:45:48 -0400 To: walter.ben...@gmail.com CC: alan...@hotmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question Walter, Agreed. I am happy to continuing working with you on this. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, if we are crossing devices? Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams. The usual approach would be to add a device input to the blocks... device 1, device 2, device 3... But also, I should do a better job of autodetecting which sensors are available. The whole thing should be more dynamic. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep Attached is a BETA version of a new WeDo plugin that supports multiple devices. It follows a schema similar to what Alan proposes above. I only have one device, so it is not tested for multiple devices, however, it seems to work for one device and includes a new feature which tests for devices before each start, rather than just at launch, so devices and be plugged in and unplugged without having to restart Turtle Art. Feedback greatly appreciated. regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Thanks for the help last night on the Arduino plugin. I know what I need to do. And now, another question. I have been working with the plugin for We Do robots. The plugin is installed and the palette is where it is supposed to be. But, the We Do does not respond to the program. When I look at the Turtle Arts plugin page ( http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art/Plugins), I am directed to this link: https://github.com/itdaniher/WeDoMore/tree/master/udev to download directions for setting up permissions. However, there are two files there and I am not sure what to do with them. I would appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, Thanks for the amazingly quick response. I see TurtleBot. I would like to learn how to create my own spin, so please do walk me through it. The easiest thing to do is to: (1) clone the TA project* (2) load the plugins you are interested in (3) run setup.py dist_xo to generate a new .xo bundle * git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/turtleart/mainline.git It may be useful to change the version number, for example, 160.1 instead of 160 in activity/activity.info I will work more with the Launchpad. So far, it seems very much like the Arduino. Once I know more, I will start to talk to you about requirements for the plugin. OK. No hurry as I have my hands full at the moment. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I have been playing with the Turtle Blocks plugins for Follow Me, We Do Robots, Lego Mindstorms, and Arduino. They installed perfectly in Turtle Blocks (as expected). I have two questions: 1. I will need to install Turtle Blocks and these plugins on 25-50 XO-1s. Do I have to do the plugins one by one on each machine? TurtleBot comes with all of the above plugins pre-installed. It is also possible to create a special spin of Turtle Art with just the plugins you want (several deployments do this and I could walk you through the process) 2. How do I go about requesting plug in(s) for the TI Launchpad? I need to know more about how to talk to the TI Launchpad and what sorts of interactions between it and TA you are looking for. -walter Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Walter, Thanks. Sorry if this is elementary. So, I download both files on the XO, and then run the rules script? Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the help last night on the Arduino plugin. I know what I need to do. And now, another question. I have been working with the plugin for We Do robots. The plugin is installed and the palette is where it is supposed to be. But, the We Do does not respond to the program. When I look at the Turtle Arts plugin page (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art/Plugins), I am directed to this link: https://github.com/itdaniher/WeDoMore/tree/master/udev to download directions for setting up permissions. However, there are two files there and I am not sure what to do with them. 99-lego-WeDo.rules are the rules and install_driver.sh is the script to run to install them. -walter I would appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, Thanks for the amazingly quick response. I see TurtleBot. I would like to learn how to create my own spin, so please do walk me through it. The easiest thing to do is to: (1) clone the TA project* (2) load the plugins you are interested in (3) run setup.py dist_xo to generate a new .xo bundle * git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/turtleart/mainline.git It may be useful to change the version number, for example, 160.1 instead of 160 in activity/activity.info I will work more with the Launchpad. So far, it seems very much like the Arduino. Once I know more, I will start to talk to you about requirements for the plugin. OK. No hurry as I have my hands full at the moment. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I have been playing with the Turtle Blocks plugins for Follow Me, We Do Robots, Lego Mindstorms, and Arduino. They installed perfectly in Turtle Blocks (as expected). I have two questions: 1. I will need to install Turtle Blocks and these plugins on 25-50 XO-1s. Do I have to do the plugins one by one on each machine? TurtleBot comes with all of the above plugins pre-installed. It is also possible to create a special spin of Turtle Art with just the plugins you want (several deployments do this and I could walk you through the process) 2. How do I go about requesting plug in(s) for the TI Launchpad? I need to know more about how to talk to the TI Launchpad and what sorts of interactions between it and TA you are looking for. -walter Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Walter, Thanks for clarifying. I am not sure of the interest either. Mine may be an unusual case. I have We Dos and Mindstorms and Arduinos and Launchpads and so I am trying to test them all. I imagine I will reduce the number of tools shortly. Does that make sense? Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: Speaking of WeDo, I have a decent handle on supporting multiple devices at once, but I am curious as to (1) there is sufficient interest; and (2) if there are insights into how best present multiple devices to the user. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Alan, I am using XO-1 build 12.1.0. Thanks. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 14:00:35 -0400 From: walter.ben...@gmail.com To: gerald.ard...@gmail.com CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the help last night on the Arduino plugin. I know what I need to do. And now, another question. I have been working with the plugin for We Do robots. The plugin is installed and the palette is where it is supposed to be. But, the We Do does not respond to the program. When I look at the Turtle Arts plugin page (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art/Plugins), I am directed to this link: https://github.com/itdaniher/WeDoMore/tree/master/udev to download directions for setting up permissions. However, there are two files there and I am not sure what to do with them. 99-lego-WeDo.rules are the rules and install_driver.sh is the script to run to install them. The file 99-lego-WeDo.rules needs to be in: /etc/udev/rules.d (in the most linux versions) In the new Fedora changes for: /etc/udev... The Sugar 0.94? and newest have that rule included. I know that in Sugar 0.96 the rule is in place.. -walter I would appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, Thanks for the amazingly quick response. I see TurtleBot. I would like to learn how to create my own spin, so please do walk me through it. The easiest thing to do is to: (1) clone the TA project* (2) load the plugins you are interested in (3) run setup.py dist_xo to generate a new .xo bundle * git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/turtleart/mainline.git It may be useful to change the version number, for example, 160.1 instead of 160 in activity/activity.info I will work more with the Launchpad. So far, it seems very much like the Arduino. Once I know more, I will start to talk to you about requirements for the plugin. OK. No hurry as I have my hands full at the moment. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I have been playing with the Turtle Blocks plugins for Follow Me, We Do Robots, Lego Mindstorms, and Arduino. They installed perfectly in Turtle Blocks (as expected). I have two questions: 1. I will need to install Turtle Blocks and these plugins on 25-50 XO-1s. Do I have to do the plugins one by one on each machine? TurtleBot comes with all of the above plugins pre-installed. It is also possible to create a special spin of Turtle Art with just the plugins you want (several deployments do this and I could walk you through the process) 2. How do I go about requesting plug in(s) for the TI Launchpad? I need to know more about how to talk to the TI Launchpad and what sorts of interactions between it and TA you are looking for. -walter Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Alan, I did, but the We Do is not responding to the Turtle Art project. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:16 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: That version have the rules.. You only need install the plugin an try! -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 14:09:56 -0400 To: alan...@hotmail.com CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question Alan, I am using XO-1 build 12.1.0. Thanks. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 14:00:35 -0400 From: walter.ben...@gmail.com To: gerald.ard...@gmail.com CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the help last night on the Arduino plugin. I know what I need to do. And now, another question. I have been working with the plugin for We Do robots. The plugin is installed and the palette is where it is supposed to be. But, the We Do does not respond to the program. When I look at the Turtle Arts plugin page (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art/Plugins), I am directed to this link: https://github.com/itdaniher/WeDoMore/tree/master/udev to download directions for setting up permissions. However, there are two files there and I am not sure what to do with them. 99-lego-WeDo.rules are the rules and install_driver.sh is the script to run to install them. The file 99-lego-WeDo.rules needs to be in: /etc/udev/rules.d (in the most linux versions) In the new Fedora changes for: /etc/udev... The Sugar 0.94? and newest have that rule included. I know that in Sugar 0.96 the rule is in place.. -walter I would appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, Thanks for the amazingly quick response. I see TurtleBot. I would like to learn how to create my own spin, so please do walk me through it. The easiest thing to do is to: (1) clone the TA project* (2) load the plugins you are interested in (3) run setup.py dist_xo to generate a new .xo bundle * git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/turtleart/mainline.git It may be useful to change the version number, for example, 160.1 instead of 160 in activity/activity.info I will work more with the Launchpad. So far, it seems very much like the Arduino. Once I know more, I will start to talk to you about requirements for the plugin. OK. No hurry as I have my hands full at the moment. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I have been playing with the Turtle Blocks plugins for Follow Me, We Do Robots, Lego Mindstorms, and Arduino. They installed perfectly in Turtle Blocks (as expected). I have two questions: 1. I will need to install Turtle Blocks and these plugins on 25-50 XO-1s. Do I have to do the plugins one by one on each machine? TurtleBot comes with all of the above plugins pre-installed. It is also possible to create a special spin of Turtle Art with just the plugins you want (several deployments do this and I could walk you through the process) 2. How do I go about requesting plug in(s) for the TI Launchpad? I need to know more about how to talk to the TI Launchpad and what sorts of interactions between it and TA you are looking for. -walter Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Walter, I think this is an important enhancement as well. I am thinking of some kind of graphical distinction with the bricks, something like icons. The colors get too noisy. Would you also need some rules then about which bricks can and cannot connect together if we are crossing devices? Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:11 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 14:03:21 -0400 From: walter.ben...@gmail.com To: gerald.ard...@gmail.com CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question Speaking of WeDo, I have a decent handle on supporting multiple devices at once, but I am curious as to (1) there is sufficient interest; and (2) if there are insights into how best present multiple devices to the user. It's an important enhancement. You can build a bigger robot that have more motors/sensors. I have the same problem with NXT plugin: How is a good way of show the diferent blocks? Create another palette for the second brick?? -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] TI MSP430 running on XO 1 - Robotics!
Tony, I have been using the Energia IDE on my MacBook Pro for the Launchpad. As I understand it, it is an Arduino variant, free and open source: http://energia.nu/ I am not sure if it will run on the XO, but it is an option as I see it. I look forward to hearing about your progress. I will share whatever I learn as well. Thanks. Gerald On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:25 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Gerald Thanks for the update. I just this link to a project using the TI Launchpad as a robot brain: http://e2e.ti.com/group/microcontrollerprojects/m/msp430microcontrollerprojects/496334.aspx I am going to give it a try. I have just got my MSP430 launchpad and am planning the next step. http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/msp430_head.html It seems that there are 2 development IDE's: CCS and IAR Neither are open source but they are free when used with a 16kB code limitation. MSPGCC is open source but only works from the command line, no graphic IDE. Yamaplos documents the command line mspdebug at http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 (I do not know if mspdebug and MSPGCC are related) Currently Arduino, PIC, and LegoWeDo are being used with the OLPC XO with the programming being done on the XO, either in TurtleArt or Scratch. The electronics of the robotics kits are being used as I/O expanders. The students are not programming the processors on the robotics kits. (I am not sure what LegoNXT is doing). The Arduino is running Firmata software firmata.org/wiki/Protocol which turns it into a dumb slave, I think the Butia team are using similar (but different) software on their Arduino or PIC. Maybe the most productive approach is to find or write for the MSP430 a Firmata emulator, then the MSP430 can be used as a replacement for the Arduino, under control of TurtleArt (and maybe Scratch). The benefit is that the MSP430 is currently 1/10 the price of an Arduino. I am concerned that this subsidised price may not continue indefinitely or that schools may not be able to buy them in quantity though. I will look at MSP430 Firmata. So far I have installed the CCS IDE for Windows (it looked easier than Linux). I will let you know my progress Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Hello. I have been playing with the Turtle Blocks plugins for Follow Me, We Do Robots, Lego Mindstorms, and Arduino. They installed perfectly in Turtle Blocks (as expected). I have two questions: 1. I will need to install Turtle Blocks and these plugins on 25-50 XO-1s. Do I have to do the plugins one by one on each machine? 2. How do I go about requesting plug in(s) for the TI Launchpad? Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtle Blocks question
Walter, Thanks for the amazingly quick response. I see TurtleBot. I would like to learn how to create my own spin, so please do walk me through it. I will work more with the Launchpad. So far, it seems very much like the Arduino. Once I know more, I will start to talk to you about requirements for the plugin. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I have been playing with the Turtle Blocks plugins for Follow Me, We Do Robots, Lego Mindstorms, and Arduino. They installed perfectly in Turtle Blocks (as expected). I have two questions: 1. I will need to install Turtle Blocks and these plugins on 25-50 XO-1s. Do I have to do the plugins one by one on each machine? TurtleBot comes with all of the above plugins pre-installed. It is also possible to create a special spin of Turtle Art with just the plugins you want (several deployments do this and I could walk you through the process) 2. How do I go about requesting plug in(s) for the TI Launchpad? I need to know more about how to talk to the TI Launchpad and what sorts of interactions between it and TA you are looking for. -walter Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Arduino and XO-1
Tony, I have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops. (Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great. Tonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port. How do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE? Thanks so much. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1
Alan, I have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list. Any thoughts about what I should do next? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi, The Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are: 'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.' 'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.' 'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.' 'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.' The Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]. The checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is wrong. I can make a version without it to test.. Regards! Alan [1] http://firmata.org/wiki/Download -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:09:03 -0400 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au; support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 Tony, I have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops. (Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great. Tonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port. How do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE? Thanks so much. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1
Alan, Thanks. I'll try it out. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:51 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Replace this file in TurtleArt.activity/plugins/arduino/ This file not have any calidation, if something is wrong, in the log will appears that. -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:36:29 -0400 Subject: Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 To: alan...@hotmail.com CC: fors...@ozonline.com.au; support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Alan, I have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list. Any thoughts about what I should do next? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi, The Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are: 'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.' 'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.' 'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.' 'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.' The Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]. The checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is wrong. I can make a version without it to test.. Regards! Alan [1] http://firmata.org/wiki/Download -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:09:03 -0400 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au; support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 Tony, I have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops. (Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great. Tonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port. How do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE? Thanks so much. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1
Tony, Thanks. I'll check it out. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:09 AM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Gerald Maybe the baud rate or the device name do not match. Somewhere in the Arduino plugin code it searches for ttyusbn where n=1,2,3 ... Your Arduino board could be ttyusbn or ttyacmn where n increments each time you replug the Arduino. Somewhere, I think /dev , you can see what your Arduino is. Somewhere in the Firmata listing the baud rate is set, check its the same in the plugin code. Tony Alan, I have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list. Any thoughts about what I should do next? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi, The Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are: 'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.' 'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.' 'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.' 'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.' The Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]. The checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is wrong. I can make a version without it to test.. Regards! Alan [1] http://firmata.org/wiki/Download -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:09:03 -0400 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au; support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 Tony, I have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops. (Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great. Tonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port. How do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE? Thanks so much. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning Alan,divbr/divdivI have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list./divdivAny thoughts about what I should do next?brbrThanks.brGeraldbrbrdiv class=gmail_quote On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn span dir=ltra href=mailto:alan...@hotmail.com; target=_blank alan...@hotmail.com/a/span wrote:brblockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex divdiv dir=ltrHi,divbr/divdivThe Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are:/divdivbr/divdivdiv'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.'/divdiv'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.'/div div'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.'/divdiv'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.'/divdivbr/divdivThe Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]./div divbr/divdivThe checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is wrong./divdivI can make a version without it to test../divdivbr/divdivRegards!/divdivbr/divdivAlan/divdiv br/divdiv[1]�a href=http://firmata.org/wiki/Download; style=font-size:12pt target=_blankhttp://firmata.org/wiki/Download/a/divbrdivdiv/divhrFrom: a href=mailto:gerald.ard...@gmail.com; target=_blank gerald.ard...@gmail.com/abr Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:09:03 -0400brTo: a href=mailto: fors...@ozonline.com.au target=_blankfors...@ozonline.com.au/a; a href=mailto:support-g...@laptop.org; target=_blank support-g...@laptop.org/a; a href=mailto:iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; target=_blankiaep@lists.sugarlabs.org/abr Subject: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1divdiv class=h5brbrTony,divbr/divdivI have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops./divdiv(Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great./div divTonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port.br brHow do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE?brbrThanks so much.br/divdivGerald/div br/div/div___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) a href=mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org;
Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1
When I do the grep, I get nothing returned. When I go into the /dev directory, there is nothing ttyUSBn. What do I do now? Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:21 AM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: If he have the latest version, the plugin makes a list of the ttyUSB availables and try get the first that works. The header of the Arduino Plugin says: self._dev = '/dev/ttyUSB0' self._baud = 57600 self._arduino = None status,output = commands.getstatusoutput(ls /dev/ | grep ttyUSB) output = output.split('\n') for i in output: status,aux=commands.getstatusoutput(udevinfo -a -p /class/tty/%s | grep ftdi_sio /dev/null % i) if (not status): self._dev='/dev/%s' % i break I'm not sure if the udevinfo commands exist in the XO. In my Ubuntu 12.10 I not have it, only the udevadm Which sugar version you have? In the Terminal Activity: check for the N of the arduino: ls /dev/ | grep ttyUSB After, check if exist the udevinfo: See the n, and replace the * in this line: udevinfo -a -p /class/ttyUSB* | grep ftdi_sio -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 00:14:08 -0400 Subject: Re: Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au CC: alan...@hotmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Tony, Thanks. I'll check it out. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:09 AM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Gerald Maybe the baud rate or the device name do not match. Somewhere in the Arduino plugin code it searches for ttyusbn where n=1,2,3 ... Your Arduino board could be ttyusbn or ttyacmn where n increments each time you replug the Arduino. Somewhere, I think /dev , you can see what your Arduino is. Somewhere in the Firmata listing the baud rate is set, check its the same in the plugin code. Tony Alan, I have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list. Any thoughts about what I should do next? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi, The Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are: 'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.' 'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.' 'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.' 'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.' The Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]. The checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is wrong. I can make a version without it to test.. Regards! Alan [1] http://firmata.org/wiki/Download -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:09:03 -0400 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au; support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 Tony, I have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops. (Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great. Tonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port. How do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE? Thanks so much. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning Alan,divbr/divdivI have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list./divdivAny thoughts about what I should do next?brbrThanks.brGeraldbrbrdiv class=gmail_quote On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn span dir=ltra href=mailto:alan...@hotmail.com; target=_blank alan...@hotmail.com/a/span wrote:brblockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex divdiv dir=ltrHi,divbr/divdivThe Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are:/divdivbr/divdivdiv'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.'/divdiv'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.'/div div'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.'/divdiv'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.'/divdivbr/divdivThe Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]./div divbr/divdivThe checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is
Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1
Alan, When I plug and unplug the board, I noticed changes to the list of stuff in /dev. When the Arduino is plugged in, I see /dev/ttyACHO (or ttyACMO). Does this make sense? Thanks. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:42 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: When I do the grep, I get nothing returned. When I go into the /dev directory, there is nothing ttyUSBn. What do I do now? Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:21 AM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: If he have the latest version, the plugin makes a list of the ttyUSB availables and try get the first that works. The header of the Arduino Plugin says: self._dev = '/dev/ttyUSB0' self._baud = 57600 self._arduino = None status,output = commands.getstatusoutput(ls /dev/ | grep ttyUSB) output = output.split('\n') for i in output: status,aux=commands.getstatusoutput(udevinfo -a -p /class/tty/%s | grep ftdi_sio /dev/null % i) if (not status): self._dev='/dev/%s' % i break I'm not sure if the udevinfo commands exist in the XO. In my Ubuntu 12.10 I not have it, only the udevadm Which sugar version you have? In the Terminal Activity: check for the N of the arduino: ls /dev/ | grep ttyUSB After, check if exist the udevinfo: See the n, and replace the * in this line: udevinfo -a -p /class/ttyUSB* | grep ftdi_sio -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 00:14:08 -0400 Subject: Re: Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au CC: alan...@hotmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Tony, Thanks. I'll check it out. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:09 AM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Gerald Maybe the baud rate or the device name do not match. Somewhere in the Arduino plugin code it searches for ttyusbn where n=1,2,3 ... Your Arduino board could be ttyusbn or ttyacmn where n increments each time you replug the Arduino. Somewhere, I think /dev , you can see what your Arduino is. Somewhere in the Firmata listing the baud rate is set, check its the same in the plugin code. Tony Alan, I have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list. Any thoughts about what I should do next? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi, The Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are: 'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.' 'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.' 'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.' 'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.' The Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]. The checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is wrong. I can make a version without it to test.. Regards! Alan [1] http://firmata.org/wiki/Download -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:09:03 -0400 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au; support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 Tony, I have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops. (Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great. Tonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port. How do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE? Thanks so much. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning Alan,divbr/divdivI have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list./divdivAny thoughts about what I should do next?brbrThanks.brGeraldbrbrdiv class=gmail_quote On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn span dir=ltra href=mailto:alan...@hotmail.com; target=_blank alan...@hotmail.com/a/span wrote:brblockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex divdiv dir=ltrHi,divbr/divdivThe Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are:/divdivbr/divdivdiv'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.'/divdiv'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255
Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1
Alan, Upon doing some research, apparently /dev/ttyACM0 is the identifier for the board. Do I have to modify the plugin? If so, how do I do this? Thanks. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:42 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: When I do the grep, I get nothing returned. When I go into the /dev directory, there is nothing ttyUSBn. What do I do now? Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:21 AM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: If he have the latest version, the plugin makes a list of the ttyUSB availables and try get the first that works. The header of the Arduino Plugin says: self._dev = '/dev/ttyUSB0' self._baud = 57600 self._arduino = None status,output = commands.getstatusoutput(ls /dev/ | grep ttyUSB) output = output.split('\n') for i in output: status,aux=commands.getstatusoutput(udevinfo -a -p /class/tty/%s | grep ftdi_sio /dev/null % i) if (not status): self._dev='/dev/%s' % i break I'm not sure if the udevinfo commands exist in the XO. In my Ubuntu 12.10 I not have it, only the udevadm Which sugar version you have? In the Terminal Activity: check for the N of the arduino: ls /dev/ | grep ttyUSB After, check if exist the udevinfo: See the n, and replace the * in this line: udevinfo -a -p /class/ttyUSB* | grep ftdi_sio -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 00:14:08 -0400 Subject: Re: Re: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au CC: alan...@hotmail.com; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Tony, Thanks. I'll check it out. Gerald On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:09 AM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Gerald Maybe the baud rate or the device name do not match. Somewhere in the Arduino plugin code it searches for ttyusbn where n=1,2,3 ... Your Arduino board could be ttyusbn or ttyacmn where n increments each time you replug the Arduino. Somewhere, I think /dev , you can see what your Arduino is. Somewhere in the Firmata listing the baud rate is set, check its the same in the plugin code. Tony Alan, I have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list. Any thoughts about what I should do next? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn alan...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi, The Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are: 'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.' 'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.' 'ERROR: Value must be either HIGH or LOW.' 'ERROR: The mode must be either INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM or SERVO.' The Arduino board needs have the Firmata firmware [1]. The checks are catched with try/excepts that not allows see what is wrong. I can make a version without it to test.. Regards! Alan [1] http://firmata.org/wiki/Download -- From: gerald.ard...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 23:09:03 -0400 To: fors...@ozonline.com.au; support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: [IAEP] Arduino and XO-1 Tony, I have been trying to get the Arduino to work with the XO-1 laptops. (Thanks to your great blog posts) I have successfully installed the Arduino IDE on the laptop, and it works great. Tonight, I installed the Arduino plugin for Turtle Art and (once again using your blog posts), created my first project. When I click Start, I get an error: Check the Arduino and the number of port. How do I do this with TurtleArt/outside the IDE? Thanks so much. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning Alan,divbr/divdivI have uploaded the newest version of Firmata to the Arduino board, and still get the first error in your list./divdivAny thoughts about what I should do next?brbrThanks.brGeraldbrbrdiv class=gmail_quote On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn span dir=ltra href=mailto:alan...@hotmail.com; target=_blank alan...@hotmail.com/a/span wrote:brblockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex divdiv dir=ltrHi,divbr/divdivThe Arduino plugin have some checks. This checks are:/divdivbr/divdivdiv'ERROR: Check the Arduino and the number of port.'/divdiv'ERROR: Value must be a number from 0 to 255.'/div div'ERROR: Value must
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] TI MSP430 running on XO 1 - Robotics!
I just this link to a project using the TI Launchpad as a robot brain: http://e2e.ti.com/group/microcontrollerprojects/m/msp430microcontrollerprojects/496334.aspx I am going to give it a try. Gerald On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 5:18 AM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: You can have arduino IDE too with a yum install arduino I believe. Peter Yes, it worked for me http://tonyforster.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/arduino-and-xo-laptop.html Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] TI MSP430 running on XO 1 - Robotics!
I have finally got to work on this. Are there any GUI tools for the programming, or does it all have to be via command line? Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 7:50 AM, Luis Galindo llwwwl...@gmail.com wrote: I just bought the TI MSP430 to test it with the Xo 1.0. Thank you Yama :-) Luis El 10 de febrero de 2012 11:06, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com escribió: 2012/2/10 Yamaplos . yamap...@gmail.com: The TI MSP430 chips are a very attractive alternative to add robotic options for XO / Sugar users. Microcontrolers are the brain behind many engineering hobby and educational pursuits, but many alternatives are expensive or very hard to run in the XO. The TI Launchpad board, with a G2553 microcontroler and an extra G2452 in the box, is available from Texas Instruments for $4.30 USD, including shipping anywhere in the world (yes, hard to believe). http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29 Here are the instructions for running the Launchpad with the G2452. Maybe if the next iteratiuon of Sugar uses Fedora 15 we will be able to use the G2553 as well. http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 The next release will be based on F-17 but both those packages are listed. You might want to use one of the test releases based on F-17 that I've released (new one coming soon) to make sure it all works OK and feedback any issues to ensure we get them fixed for the final release. Peter ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] TI MSP430 running on XO 1 - Robotics!
Yama and Walter, Thanks. I was not as clear as I wanted to be. Arduino (or Energia, an alternative) would be fine. I was speaking about using mspdebug, which is purely command line based. Walter, I will play and then let you know about possible plug-ins. Turtle Art would be a much better solution for the kids. Thanks. Gerald On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: I have finally got to work on this. Are there any GUI tools for the programming, or does it all have to be via command line? If you figure out some useful command lines, we could probably make a TA plugin. (I've not got my hands of the device yet.) -walter Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 7:50 AM, Luis Galindo llwwwl...@gmail.com wrote: I just bought the TI MSP430 to test it with the Xo 1.0. Thank you Yama :-) Luis El 10 de febrero de 2012 11:06, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com escribió: 2012/2/10 Yamaplos . yamap...@gmail.com: The TI MSP430 chips are a very attractive alternative to add robotic options for XO / Sugar users. Microcontrolers are the brain behind many engineering hobby and educational pursuits, but many alternatives are expensive or very hard to run in the XO. The TI Launchpad board, with a G2553 microcontroler and an extra G2452 in the box, is available from Texas Instruments for $4.30 USD, including shipping anywhere in the world (yes, hard to believe). http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29 Here are the instructions for running the Launchpad with the G2452. Maybe if the next iteratiuon of Sugar uses Fedora 15 we will be able to use the G2553 as well. http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 The next release will be based on F-17 but both those packages are listed. You might want to use one of the test releases based on F-17 that I've released (new one coming soon) to make sure it all works OK and feedback any issues to ensure we get them fixed for the final release. Peter ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] TI MSP430 running on XO 1 - Robotics!
Peter, That part worked perfectly! I have just been used to the Arduino IDE, and so need to make a mental change. And, more importantly, get more experience with the TI Launchpad. Thanks. Gerald On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Yama and Walter, Thanks. I was not as clear as I wanted to be. Arduino (or Energia, an alternative) would be fine. I was speaking about using mspdebug, which is purely command line based. mspdebug is packaged in Fedora so it should be as simple as yum install mspdebug on an XO Peter On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: I have finally got to work on this. Are there any GUI tools for the programming, or does it all have to be via command line? If you figure out some useful command lines, we could probably make a TA plugin. (I've not got my hands of the device yet.) -walter Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 7:50 AM, Luis Galindo llwwwl...@gmail.com wrote: I just bought the TI MSP430 to test it with the Xo 1.0. Thank you Yama :-) Luis El 10 de febrero de 2012 11:06, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com escribió: 2012/2/10 Yamaplos . yamap...@gmail.com: The TI MSP430 chips are a very attractive alternative to add robotic options for XO / Sugar users. Microcontrolers are the brain behind many engineering hobby and educational pursuits, but many alternatives are expensive or very hard to run in the XO. The TI Launchpad board, with a G2553 microcontroler and an extra G2452 in the box, is available from Texas Instruments for $4.30 USD, including shipping anywhere in the world (yes, hard to believe). http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29 Here are the instructions for running the Launchpad with the G2452. Maybe if the next iteratiuon of Sugar uses Fedora 15 we will be able to use the G2553 as well. http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 The next release will be based on F-17 but both those packages are listed. You might want to use one of the test releases based on F-17 that I've released (new one coming soon) to make sure it all works OK and feedback any issues to ensure we get them fixed for the final release. Peter ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [OLE Bolivia] [Sur] TI MSP430 running on XO 1 - Robotics!
Yama, This worked great, and I wrote my first program (as indicated on the wiki). You started a thread a while back about using the Launchpads for robotics on the XO-1s. And this post turned me on to them. I have been working with the Arduino, but these boards are pretty neat. Have you been able to use them in robotics? Is your work documented somewhere. Thanks. Gerald On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:34 PM, Yama Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.com wrote: in Terminal: sudo yum install mspdebug msp430-libc It takes a while to complete, and seems to freeze a couple times for a minute or so (some 5-10 minutes or so total) In the more recent releases it finally works again - for at least a couple major Sugar releases the redirecting to the Fedora repositories was mangled. i.e., if you do not use the most recent releases of Sugar, follow this http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1#Error_:_cannot_retrieve_repository_metada Also, those earlier releases only handle MSP430 chips up to the 24xx family, not the more recent 25xx If you didn't have a better reason to update Sugar, this is a good one :-) (even if the newest Sugar doesn't allow for use of the Gnome desktop besides the image...) On 09/26/2012 11:14 AM, Peter Robinson wrote: On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Yama and Walter, Thanks. I was not as clear as I wanted to be. Arduino (or Energia, an alternative) would be fine. I was speaking about using mspdebug, which is purely command line based. mspdebug is packaged in Fedora so it should be as simple as yum install mspdebug on an XO Peter On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: I have finally got to work on this. Are there any GUI tools for the programming, or does it all have to be via command line? If you figure out some useful command lines, we could probably make a TA plugin. (I've not got my hands of the device yet.) -walter Thanks. Gerald On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 7:50 AM, Luis Galindo llwwwl...@gmail.com wrote: I just bought the TI MSP430 to test it with the Xo 1.0. Thank you Yama :-) Luis El 10 de febrero de 2012 11:06, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com escribió: 2012/2/10 Yamaplos . yamap...@gmail.com: The TI MSP430 chips are a very attractive alternative to add robotic options for XO / Sugar users. Microcontrolers are the brain behind many engineering hobby and educational pursuits, but many alternatives are expensive or very hard to run in the XO. The TI Launchpad board, with a G2553 microcontroler and an extra G2452 in the box, is available from Texas Instruments for $4.30 USD, including shipping anywhere in the world (yes, hard to believe). http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29 Here are the instructions for running the Launchpad with the G2452. Maybe if the next iteratiuon of Sugar uses Fedora 15 we will be able to use the G2553 as well. http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 The next release will be based on F-17 but both those packages are listed. You might want to use one of the test releases based on F-17 that I've released (new one coming soon) to make sure it all works OK and feedback any issues to ensure we get them fixed for the final release. Peter ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Bolivia mailing list boli...@lists.ole.org http://lists.ole.org/listinfo/bolivia ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2012-09-18
Daniel and others, This thread has really inspired me. I am going to work with my students to develop Sugar activities. I have James' book. Are there other resources I need? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 4:16 AM, Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net wrote: --- On Wed, 9/19/12, S. Daniel Francis fran...@sugarlabs.org wrote: From: S. Daniel Francis fran...@sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2012-09-18 To: Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net Cc: James Simmons nices...@gmail.com, iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org, Sugar-dev Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org, community-n...@lists.sugarlabs.org Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 11:27 PM Hi Kevin, 2012/9/19 Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net: Hearing from the kids who are making Sugar activities and more contributions, I'm really wanting to know what teaching environment made this possible? Summing my case all the cases I listened about, we usually learn by our self. Thinking about why Sugar, well, we could make desktop applications, but a free and decent way to share a program is difficult to find and there's not always a community where we can share what we make. While I can't speak for Sugar Labs, this sound like a very good problems to address. Scratch has a website to 'upload' its programs. I would really love to see a way to help young sugar activity hacker have a place for them to 'hack' on their games/activities. Maybe Activities.sugarlabs.org or some website in .uy? And maybe a forum? (I'm not someone to do this sadly but would think that the very capable people around the sugar community would find this idea motivating) Also I think Sugar needs activities, unlike desktops, where practically all is already made. Just Edward suggested us to tell our stories, but at the moment I'll not get into many details and only answer your questions. Are there activity hacking classes? In Uruguay there is only one activity hacking teacher: Flavio Danesse. OH wow. I have recently started to 'hack' on JAMedia and JAMediaTube. So I know his work. I wonder if making videos of his lecture would be something he could do and the kids could watch? He is an IT teacher, and every year he organizes a workshop where he teaches volunteer students to program in Python. The group Python Joven, in English Young Python.. If you and others can make 'clubs' in your area, that would be great, maybe they can setup a web 'forum' for everyone to exchange ideas. Currently, his students contributing here are Agustin Zubiaga and Cristhofer Travieso, they told me about another student who develops applications for Android. Is this kind of experimentation part of a turtleart class? For my part I can say yes and no... When I received my XO with Sugar I liked very much TurtleArt, but the teachers don't teach it very often, I had to look for documentation. Oh, that is sad, I'm surprised to read that. Have kids 'goggled' about programming on their own time and wanted to know about programming? Now you are right, I learn practically all 'googling'. Flavio's students told me they also learn(ed) a big part of what they know searching and investigating by them self. I think it's better because we can learn what we are interested in, also if it's not related with Sugar. yes that is true. learning what you want (being an auto-didact) is powerful. Are there computer programming classes and teachers that have assignments that ask the kids to explore? Programming is not often a subject at the school. I know about optional workshops, like Flavio's. My parents are teachers, and about three-four years ago, when I was ten years old, I used to go to the highschool where my parents worked and I listened to a workshop about web design (basic HTML development) and graphic design (with GIMP). That workshop was not a way to get young programmers, but it removed me the fear of seeing a source code as something strange or made for be understood by non-human people. Yes, many people have a fear of this 'scary' stuff. It something everyone who wants to learn about programming has to face. Turtleart and Scratch was suppose to help. Cheers. ~danielf P.S: Sorry, I don't speak English very well. Thanks you very much for your answers. I think you write English very well! -Kevin aka kevix ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2012-09-18
Walter, Sounds good. Thanks. Gerald P.S. And congratulations on the pending new arrival. On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 9:12 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Daniel and others, This thread has really inspired me. I am going to work with my students to develop Sugar activities. I have James' book. Are there other resources I need? I'd recommend using the Duplicate function in View Source. Have them make some changes to a favorite existing Sugar activity. regards. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 4:16 AM, Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net wrote: --- On Wed, 9/19/12, S. Daniel Francis fran...@sugarlabs.org wrote: From: S. Daniel Francis fran...@sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2012-09-18 To: Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net Cc: James Simmons nices...@gmail.com, iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org, Sugar-dev Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org, community-n...@lists.sugarlabs.org Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 11:27 PM Hi Kevin, 2012/9/19 Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net: Hearing from the kids who are making Sugar activities and more contributions, I'm really wanting to know what teaching environment made this possible? Summing my case all the cases I listened about, we usually learn by our self. Thinking about why Sugar, well, we could make desktop applications, but a free and decent way to share a program is difficult to find and there's not always a community where we can share what we make. While I can't speak for Sugar Labs, this sound like a very good problems to address. Scratch has a website to 'upload' its programs. I would really love to see a way to help young sugar activity hacker have a place for them to 'hack' on their games/activities. Maybe Activities.sugarlabs.org or some website in .uy? And maybe a forum? (I'm not someone to do this sadly but would think that the very capable people around the sugar community would find this idea motivating) Also I think Sugar needs activities, unlike desktops, where practically all is already made. Just Edward suggested us to tell our stories, but at the moment I'll not get into many details and only answer your questions. Are there activity hacking classes? In Uruguay there is only one activity hacking teacher: Flavio Danesse. OH wow. I have recently started to 'hack' on JAMedia and JAMediaTube. So I know his work. I wonder if making videos of his lecture would be something he could do and the kids could watch? He is an IT teacher, and every year he organizes a workshop where he teaches volunteer students to program in Python. The group Python Joven, in English Young Python.. If you and others can make 'clubs' in your area, that would be great, maybe they can setup a web 'forum' for everyone to exchange ideas. Currently, his students contributing here are Agustin Zubiaga and Cristhofer Travieso, they told me about another student who develops applications for Android. Is this kind of experimentation part of a turtleart class? For my part I can say yes and no... When I received my XO with Sugar I liked very much TurtleArt, but the teachers don't teach it very often, I had to look for documentation. Oh, that is sad, I'm surprised to read that. Have kids 'goggled' about programming on their own time and wanted to know about programming? Now you are right, I learn practically all 'googling'. Flavio's students told me they also learn(ed) a big part of what they know searching and investigating by them self. I think it's better because we can learn what we are interested in, also if it's not related with Sugar. yes that is true. learning what you want (being an auto-didact) is powerful. Are there computer programming classes and teachers that have assignments that ask the kids to explore? Programming is not often a subject at the school. I know about optional workshops, like Flavio's. My parents are teachers, and about three-four years ago, when I was ten years old, I used to go to the highschool where my parents worked and I listened to a workshop about web design (basic HTML development) and graphic design (with GIMP). That workshop was not a way to get young programmers, but it removed me the fear of seeing a source code as something strange or made for be understood by non-human people. Yes, many people have a fear of this 'scary' stuff. It something everyone who wants to learn about programming has to face. Turtleart and Scratch was suppose to help. Cheers. ~danielf P.S: Sorry, I don't speak English very well. Thanks you very much for your answers. I think you write English very well! -Kevin aka kevix ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] meeting reminder
I'll be there. Gerald On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Sebastian Silva sebast...@somosazucar.org wrote: I'll be there. Regards, Sebastian On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:04:20 -0400 Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: For once I remembered to send a meeting reminder :P We (the Sugar Labs Oversight Board) will be meeting tomorrow (Tuesday, September 18) at 17:00 EST, (21:00 UTC) on irc.freenode.net (#sugar-meeting). Please join us for a discussion of our annual report to the Software Freedom Conservancy and some topics regarding our programs in internationalization (i18n). regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ SLOBs mailing list sl...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] scheduling our next meeting
+1 On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 7:57 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: I forgot to send out a reminder about yesterday's meeting and thus we did not have a quorum. I'd like to try again early next week. How about Tuesday, 18 September at 17:00 EST, (21:00 UTC). Topics include our year-end summary for the SFC and Endangered Languages Project. regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ SLOBs mailing list sl...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] Local Labs motion
+1 Gerald On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:13 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Buried in the meeting log [1] is a motion [5] to adopt three changes [2, 3, 4] to the Trademark [6] and Local Labs [7] pages in the wiki. The motion was seconded and we began a vote, but whereas it seemed to be a controversial decision, I though it prudent to ask those who were not able to attend today's Sugar Labs oversight board meeting to also vote. So far, walter +1 cjl +1 icarito -1 alsroot has not voted yet. cjb, canoeberry, and geralda were not present. Please respond to this email with your vote. Also, there was motion [8], not yet seconded, to ask Tony if he was OK with a change in the wording of [4]. There was not consensus on the wording, but there was consensus on asking for Tony's input. Tony, could you please chime in? thanks. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org [1] http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2012-05-30T21:08:10 [2] http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2012-05-30T21:08:10#i_2739410 [3] http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2012-05-30T21:08:10#i_2739421 [4] http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2012-05-30T21:08:10#i_2739445 [5] http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2012-05-30T21:08:10#i_2739570 [6] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Trademark [7] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Local_Labs [8] http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2012-05-30T21:08:10#i_2739707 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] meeting proposal: Thursday, 3 May, at 21:00 UTC (17:00 EST)
I'll be there. Gerald On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi, On Fri, Apr 27 2012, Walter Bender wrote: It has been a while. A few things to catch up on. Can we muster a quorum for the proposed date/time? I'll be there. Thanks, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org http://printf.net/ One Laptop Per Child ___ SLOBs mailing list sl...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] TI MSP430 running on XO 1 - Robotics!
Yama, Thanks so much for sharing this. I am planning to order some to test out with my students on the XOs. Perhaps we can open some wiki pages devoted to this? Cheers, Gerald 2012/2/11 Luis Galindo llwwwl...@gmail.com I just bought the TI MSP430 to test it with the Xo 1.0. Thank you Yama :-) Luis El 10 de febrero de 2012 11:06, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.comescribió: 2012/2/10 Yamaplos . yamap...@gmail.com: The TI MSP430 chips are a very attractive alternative to add robotic options for XO / Sugar users. Microcontrolers are the brain behind many engineering hobby and educational pursuits, but many alternatives are expensive or very hard to run in the XO. The TI Launchpad board, with a G2553 microcontroler and an extra G2452 in the box, is available from Texas Instruments for $4.30 USD, including shipping anywhere in the world (yes, hard to believe). http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29 Here are the instructions for running the Launchpad with the G2452. Maybe if the next iteratiuon of Sugar uses Fedora 15 we will be able to use the G2553 as well. http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1 The next release will be based on F-17 but both those packages are listed. You might want to use one of the test releases based on F-17 that I've released (new one coming soon) to make sure it all works OK and feedback any issues to ensure we get them fixed for the final release. Peter ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ Lista olpc-Sur olpc-...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] What makes examples good for novices? and How do we tell if an example is good for novices?
Steve, Your question made me think about research I read about a couple of years ago. The researcher was investigating narratives between patients and doctors. Their major finding was that patients naturally needed to narrate what they were experiencing, and that close to 100% of the time, the doctor stopped them from talking. What makes the examples good is that are narrative, rather than functional. For example, I want to do this, instead of here's how you define a class. I hope this helps. Gerald On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:56 PM, Steve Thomas sthom...@gosargon.com wrote: So I am taking a P2PU course On How to Teach Web Programmin to Free Range Learnershttp://p2pu.org/en/groups/how-to-teach-webcraft-and-programming-to-free-range-students/and a couple of questions came up: So I pose them to the community: 1. What makes examples good for novices? 2. How do we tell if an example is good for novices? Also where can I find a good set of examples for learning programming? It would be nice to have a curated set of Great literature. Pointers to any research on the topic would be appreciated. Stephen ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] something to aspire to...
What about an Activity (maybe branching from Physics) that would allow children to build their own virtual Rube Goldberg machines? I would be happy to help. Gerald 2012/1/8 Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/nyregion/brooklyns-joseph-herscher-and-his-rube-goldberg-machines.html -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Website Revamp IRC Mtg 1-8-12 11:00amEST(16:00UTC)
Christian, I'll be there. Thanks. Gerald On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all We met today on IRC to discuss the website design and content, but not many were present. It is important that we get your feedback as the work on the website progresses. Therefor, I am looking to reschedule our meeting to another time that works for everyone. See John's original email below: We are looking for feedback on the design as well as volunteers to help us generate content for the new website. Does this coming Saturday 14th at 11:00am EST/16:00 UTC work for everyone? Or is a time during the week better? Suggestions welcome. Thank you, Christian On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 4:10 PM, John Tierney jtis4...@hotmail.com wrote: Hello All, Happy New Year! As the New Year starts we are making another effort to restart the Sugar Labs Website Revamp. Designer and community member Christian Marc Schmidt has put together a Design Template along with a Sugar Labs Website Refresh: Content Document. These two documents along with the work and content gathering done by RIT Co-op students Mike Devine and JT Mengel last year will hopefully give us solid basis to start from. Our Kick-off IRC meeting will take place this Sunday Jan. 8th on#sugar-meeting at 11:00amEST(16:00UTC), after the Design Meeting surrounding Write To Journal Anytime taking place at 10:00amEST. Please join us if you are available-our key shortcoming last year in our attempt was a lack of content to effectively create the new site. All help is Welcome and needed. Because this is in the Building and Design stage please email me at: jtis4...@hotmail.com to get links to the preview documents if you are interested in being part of the process. Our First Step is to give Christian the Thumbs Up/Make Enhancements to the Design. Our Second Step will look to get individual community members to take responsibility in Content Gathering Areas that flow out of the documents Christian has prepared. Our Third Step is to execute Content Gathering Upon receiving enough content Christian will then commence the build phase. We hope you can join us on Sunday and look forward to working with the community to do this important work. Please let us know of your interest in taking part in this important endeavor. Appreciate the Collaboration! John Tierney P.S. Please get into the hands of those who will be best able to assist-Thank You! -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.facebook.com/christianmarcschmidt http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ Skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] scheduling future meetings
It's good for me, too. Gerald On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: I've not heard back from everyone yet, but it seems that Tuesdays at 4PM EST (21 UTC) may work. Let's schedule our next meeting for the 20th? regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ SLOBs mailing list sl...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Why is Scratch more popular than Etoys?
I have been using Scratch and Etoys with students in grades 5-8 for the past 4 years or so. In this work, I have seen an interesting pattern. The younger students (5th and 6th graders) ALWAYS prefer Etoys to Scratch. (I am talking here about first exposure).They love the drawing component and then being able to make their drawings move or do something. The older students ALWAYS prefer Scratch. They get the bricks metaphor right away and so can get things done very quickly. And sometimes students using Etoys get frustrated because there are so many options and choices and opportunities for functionality. What is also interesting is the degree to which the tools are owned by the students. Whichever one they are using starts to become a powerful form of expression for them so that, if given the opportunity, they will use it to complete projects and presentations, etc. I just wanted to add this experience to the conversation. Gerald On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 4:54 PM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.comwrote: Scratch looks a bit more sleek (modern?) and is a bit easier to use. I think these bits add up. I think Scratch has easier media tools, but I may be mistaken there - maybe I just don't know how to use Etoys media tools. Cheers, Maria Droujkova 919-388-1721 Make math your own, to make your own math On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Steve Thomas sthom...@gosargon.comwrote: I have taught both Scratch and Etoys to kids and hands down most kids prefer Scratch. I also prefer Scratch for certain things, but prefer Etoys for most learning and teaching. What can we learn from Scratch (and TurtleArt et al) to improve Etoys? And vice versa what can be done to improve Scratch? . I have ideas, which I will share later, but I am curious to hear the thoughts of others (as mine add nothing to my current understanding and repeating them will simply further ingrain incomplete and incorrect assumptions and prejudices ;) Stephen P.S. I fully believe kids should learn multiple languages and am not looking for the one ring to rule them all. Each language/environment has its advantages and we need multiple. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Update on the Sugar Labs website refresh
Sean, I would be happy to participate on the panel. Gerald On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Many thanks Christian for this update Yes I too saw that although Walter (the Sugar Digest [1]), myself (on the lists [2] plus the olpcnews piece [3]), John (on the lists [4]), JT Mike (on the lists [5]) all asked for content, there was little or no reaction. I believe we need to ask more concretely, i.e. for the X page we need a Y visual - even if this means a list of requests. I can't help but feel that the day the new site goes live there will be complaints, while assistance now will make the site the best it can be! Another next step is to assemble a teacher panel to assess the site usability. The Marketlab study [6] clearly showed that teachers are not finding the information they need on our current sites, and coupled with the high technical barriers to installing and configuring Sugar means we discourage too many teachers from even trying Activities. Teachers, contact us please to participate in the panel! thanks Sean 1. http://walterbender.org/?p=431 2. http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-March/012783.html 3. http://www.olpcnews.com/software/sugar/teachers_help_us_improve_the_sugarlabs_website.html 4. http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-April/012959.html 5. http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-April/012843.html, http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/dextrose/2011-April/001234.html 6. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team#MIT_Sloan_MarketLab_Study On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:22 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com wrote: Hi everyone, John and I wanted to give you a brief update on the status of the website. For the last few months we had the benefit of working with two RIT students, JT and Mike, who helped us take initial steps in launching a new and improved public-facing website. With their help, we identified the shortcomings of the current site and the opportunities for (a) better articulating the Sugar value proposition and (b) keeping the site current with events and progress made by the developer community. There were a few learnings along the way: While JT and Mike were able to gather and produce a fair number of assets, it was far more difficult to get all the content we had hoped for and which we know does exist. This means that we will be reaching out to the community again in a short while to help us fill in the missing pieces. In the meantime, thank you to all of you who helped to provide content in the first round! Next steps are to make further traction on the UI design in order to give us a scaffold to populate with content as it comes in. This will be happening over the next few weeks, and we'll keep all of you updated when there are opportunities for feedback. Thanks, and more to come, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.facebook.com/christianmarcschmidt http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ Skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. I cannot speak for every Sugar developer, but the approach I have tried to take with Turtle Art is a bit different than you are describing. The block-based programming environment is not meant to be a substitute for real tools; it is meant to be a place to get started; to learn that you can write and modify code; and to provide multiple motivations and launch pads for getting into the real thing. I've worked pretty hard to make the structured thing behind the view more approachable, and have provided multiple ways in and out: exporting your fluffy view into Logo that can be run in Brian Harvey's text-based Logo environment; direct, in-line extensions written in Python; the ability to create new blocks by importing Python; a plugin mechanism for making major interventions; and a refactoring of the underlying structures to make the code more approachable. (The source code is peppered with comments and examples of how to make modifications.) None of these interventions are intended to keep the kids programming in Turtle Art. They are all intended to get the kids started down the path of real programming. But I content that we need to engage them; let them discover that they can write code; and make changes; and that it is not something just for others but for everyone. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat that over and over until done. We'd look for a spray gun, or toss a whole bucket of paint, or recruit a crowd of painters, or something. Fast things and painstaking things aren't disjoint in computing, as they are elsewhere; how do you teach that powerful insight?) Cute idea for a project: fill the screen. There are of course many ways to do it: from using the fill-screen block to setting the pen size to the screen width to discovering the repeat block to discovering that you can launch as many turtles as you'd like, each of which has a pen. I am open to suggestions as to how to get more kids to move on from Turtle Art to ___ (insert you favorite real programming environment here). First, have Turtle Art start up not with a blank slate, but by bringing in one of the predefined designs -- preferably at random, so they'll see more of the corpus as they run it over and over. I have gone back and forth on this one. I think that you are right: I should start with a program on the screen, probably a simple example of a spiral that introduces the concepts of loops and variables (and perhaps sensors). Second, I suggest that if some blocks are
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
Walter, Thanks. And I'll check out Fred Martin's book. If you are up for another visit to us in the Fall to do some more intensive Turtle Art work, we'd love to have you. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? Yes. v108 should run on any XO build. 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). Those are all nice, but just using the microphone in works nicely. Plus you have the camera. 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? There are lots of bits and pieces. Regarding robots, there is a nice book written by Fred Martin that came out maybe 5 years ago. (Fred was one of the principal designers of the original Lego robotics kits at MIT and helped develop with 6.270 curriculum. He teaches at UMass-Lowell. enjoy. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. I cannot speak for every Sugar developer, but the approach I have tried to take with Turtle Art is a bit different than you are describing. The block-based programming environment is not meant to be a substitute for real tools; it is meant to be a place to get started; to learn that you can write and modify code; and to provide multiple motivations and launch pads for getting into the real thing. I've worked pretty hard to make the structured thing behind the view more approachable, and have provided multiple ways in and out: exporting your fluffy view into Logo that can be run in Brian Harvey's text-based Logo environment; direct, in-line extensions written in Python; the ability to create new blocks by importing Python; a plugin mechanism for making major interventions; and a refactoring of the underlying structures to make the code more approachable. (The source code is peppered with comments and examples of how to make modifications.) None of these interventions are intended to keep the kids programming in Turtle Art. They are all intended to get the kids started down the path of real programming. But I content that we need to engage them; let them discover that they can write code; and make changes; and that it is not something just for others but for everyone. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat that over and over until done. We'd look for a spray gun, or toss a whole bucket of paint, or recruit a crowd of painters, or something. Fast things and painstaking things aren't disjoint in computing, as they are elsewhere; how do you teach that powerful insight?) Cute idea for a project: fill the screen. There are of course many ways to do it: from using
Re: [IAEP] Turtles All The Way Out
Walter, That would be great. Thanks. Can you look and see when in September might work for you? Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter, Thanks. And I'll check out Fred Martin's book. If you are up for another visit to us in the Fall to do some more intensive Turtle Art work, we'd love to have you. Sounds like fun. Maybe early in the semester to get them up and running. -walter Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Walter and Edward, I am very interested in this conversation. As you know, I have been working with 5th graders and XO Laptops for the past 3 years in the middle school in which I teach. For next year, I have designed a pilot program to teach our 6th graders about programming software and devices. I have seen the sequence as beginning with software and then leading to robots of some kind. I think Turtle Art is a perfect place to start, especially given this conversation, and the availability of the XOs. So, I am willing to test out the work you are doing with these students. I have some questions: 1. Will the recent version of Turtle Art (Turtle Blocks) run on the latest XO build? Yes. v108 should run on any XO build. 2. In order to use sensors, what kind of devices are you talking about (WeDos?; Arduino? Something else?). Those are all nice, but just using the microphone in works nicely. Plus you have the camera. 3. Do you have or know of a curriculum that addresses our project? There are lots of bits and pieces. Regarding robots, there is a nice book written by Fred Martin that came out maybe 5 years ago. (Fred was one of the principal designers of the original Lego robotics kits at MIT and helped develop with 6.270 curriculum. He teaches at UMass-Lowell. enjoy. -walter Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:11 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I had to think about this some before having a useful response. Lots of good ideas here, so thank you for taking the time. I cannot speak for every Sugar developer, but the approach I have tried to take with Turtle Art is a bit different than you are describing. The block-based programming environment is not meant to be a substitute for real tools; it is meant to be a place to get started; to learn that you can write and modify code; and to provide multiple motivations and launch pads for getting into the real thing. I've worked pretty hard to make the structured thing behind the view more approachable, and have provided multiple ways in and out: exporting your fluffy view into Logo that can be run in Brian Harvey's text-based Logo environment; direct, in-line extensions written in Python; the ability to create new blocks by importing Python; a plugin mechanism for making major interventions; and a refactoring of the underlying structures to make the code more approachable. (The source code is peppered with comments and examples of how to make modifications.) None of these interventions are intended to keep the kids programming in Turtle Art. They are all intended to get the kids started down the path of real programming. But I content that we need to engage them; let them discover that they can write code; and make changes; and that it is not something just for others but for everyone. Walter, this is a worthwhile approach. But it was all invisible from an OLPC user's point of view (i.e. a child's). All they get is a GUI in which they can hook blocks together and see graphics. Even finding the library of fun looking pre-existing designs was hard (it's hiding behind a bizarre looking icon that you can't even see until you go to a different tab in the Frame than the default one). If you show a kid how to find one of those designs, they get the idea of TurtleArt, and can modify them to see how the design changes. Until they see a complete, working design in 10 blocks including a loop, TurtleArt is a morass where new users can drag things around but it doesn't do anything fun. (Note I'm working from memory of a several-year-old TurtleArt. Perhaps it's better now.) Please grab a recent version. It is quite different from even a year ago. (Also, it's hard to make the leap from a slow turtle leaving marks behind as it goes two steps and turns, to the whole screen being filled with colors in a flash. Most things in the world don't have the many-orders-of-magnitude speedups that we in computing have become blase about. It wouldn't occur to us that to paint an entire wall in a second, we should tell the painter to move the brush one inch and then repeat
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] New activity from OLPC France
Walter, The type of lab notebook activity you describe could be extended beyond the cooking area. I can see students using this for all kinds of scientific investigations. My two cents. Gerald On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 7:47 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Stefanie Nobel stefanie.no...@googlemail.com wrote: Hello, I’m glad to present you a new project from OLPC France. For the next six months we will develop a new playful software, which aims at educating children about a healthier nutrition. In this game children are taking care of an avatar by providing him with meals, which they have to prepare before. By doing so the children are meant to learn the importance of good nutrition for their healthy. The game will be supported by Danone Research. They will not only finance the project but also share their great knowledge on this topic with us. We’re just at the begining of the development but here is a short description of our first ideas: The game will be split in two parts: In one part the children can create their own recipes in a virtual environment, similar to a “cook studio”. There is also the possibility to share these recipes with other children. The other part is for validation: Here the meal will be “validated” by the avatar, (for example, a reaction might be, that the avatar can’t do homework because he has not sufficient energy). So at first we will have to define the relevant parameters, which you have to consider when you validate a healthy meal, for example: The need of the different nutritional values, The nutritional value of the aliment In natural and organic state and after the preparation of the meal The activities, the avatar/child do/did during the day The season and the weather The times of the meals during the day(this has an impact on the gain of the food) The health of the avatar/child The extent of hygienic conditions when preparing the food The next step will be to collect all those information and integrate it into a rough logic. So don’t hesitate to comment about this project and share your thoughts. We appreciate all kinds of input! FWIW, several of us have been thinking about a different angle on a cooking activity, one more geared towards chemistry and the science of the kitchen: getting the kids to experiment with recipes, for example, changing the 'resting time' when making noodles from flour and water, and observing how this changes the consistency, flavor, etc. The Activity would be more like a lab notebook and set of simple data analysis tools than anything else, but then the kids could presumably photograph their results with their XO and share their successes and failures, and aggregate data more widely. It be interesting to fold in nutrition into the mix: does Danone have data we can use re how cooking impacts the foods we eat? regards. -walter Stefanie ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Feedback needed: pippy use cases?
Thanks, Scott. Gerald On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 5:42 AM, C. Scott Ananian csc...@cscott.net wrote: http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/cscott/pippy-examples/tree/ has a set of pippy examples in both English and Spanish, based on the example code in the Commodore 64 user's manual (which taught me how to program, once upon a time). I've used this to teach programming with pippy in Peru. It's best if these are presented on a blackboard for the student to type in, not just clicked-through. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Feedback needed: pippy use cases?
I wanted to add that I agree with Steve. I have been working with 5th-8th graders, many of whom love Turtle Art, Scratch, and Etoys. When they get the bug from this kind of programming, I want to introduce them to Pippy, but, like Steve said, I am not sure what to do other than press run. Gerald On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 4:45 AM, Steve Thomas sthom...@gosargon.com wrote: An interface and examples like: http://tryruby.org/ would be a nice. It;s a hand's on tutorial that walks you through learning ruby step by step and you feel like you are actually doing and learning something. Ideally you could also build a framework where users could create their own lesson's following a similar format. Part of the challenge of the existing Pippy is while it has some nice fun examples they don't invite you in to start coding the way tryruby.orgdoes. To me when I first saw it I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do other than hit Run!'. FYI, the Thanks program does not work on my XO. Stephen http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/ On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:03 PM, Anish Mangal an...@activitycentral.orgwrote: Hi, As Pippy maintainer, I'm looking for inputs as to how is Pippy intended to be used in a classroom environment and how is it currently used. In particular: 1. What grades use Pippy? Could it be used in lower grades with some changes? If so, what could be the nature of those changes? 2. Collaborative code editing? How much is it actually used? What could be made better? 3. Sharing/reviewing of examples by other kids/teachers? 4. Would more explanatory code comments in Pippy examples help? 5. Would having a central repository of having pippy code examples help... For example, the ability to download/upload to a url like pippy.sugarlabs.org? 6. Would it help to have the examples in different languages wherever possible (spanish, for example)? Inputs will help guide future releases of Pippy. -- Anish ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Another Etoys Question
Cherry, I am going to be using the manual with some teachers soon. I will make updates from those sessions. Gerald On Monday, January 31, 2011, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote: Hi Carlos, The manual is not completely done. It needs editing and we would appreciate all the feedback that we can get. If you'd like to spearhead the effort of translating it to Spanish, it will be most appreciated! The original manual was done using FLOSS Manuals. You can open an account for free and email them of your intent to start a book or manual and go from there: http://en.flossmanuals.net/ Thank you for all of your support! --Cherry On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Carlos Rabassa car...@me.com wrote: Cherry, interesting you mention the manual. What is the status of the manual? At one point I had volunteered to translate it into Spanish. Then there were other volunteers, then there was some other book and then no more talk. My offer is still on. Is there anything you think I could start translating about Etoys? Carlos Rabassa On Jan 31, 2011, at 8:49 PM, Cherry Withers wrote: Hi Caryl, I wrote that chapter on the manual. I would really like to know if there's anything at all that's unclear about what I wrote. I would also be happy to go through it with you on Skype at your convenience. Cheers, Cherry On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Steve Thomas sthom...@gosargon.com wrote: Caryl, From the supplies bin, drag out a book. Then click on the Triangle in the upper left corner of the book (when you hover over it it will say More Controls. You will then be able to add pages by clicking on the + in the Book header and you can also duplicate pages from the menu in the header. More details are in the Etoy floss manual Chapter 5 http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Etoys/Objects (search for book within the page). Stephen On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: OK, so I have watched the tutorials and even looked at 2 books I have about Squeak and still haven't found out how to make a multi-page book or slide show like we want to do for the Water Lessons. Innocent that I am, I assumed that clicking on the page symbol (looks like a page symbol used in other programs) would give me a new page. I got what I thought was a new page. Constructed it and saved. Then I discovered it created a new project, not a new page! Rats! Oh well, the page I lost was just the title page and it will be easy to remake it. However I would like to keep the second page I made, put the title page before it and then add several more pages after. Is there a link to instructions for doing this? I don't need to learn about loops, variables, tiles and stuff like that... already know that and can, and have, taught it. Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Importing Photos to Etoys on Mac or PC, not running Sugar???? How To???
Caryl, I am working on a MacBook Pro running OX 10.6.6 and Etoys 4.1. Just like in Sugar, I just drag the photo onto Etoys and it is imported. I do the same in Windows. Hope this helps. Gerald On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 8:11 PM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Folks, What is the method for importing a photo to Etoys when working on a Mac or PC? I found instructions for doing it in Sugar, but not elsewhere. Thanks, Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Communities around technology for learning (was: Re: When teaching restrains discovery)
Edward, I like your idea. And plan on setting up a blog, or other site, where the students I am working with could share with one another about their experiences with the XOs. Gerald On Saturday, January 22, 2011, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: I have suggested creating a walled garden Web site for all OLPC children. We can discuss whether teachers should be allowed in, but definitely no parents. ^_^ They should have their own place to discuss whatever concerns them. Education, poverty, government corruption, international e-commerce... On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 17:32, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: I finally got around to reading Claudia's article and one of the core take-aways for me is that building communities (plural!) which help disseminate knowledge about how to use technology for learning is a core challenge which hasn't been sufficiently addressed yet. To me 2010 did show the first promises of this happening within the OLPC / Sugar community with collaboration starting between Plan Ceibal and ParaguayEduca, the work of organizations and communities such as ceibalJAM and RAP Ceibal, a better integration of Latin American contributors in the global community, eKindling's work in the Philippines, all the time Bernie, Daniel, Claudia, Walter and others are spending sharing with and learning from deployments, events such the community summit in San Francisco and the realness summit, the olpcMAP.net project, etc. And with some OLE Nepal staff having started the year by flying out to Rwanda to support the deployment there 2011 is also definitely beginning on a high-note. Having said that I personally feel that at the moment this network of networks (or community of communities, take your pick;-) is wide rather than deep - often seemingly ending at people living in capitals or major cities, being experienced with FLOSS and/or innovative education, etc. rather than reaching and benefiting the children, parents, teachers, principals, and administrators who are really the major stakeholders of education initiatives. I don't have a simple answer on how to deal with this (and who knows, it might just be an issue perceived by yours truly) but I think keeping it in the back of the head might be a start. Cheers, Christoph Am 20.01.2011 17:24, schrieb Holt: Thanks Bastien. Back on the home front, also check out Claudia Urrea's (OLPC Assoc's Chief Learner ;) article today on one-to-one edutech etc: http://edutechdebate.org/ict-in-schools/technologies-for-learning-vs-learning-about-technology/ On 1/20/2011 9:46 AM, Bastien wrote: Hi Christoph and all, I always enjoy those resources about education, thank you for the pointers -- and to everyone for the comments! Let me share two recent readings of mine: John Maeda : The Laws of Simplicity http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Simplicity-Design-Technology-Business/dp/0262134721 My attention got caught when I saw John Maeda referring to Nicholas Negroponte in the chapter « Context ». While discussing the importance of focusing, he mentions this advice from NN : Be as an electric bulb, not as a lazer ray. Which I found to be quite an inspiring metaphor in the context of learning: let's all learn how to shed light on things as bulbs, taking care of others and the context, not as lazer ray, only taking care of the subject matter. George Steiner - « Éloge de la transmission - Le maître et l'élève » http://livre.fnac.com/a1904995/George-Steiner-Eloge-de-la-transmission-le-maitre-et-l-eleve (Sorry, only published in french.) In the debate about instructionisme vs. [constructionisme, project-based method, Montessori method, etc.], most people would certainly say that Steiner -- George, not Rudolph! -- is rather conservative, expressing opinions shared by teachers with a classical-instructionist attitude. The title of this book says it all. Still, he proposes a definition for what it is to be a master: it is someone from which students can always feel the love behind the irony. Of course, So-- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Communities around technology for learning (was: Re: [support-gang] When teaching restrains discovery)
Christoph, Thanks for your email. I also got to read Claudia's article. I have been familiar with and inspired by her research. In fact, in informed my doctoral dissertation, which focused on the changes to the classroom learning environment through the use of the XO laptops. I have been participating in this community for about 2 years. I have received much help and support and encouragement for which I am grateful. But I have been reluctant to have my fellow teachers (who are less technically inclined) to participate because of the frequently highly technical and operational nature of many conversations. I have been struggling with trying to include more teachers and students in these conversations and in this community. I feel that their participation would benefit many, and add to the depth you discussed. I am now working with 5 schools in the US using XOs, and will try to find a way for those teachers and students to participate. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 5:32 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: I finally got around to reading Claudia's article and one of the core take-aways for me is that building communities (plural!) which help disseminate knowledge about how to use technology for learning is a core challenge which hasn't been sufficiently addressed yet. To me 2010 did show the first promises of this happening within the OLPC / Sugar community with collaboration starting between Plan Ceibal and ParaguayEduca, the work of organizations and communities such as ceibalJAM and RAP Ceibal, a better integration of Latin American contributors in the global community, eKindling's work in the Philippines, all the time Bernie, Daniel, Claudia, Walter and others are spending sharing with and learning from deployments, events such the community summit in San Francisco and the realness summit, the olpcMAP.net project, etc. And with some OLE Nepal staff having started the year by flying out to Rwanda to support the deployment there 2011 is also definitely beginning on a high-note. Having said that I personally feel that at the moment this network of networks (or community of communities, take your pick;-) is wide rather than deep - often seemingly ending at people living in capitals or major cities, being experienced with FLOSS and/or innovative education, etc. rather than reaching and benefiting the children, parents, teachers, principals, and administrators who are really the major stakeholders of education initiatives. I don't have a simple answer on how to deal with this (and who knows, it might just be an issue perceived by yours truly) but I think keeping it in the back of the head might be a start. Cheers, Christoph Am 20.01.2011 17:24, schrieb Holt: Thanks Bastien. Back on the home front, also check out Claudia Urrea's (OLPC Assoc's Chief Learner ;) article today on one-to-one edutech etc: http://edutechdebate.org/ict-in-schools/technologies-for-learning-vs-learning-about-technology/ On 1/20/2011 9:46 AM, Bastien wrote: Hi Christoph and all, I always enjoy those resources about education, thank you for the pointers -- and to everyone for the comments! Let me share two recent readings of mine: John Maeda : The Laws of Simplicity http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Simplicity-Design-Technology-Business/dp/0262134721 My attention got caught when I saw John Maeda referring to Nicholas Negroponte in the chapter « Context ». While discussing the importance of focusing, he mentions this advice from NN : Be as an electric bulb, not as a lazer ray. Which I found to be quite an inspiring metaphor in the context of learning: let's all learn how to shed light on things as bulbs, taking care of others and the context, not as lazer ray, only taking care of the subject matter. George Steiner - « Éloge de la transmission - Le maître et l'élève » http://livre.fnac.com/a1904995/George-Steiner-Eloge-de-la-transmission-le-maitre-et-l-eleve (Sorry, only published in french.) In the debate about instructionisme vs. [constructionisme, project-based method, Montessori method, etc.], most people would certainly say that Steiner -- George, not Rudolph! -- is rather conservative, expressing opinions shared by teachers with a classical-instructionist attitude. The title of this book says it all. Still, he proposes a definition for what it is to be a master: it is someone from which students can always feel the love behind the irony. Of course, Socrates comes to mind as a master of both irony and love towards its pupils -- I bet Steiner would agree. I like this definition. It is general enough to escape the opposition between instructionism / [constructionisme, ...]. But still, I feel this definition captures something essential that any teacher could fruitfully think about. My 2 cents, -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail:
Re: [IAEP] reluctant/proactive leader
Yama, Your response actually gave me an idea. In the various situations in which I have worked, I have been able to develop students (even at ages 9 and 10) to be real leaders. Perhaps they are the way in to this dilemma. I will find a way to add them to this community. Perhaps, just as in the classroom, when teachers (and others) find the students participating so actively and responsibly, they will be called to join in? What do you think. Gerald On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.comwrote: On 01/21/2011 08:54 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote originally about something else, but said there: I have been participating in this community for about 2 years. I have received much help and support and encouragement for which I am grateful. But I have been reluctant to have my fellow teachers (who are less technically inclined) to participate because of the frequently highly technical and operational nature of many conversations. I am lost for words. So totally lost for words. What kind of a community you would *not* feel reluctant to have your teachers participate? IAEP is as common ground as you possibly can get. Or are you talking about the support gang? There I can understand sort of maybe, though all kinds of people can benefit to lurk there, and even contribute - maybe they just need to be given a chance, and they will flourish! Of course there is a continuum for the choices an education administrator can make, from wholesale advocacy for participating in all and every community (probably not wise), to a complete ban and prohibition leading to termination for those caught connecting with strangers. Somewhere along the middle I suspect most deployments just do not encourage enough nor their leaders model participation (the later not your case, Gerald, you do participate generously of your time and experience). I am amazed that, for example, Ceibal has over 14.000 teachers with connectivity, and apparently less than 3% have ever signed up to a list or open forum. Peru's emails set up for their project often returned a box full error. I am convinced that one of the the main lessons to be learned through this Education Project is precisely about remote collaboration. It hasn't taken off yet, and I wonder how we can help it happen. How can we bridge real issues like fear of reprisals, fear to seem dumb? Lack of time (real, or imagined for people that otherwise spend hours by the TV or Faisbuk)? Relevant, interesting communication? The next step: kids collaborating beyond their bailiwick? Yama ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] reluctant/proactive leader
Yama, Thanks for your kind words. Onward and upward! Gerald On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.comwrote: WOW! you *are* a Courageous Leader! (not to be confused with a N k0rea title :-) which reminds me of an excerpt from Krishnamurti that I have had doing the rounds, precisely on how younger people have an easier time collaborating than so-called adults. Because of its potential OT nature, I am copying it below the fold to mitigate offense - I put in bold the relevant part, to make the load lighter... :-) BTW, reading in between the lines, it turns out it was not that *you* were reluctant, but rather your teachers? Nice of you to take up the blame. I feel so encouraged by your attitude, and much honored to learn from you Yama On 01/21/2011 10:04 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: Yama, Your response actually gave me an idea. In the various situations in which I have worked, I have been able to develop students (even at ages 9 and 10) to be real leaders. Perhaps they are the way in to this dilemma. I will find a way to add them to this community. Perhaps, just as in the classroom, when teachers (and others) find the students participating so actively and responsibly, they will be called to join in? What do you think. Gerald one of my favorite blogs, framablog.org, had recently a version of this text by Krishnamurti. Since great friends Padmanabha and Rama Rao run the Krishnamurti school in India, it all came together to make me wish to share this with y'all - the subject matter is something we all wonder a lot about: *the purpose of education, cooperation...* One of the basic problems confronting the world is the problem of cooperation. What does the word cooperation mean? To cooperate is to do things together, to build together, to feel together, to have something in common so that we can freely work together. But people generally don't feel inclined to work together naturally, easily, happily; and so they are compelled to work together through various inducements: threat, fear, punishment, reward. This is the common practice throughout the world. Under tyrannical governments you are brutally forced to work together; if you don't cooperate you are liquidated or sent to a concentration camp. In the so-called civilized nations you are induced to work together through the concept of my country, or for an ideology which has been very carefully worked out and widely propagated so that you accept it; or you work together to carry out a plan which somebody has drawn up, a blueprint for Utopia. So, it is the plan, the idea, the authority which induces people to work together. This is generally called cooperation, and in it there is always the implication of reward or punishment, which means that behind such cooperation there is fear. You are always working for something--for the country, for the king, for the party, for God or the Master, for peace, or to bring about this or that reform. Your idea of cooperation is to work together for a particular result. You have an ideal--to build a perfect school, or what you will--towards which you are working, therefore you say cooperation is necessary. All this implies authority, does it not? There is always someone who is supposed to know what is the right thing to do, and therefore you say, We must cooperate in carrying it out. Now, I don't call that cooperation at all. That is not cooperation, it is a form of greed, a form of fear, compulsion. Behind it there is the threat that if you don't cooperate the government won't recognize you, or the Five Year Plan will fail, or you will be sent to a concentration camp, or your country will lose the war, or you may not go to heaven. There is always some form of inducement, and where there is inducement there cannot be real cooperation. Nor is it cooperation when you and I work together merely because we have mutually agreed to do something. In any such agreement what is important is the doing of that particular thing, not working together. You and I may agree to build a bridge, or construct a road, or plant some trees together, but in that agreement there is always the fear of disagreement, the fear that I may not do my share and let you do the whole thing. So it is not cooperation when we work together through any form of inducement, or by mere agreement, because behind all such effort there is the implication of gaining or avoiding something. To me, cooperation is entirely different. Cooperation is the fun of being and doing together--not necessarily doing something in particular. Do you understand? *Young children normally have a feeling for being and doing together. Haven't you noticed this? They will cooperate in anything. There is no question of agreement or disagreement, reward or punishment; they just want to help. They cooperate instinctively, for the fun of being and doing together
Re: [IAEP] [realness] a school is not a building
I think back to the various work (especially Piaget, Vygotsky, and Papert) that investigates learning as a social phenomenon. The XO Laptops and Sugar derive directly, in my humble opinion, from these principles, especially Papert's concept of Constructionism. The issue for me, then, is not schools versus laptops (or some other technology), but how these devices and their software can be used to shape the learning environment itself. I have seen classrooms in my school change (in terms of student independence) as a result of the students being deeply engaged with the XOs and Sugar. This change has been reflected in both the students and their teachers. I think more focus should be spent on this ecosystem of learning. Best, Gerald On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 8:51 PM, Blake Elias blakeel...@gmail.com wrote: It's not that Ministries of Education should *stop* their core activities, but another possibility to consider before *starting*. A physical school where children can learn and work together is wonderful. In some situations where it's a struggle to build a physical school, where it really may be a dichotomy between buildings/laptops because of the expense, maybe they want to make digital collaboration their main goal instead of building with brick and mortar. Blake Elias On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 6:47 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: What he said. I hate false dichotomies. They abound in discussions of education and in the politics of education, indeed in any situation where the more extreme the position, the more likely it is to be heard. On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 18:04, Ian Thomson i...@spc.int wrote: Personally, I think the whole approach is wrong. You will never convince Ministries of Education to stop their core activities just because there are laptops. The better approach is to show how laptops can enhance education in schools. This should not be an either/or approach. We can do both. As a simple example, children can leave the school earlier after suitable teaching and complete work on the laptops at home or other locations. This will free up the school to take a second shift of students. Teachers can restructure their teaching to have groups working together to learn, so freeing them up to take more students. Ian Thomson ICT Outreach Section Economic Development Division Secretariat of the Pacific Community B.P. D5 - Noumea Cedex - 98848 New Caledonia Phone +687-265419 Fax +687 26 38 18 http://www.spc.int -Original Message- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Bernie Innocenti Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 8:36 AM To: Timothy Falconer Cc: olpc-ha...@lists.laptop.org; grassroots OLPC; olpc-o...@lists.laptop.org; Squeakland List; Maho 2010; IAEP; ht2011-win...@waveplace.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] [realness] a school is not a building On Sun, 2010-12-05 at 15:18 -0500, Timothy Falconer wrote: Hi all, A favor: help me make this case (or refute it) as we prepare once more for Haiti ... spend money on training laptops instead bricks and mortar. http://waveplace.com/news/blog/archive/001035.jsp It's a beautiful thought that touches deep into my hacker spirit, but the conclusion seems weak: what is it that we are advocating for? Remote learning? Home-schooling? Having classes under a tree? It's unclear. The point that you were making with the military canteen vs cooking at home metaphor is that compulsory education doesn't follow individual inclinations. Then, the conclusion should state the proposed solution for this problem. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] votes you missed
+1 to all motions from me as well. Gerald On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: In case you are interested in casting your vote on the 3 motions we passed (Please see http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2010-12-01), please send email to SLOBs. Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, 9 December 2010 at 20UTC (15 EST). Hope to see you in #sugar-meeting (or #sugar-meeting-es). regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?
Alan, Thanks so much. I am sure this will work well for us. Best, Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: It's the make a car you can drive yourself one which starts with the painting of a car, scripting it to go in a circle, steering by modifying the script on the fly, adding a steering wheel, moving the steering wheel's heading to the car turn by, making a gear by dividing the heading by 3, making a car that will follow a track, etc. This has proved to be a great opening sequence with most 5th graders, and it goes best with one on one guidance. They learn a lot of things about Etoys (we counted about 35) and the next few months projects can be done with what they encounter in their first half hour or so. It is extremely difficult to pull off in a mass class with either children or adults because of the range of pace and what it takes for individuals to get it, and what questions and prompts they need. Kind of a perfect example where mass class loses badly and one on one is very efficient and effective. Cheers, Alan -- *From:* Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com *To:* Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com *Cc:* Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com; Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org; danielgast...@yahoo.com.ar; Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz; Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com; iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org *Sent:* Mon, September 27, 2010 6:00:52 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy? Alan, Thanks for this. I am just beginning to work with our 5th grade students and teachers and will put this into action. One question for you, if I may. Can you tell me about the first Etoys lesson you mentioned (with 35 things in 30 minutes)? Thanks again. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Gerald, Yes, I think the experts approach is a good one also -- we first saw it used by Betty Edwards (the drawing teacher) and it works very well if the ratio is about 1 expert to 6 or 7 learners or better. And we have tried this with Etoys (mostly on adult teachers). However, of all the ways we've tried, doing one on ones, and then using the new learners as one on one teachers for the next group (so you are doubling each time) works the best (and is also the most efficient with regard to how much time it takes to successfully do the first Etoys exercise -- in which the learners do and learn about 35 things in about 30 minutes). Best regards, Alan -- *From:* Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com *To:* Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com *Cc:* Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com; Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org; danielgast...@yahoo.com.ar; Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz; Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com; iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org *Sent:* Mon, September 27, 2010 4:31:13 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy? Alan, First, I just want to clarify that I meant challenged in a positive way. The 5th graders dove into Etoys first through painting, and then through scripting. However, I agree with what you say about artifacts of a pedagogical approach. We saw this, too. Our learning situation involved 4-6 student experts with whom I spent time showing them the key elements of Etoys needed to begin the project. Then, when we introduced this project to larger class, these experts were free to move around the room helping other students. We found this model to be a good one for generating a very productive classroom environment with the XOs (in fact, it was the topic of my dissertation which I completed last May). However, I wished we had spent more time with the scripting piece. We had not developed those skills enough. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: I'd be curious to hear what the process is with the 5th graders. These were our main subjects. We worked only through regular classroom teachers (who had been carefully coached). You will not see any challenged 5th graders if you use a one on one session with them for about 20-30 minutes. The best way to do this is to teach a few this way, and then use a spreading wave of one on ones. We found that this was much better with both children and adults than to try to teach all of them in mass. So you might be seeing artifacts of pedagogical approach here (and a lot of challenged students result from such artifacts). Cheers, Alan -- *From:* Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com *To:* Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com *Cc:* Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org; danielgast...@yahoo.com.ar; Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz; Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com; iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org *Sent:* Mon, September 27, 2010 2:29:57 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Etoys
Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?
Caroline, You are remembering well. And I agree with your hypothesis. The 5th graders took pretty well to Etoys. It is the drawing piece that hooks them, and then the scripting part that really challenges them. And the 7th and 8th graders love Scratch. It is interesting to me because they also do plenty of painting of sprites and backgrounds, but something about the bricks seems to match their thinking process. I am getting ready to introduce my current 7th grade classes to Scratch and am looking forward to that. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:21 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Gerald did some interesting work last year introducing both Scratch and eToys to 5th and 8th graders. Gerald please correct me if I am misremembering. I think the results were the 8th graders took to Scratch more and the 5th graders took to eToys more. Our hypothesis is that the first thing you do with eToys in draw and that is very accessible to 5th graders. They can engage with the system before they have to start understanding programming. On the other hand 8th graders were directly ready to engage with programming and had a easier/faster time picking that up with Scratch. This is very much a hypothesis, not proven and not based on much data but it would be interesting to explore further. On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.comwrote: OK, I'll send it to you separately. Anybody else is still welcome to join in. On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 20:47, Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com wrote: Edward, Thanks, please send me the outline and what you think needs to be more easily discoverable and I will work on it. Stephen On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: It is true that you can do all of these things in EToys, if you know where to start. It is also true that the start screen of EToys could be improved by providing a path to each of them, and to other education modules, and Etoys could be improved with a few more introductory modules. Since children and untrained teachers cannot be expected to discover these paths, and paths in other Activities, on their own, I am in the middle of writing a guide to Discovery on the XO. The starting point is my Wiki page, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Undiscoverable http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick The undiscoverable is an unofficial FAQ for tips, tricks, and solutions to common problems that may otherwise be tricky to find. These are being considered for inclusion in the official SoaS documentation. The Etoys section needs vast expansion. I have an outline in mind, which I can share with anybody who would like to work on it. On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 15:59, Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz wrote: The analogy doesn't quite fit, as it's possible to do complex things in all of those tools and it's easy to do simple things in EToys. Each Activity can be used in this learning model, e.g. training wheels to motorbike. Tim On 25 September 2010 05:48, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote: And Scratch? ... don't remember where I read it, but it sounded logical to me. Use progressively difficult tools for progressively difficult tasks. To confirm this statement, I add the phrase: Visible learning, invisible technology. Children would first learn TurtleArt. When they outgrow it switch to Scratch. When all its possibilities are exhausted, continue with eToys. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?
Alan, First, I just want to clarify that I meant challenged in a positive way. The 5th graders dove into Etoys first through painting, and then through scripting. However, I agree with what you say about artifacts of a pedagogical approach. We saw this, too. Our learning situation involved 4-6 student experts with whom I spent time showing them the key elements of Etoys needed to begin the project. Then, when we introduced this project to larger class, these experts were free to move around the room helping other students. We found this model to be a good one for generating a very productive classroom environment with the XOs (in fact, it was the topic of my dissertation which I completed last May). However, I wished we had spent more time with the scripting piece. We had not developed those skills enough. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: I'd be curious to hear what the process is with the 5th graders. These were our main subjects. We worked only through regular classroom teachers (who had been carefully coached). You will not see any challenged 5th graders if you use a one on one session with them for about 20-30 minutes. The best way to do this is to teach a few this way, and then use a spreading wave of one on ones. We found that this was much better with both children and adults than to try to teach all of them in mass. So you might be seeing artifacts of pedagogical approach here (and a lot of challenged students result from such artifacts). Cheers, Alan -- *From:* Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com *To:* Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com *Cc:* Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org; danielgast...@yahoo.com.ar; Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz; Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com; iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org *Sent:* Mon, September 27, 2010 2:29:57 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy? Caroline, You are remembering well. And I agree with your hypothesis. The 5th graders took pretty well to Etoys. It is the drawing piece that hooks them, and then the scripting part that really challenges them. And the 7th and 8th graders love Scratch. It is interesting to me because they also do plenty of painting of sprites and backgrounds, but something about the bricks seems to match their thinking process. I am getting ready to introduce my current 7th grade classes to Scratch and am looking forward to that. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:21 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Gerald did some interesting work last year introducing both Scratch and eToys to 5th and 8th graders. Gerald please correct me if I am misremembering. I think the results were the 8th graders took to Scratch more and the 5th graders took to eToys more. Our hypothesis is that the first thing you do with eToys in draw and that is very accessible to 5th graders. They can engage with the system before they have to start understanding programming. On the other hand 8th graders were directly ready to engage with programming and had a easier/faster time picking that up with Scratch. This is very much a hypothesis, not proven and not based on much data but it would be interesting to explore further. On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.comwrote: OK, I'll send it to you separately. Anybody else is still welcome to join in. On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 20:47, Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com wrote: Edward, Thanks, please send me the outline and what you think needs to be more easily discoverable and I will work on it. Stephen On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: It is true that you can do all of these things in EToys, if you know where to start. It is also true that the start screen of EToys could be improved by providing a path to each of them, and to other education modules, and Etoys could be improved with a few more introductory modules. Since children and untrained teachers cannot be expected to discover these paths, and paths in other Activities, on their own, I am in the middle of writing a guide to Discovery on the XO. The starting point is my Wiki page, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Undiscoverable http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick The undiscoverable is an unofficial FAQ for tips, tricks, and solutions to common problems that may otherwise be tricky to find. These are being considered for inclusion in the official SoaS documentation. The Etoys section needs vast expansion. I have an outline in mind, which I can share with anybody who would like to work on it. On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 15:59, Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz wrote: The analogy doesn't quite fit, as it's possible to do complex things in all of those tools and it's easy to do simple things in EToys. Each
Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?
Alan, Thanks for this. I am just beginning to work with our 5th grade students and teachers and will put this into action. One question for you, if I may. Can you tell me about the first Etoys lesson you mentioned (with 35 things in 30 minutes)? Thanks again. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Gerald, Yes, I think the experts approach is a good one also -- we first saw it used by Betty Edwards (the drawing teacher) and it works very well if the ratio is about 1 expert to 6 or 7 learners or better. And we have tried this with Etoys (mostly on adult teachers). However, of all the ways we've tried, doing one on ones, and then using the new learners as one on one teachers for the next group (so you are doubling each time) works the best (and is also the most efficient with regard to how much time it takes to successfully do the first Etoys exercise -- in which the learners do and learn about 35 things in about 30 minutes). Best regards, Alan -- *From:* Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com *To:* Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com *Cc:* Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com; Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org; danielgast...@yahoo.com.ar; Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz; Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com; iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org *Sent:* Mon, September 27, 2010 4:31:13 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy? Alan, First, I just want to clarify that I meant challenged in a positive way. The 5th graders dove into Etoys first through painting, and then through scripting. However, I agree with what you say about artifacts of a pedagogical approach. We saw this, too. Our learning situation involved 4-6 student experts with whom I spent time showing them the key elements of Etoys needed to begin the project. Then, when we introduced this project to larger class, these experts were free to move around the room helping other students. We found this model to be a good one for generating a very productive classroom environment with the XOs (in fact, it was the topic of my dissertation which I completed last May). However, I wished we had spent more time with the scripting piece. We had not developed those skills enough. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: I'd be curious to hear what the process is with the 5th graders. These were our main subjects. We worked only through regular classroom teachers (who had been carefully coached). You will not see any challenged 5th graders if you use a one on one session with them for about 20-30 minutes. The best way to do this is to teach a few this way, and then use a spreading wave of one on ones. We found that this was much better with both children and adults than to try to teach all of them in mass. So you might be seeing artifacts of pedagogical approach here (and a lot of challenged students result from such artifacts). Cheers, Alan -- *From:* Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com *To:* Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com *Cc:* Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org; danielgast...@yahoo.com.ar; Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz; Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com; iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org *Sent:* Mon, September 27, 2010 2:29:57 PM *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy? Caroline, You are remembering well. And I agree with your hypothesis. The 5th graders took pretty well to Etoys. It is the drawing piece that hooks them, and then the scripting part that really challenges them. And the 7th and 8th graders love Scratch. It is interesting to me because they also do plenty of painting of sprites and backgrounds, but something about the bricks seems to match their thinking process. I am getting ready to introduce my current 7th grade classes to Scratch and am looking forward to that. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:21 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Gerald did some interesting work last year introducing both Scratch and eToys to 5th and 8th graders. Gerald please correct me if I am misremembering. I think the results were the 8th graders took to Scratch more and the 5th graders took to eToys more. Our hypothesis is that the first thing you do with eToys in draw and that is very accessible to 5th graders. They can engage with the system before they have to start understanding programming. On the other hand 8th graders were directly ready to engage with programming and had a easier/faster time picking that up with Scratch. This is very much a hypothesis, not proven and not based on much data but it would be interesting to explore further. On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.comwrote: OK, I'll send it to you separately. Anybody else is still welcome to join in. On Sat, Sep 25, 2010
Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?
Edward, Sure thing. The citation for the dissertation would be: Ardito, G. (2010). The shape of disruption: xo laptops in the fifth grade classroom (Doctoral dissertation). Available from Pace University. I hope my work will be of some service to your projects. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do. Best, Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Can we add your dissertation to the Bibliography? On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 19:31, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Alan, First, I just want to clarify that I meant challenged in a positive way. The 5th graders dove into Etoys first through painting, and then through scripting. However, I agree with what you say about artifacts of a pedagogical approach. We saw this, too. Our learning situation involved 4-6 student experts with whom I spent time showing them the key elements of Etoys needed to begin the project. Then, when we introduced this project to larger class, these experts were free to move around the room helping other students. This is excellent information. I need to see how to integrate what you have found with my work on Discovery and The Undiscoverable. My notion had been to work out the constraints between Sugar features, and then a sequence of topics that would allow teachers to introduce one or two features per lesson. Your work may allow us to speed up the process considerably. We found this model to be a good one for generating a very productive classroom environment with the XOs (in fact, it was the topic of my dissertation which I completed last May). However, I wished we had spent more time with the scripting piece. We had not developed those skills enough. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: I'd be curious to hear what the process is with the 5th graders. These were our main subjects. We worked only through regular classroom teachers (who had been carefully coached). You will not see any challenged 5th graders if you use a one on one session with them for about 20-30 minutes. The best way to do this is to teach a few this way, and then use a spreading wave of one on ones. We found that this was much better with both children and adults than to try to teach all of them in mass. So you might be seeing artifacts of pedagogical approach here (and a lot of challenged students result from such artifacts). Cheers, Alan From: Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com To: Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com Cc: Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org; danielgast...@yahoo.com.ar ; Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz; Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com; iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Mon, September 27, 2010 2:29:57 PM Subject: Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy? Caroline, You are remembering well. And I agree with your hypothesis. The 5th graders took pretty well to Etoys. It is the drawing piece that hooks them, and then the scripting part that really challenges them. And the 7th and 8th graders love Scratch. It is interesting to me because they also do plenty of painting of sprites and backgrounds, but something about the bricks seems to match their thinking process. I am getting ready to introduce my current 7th grade classes to Scratch and am looking forward to that. Thanks. Gerald On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:21 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Gerald did some interesting work last year introducing both Scratch and eToys to 5th and 8th graders. Gerald please correct me if I am misremembering. I think the results were the 8th graders took to Scratch more and the 5th graders took to eToys more. Our hypothesis is that the first thing you do with eToys in draw and that is very accessible to 5th graders. They can engage with the system before they have to start understanding programming. On the other hand 8th graders were directly ready to engage with programming and had a easier/faster time picking that up with Scratch. This is very much a hypothesis, not proven and not based on much data but it would be interesting to explore further. On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: OK, I'll send it to you separately. Anybody else is still welcome to join in. On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 20:47, Steve Thomas stevesar...@gmail.com wrote: Edward, Thanks, please send me the outline and what you think needs to be more easily discoverable and I will work on it. Stephen On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: It is true that you can do all of these things in EToys, if you know where to start. It is also true that the start screen of EToys could be improved by providing a path
Re: [IAEP] Peer tutoring initiatives
Jennifer, I manage a deployment of 140 XOs with 5th grade students in a middle school in Westchester County, NY. We trained about 4-5 students per classroom (we call them the Tech Team), and they support their teachers and fellow students. You can read about it here: http://web.me.com/geraldar/The_Shape_of_Disruption/Documents.html If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. Best, Gerald On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Jennifer Martino mart...@laptop.orgwrote: Good afternoon everyone, I am a learning consultant currently supporting OLPC deployments in Latin America. I am putting together a document regarding peer tutoring initiatives (available in both English and Spanish) and would like to include more examples from OLPC deployments around the world. If you are aware of advancements in this area, or know someone who might be, I would really appreciate hearing from you! Thank you in advance for your support, Jennifer ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] InfoTech Report and link to Photos
Caryl, Thanks for all of your work to make this happen. Please keep us posted. Thanks. Gerald On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.comwrote: Hi All, Today was showtime for SoaS at the LAUSD InfoTech and Parent Summit at the Los Angeles Convention center. This year's event was sponsored by Target as one of their community involvement projects. Everything was free... even parking and a great lunch! They said there were about 4000 people there including kids. We had a lot of parents and teachers stop by and ask about getting XOs for their schools and about SoaS. I gave them a special handout with links to lots of info. Some also signed up for the olpc-SoCal mailing list. Their names will be added sometime next week. You can see some photos of the event here. I wish I had had time to take more (and to see the other booths). http://bit.ly/9xfTAz We showed SoaS Blueberry running on the eeePC and MacBook (with a boot helper cd) and it worked fine. This was a non-persistant version. A couple of teachers who stopped by were very interested in trying it and may help us work on the Grannies Guide. I will keep working on it myself in the next couple of weeks. Thanks again to all of you who helped me get the project this far! Hopefully by CUELA's Tech Fair in November we will be ready for a hands-on make and take workshop... BYOLT and usb, take home SoaS ready to go! Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Homework turn-in without server (was: Re: Data vs Critical Thinking - Can Sugar give schools both?)
Sascha, Speaking as a teacher, this workflow seems really good. Gerald On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 7:49 AM, Sascha Silbe sascha-ml-ui-sugar-i...@silbe.org wrote: On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 11:18:14AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 02:08, Gonzalo Odiard godi...@gmail.com wrote: In the context of Sugar we need a simple way to students to send their work to the teacher and a simple way to the teacher to group these works, and follow the progress. Can we start with it? You mean something that works without a server such as Moodle? If so, I think we should start by thinking who is going to review and stabilize that work, as we are getting very short of maintainers. Maybe we should start by designing a work flow / UI for this? I believe the actual code changes could be fairly small and easily reviewed if done right. If we transfer metadata during file transfer (Journal Send To feature) as suggested in #1344 [1], we have everything needed for the most basic workflow: 1. Student opens completed work in Journal details view. 2. Student adds tags as instructed by the teacher (e.g. Class-6a homework bees). 3. Student uses Send To name of teacher. 4. Teacher accepts file transfer. 5. Teacher opens Journal and uses full text search with the given tags. 6. Teacher annotates the work (either inline or (ab)using the description field). 7. Teacher uses Send To name of student. 8. Student accepts file transfer. There are obviously quite a few ways to improve on this workflow, but we can get there step by step with incremental, self-contained changes that are easy enough to review. [1] https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1344 CU Sascha -- http://sascha.silbe.org/ http://www.infra-silbe.de/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJL0YlXAAoJELpz82VMF3DaCfkH/1ZEPp9HBAmg98TjuwbQZtT1 ZTMEXchIGEWl2ZoTJj0+B5s5v1/6fkTsA2YgfC8E2NizL0xowrv+VmpNkNE3yarw nlyhPVfRgWqSdQa39ux+O2pWv+dWX5dgLd2R653t6/8tdsgOaNLtEQT1iL10kLg4 K6ht4QzK7xNN5aMRhHOezMcmG2U8vhMBAhxb1P2gP2ESrWtGTSnqqjmeRy3S4qr4 EVyDysnX94BNQqjsNkk2qjCceQt5R/Dzdpk9eeJT4ipfc+zRpF+DXJNvY/LlE6Zv uEzFNEP2IlshBHVFoevDhGI3r/rAKpFY1R2siL9W+0RTryXXwpneQ4gPS7k+yPA= =EHSi -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SoaS] SoaS For Dummies?
I am excited about trying this. I manage a deployment of 140 XO-1's in a school in Westchester County, New York and have really wanted to upgrade our software from the official build. How do I disable security? Many thanks. Gerald On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 8:28 AM, Thomas C Gilliard satel...@bendbroadband.com wrote: Caryl; I just bought a G1G1 XO-1 on e-bay for testing. * I requested and downloaded a developer key * disabled security (very important!) * installed f11-xo-1-py (fedora 11 gnome and sugar) http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/olpc/f11-xo1-py/os140py.img http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/olpc/f11-xo1-py/os140py.crc This is great software and expands the capabilities of the OLPC XO-1 that bernie has developed for the Paraguay deployment (english and spanish) In the Gnome desktop terminal program on the XO-1: su yum install liveusb-creator liveusb-creator runs using 2 USB sticks: 1-) Target USB 2GB or larger 2-) USB with Blueberry/strawberry.iso's (downloaded on another PC) DO NOT DOWNLOAD soas.iso's to the XO-1 It has too small a working solid state HD to do this. This is very similar to running a 3 stick solution on a EeePC900 The XO-1 is much slower (50min for Blueberry soas) than the EeePC900; but it makes Soas Live USB's fine. (Plus they boot on the XO-1, just leave them inserted and do a shutdown and restart.) I just did this with the soas-2-blueberry.iso and it boots on the XO-1 plus on the EeePC900. (A EeePC900 livecd-iso-to-disk script created live usb will not boot on the XO-1) This could be a nice way to demonstrate sugar and the OLPC XO-1 while it makes and runs Soas Live USB's Tom Gilliard satellit Caryl Bigenho wrote: Thanks Tom for the confirmation! I suspected it might work like that, but not being a PC person, I wasn't sure. Sounds like a piece of cake. Caryl Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:08:38 -0700 From: satel...@bendbroadband.com To: cbige...@hotmail.com CC: s...@lists.sugarlabs.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [SoaS] SoaS For Dummies? Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi Bert, Tom, and All, In case you are all wondering why I want to make this so easy, remember that while I am sort of a closet techie and could learn to do all these fancy work-arounds, I also have many years experience working with and training other educators who are very shy about using computers. For most of them it has to be very simple and work almost as a plug-'n-play. Even the boot-helper disk is a stretch, but I think it is doable with some very clear step-by-step instructions. It needs to be easy, and hopefully fun, with a high probability of success. Bert wrote: The iso file is a CD image. ISO is short for ISO 9660, a.k.a. CDFS (Compact Disc File System). It is a file system designed for CDs, which is read-only. So, I could save money and just use an image on a cd, but unfortunately the live CD will not boot on a MacBook. It needs a boot helper cd to run the usb stick version and there is only one optical drive on the machine. Probably about 50% of the teachers will have Macs. And, Tom suggested using Virtual Box: I really didn't want to use the Virtual Box again. I did that with an early version of Strawberry. I think the Virtual Box would be a deal breaker for a lot of teachers, whereas a usb version with the boot helper cd should be quite acceptable and easy to use. That is why I was hoping to get a usb version that could be used on both PCs and Macs. After all the advice I got from you folks, I ordered a refurbished eeePC 900 with Windows XP today. It will arrive Monday. I chose to get one with Windows XP because the Fedora Live USB Creator seems to be the easiest route to success... sort of SoaS for Dummies! So... according to the instructions at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/SoaS_Blueberry_Instructions you download the blueberry image while in the LiveUSB Creator. Rather than downloading all over again, can I just plug in one of my usb sticks with SoaS (created on the Mac) and use it? Or could I download it to the eeePC once and use it there? What would be the easiest, most fool-proof way to do this? Caryl; YOU DO NOT NEED external CD to do this: * Copy-paste the Blueberry.isofile from the SugarCreation Kit CD onto an empty USB inserted in your MAC * transfer the .iso to your EeePC900 by inserting that USB into the EeePC900 and (drag - drop/copy-paste) the .iso to the XP Desktop. * Install Liveusb-creator for Windows: (See attached .png file) https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/ * Use Liveusb-creator for windows to make a soas USB with it. * Do not do a Download again. use left select box (use existing live CD/ Browse) to find the blueberry.iso on the XP Desktop * Insert a new target USB (2GB fat16) into EeePC900 ad see it appear
Re: [IAEP] [SoaS] SoaS For Dummies?
Dave, Thanks. I will probably train my 20 Tech Team students to do this, which will empower them and help the process. Gerald On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Dave Bauer dave.ba...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 10:59 AM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: I am excited about trying this. I manage a deployment of 140 XO-1's in a school in Westchester County, New York and have really wanted to upgrade our software from the official build. How do I disable security? Check out this page: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activation_and_developer_keys#Getting_a_developer_key_for_your_running_XO_laptop You need to open Browse, click get developer key from the OLPC home page (if your build is new enough) or type file:///home/.devkey.html in the address bar. Then there are further instructions to disable security on that wiki page You need a key for every XO so this might be time consuming. Dave Many thanks. Gerald On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 8:28 AM, Thomas C Gilliard satel...@bendbroadband.com wrote: Caryl; I just bought a G1G1 XO-1 on e-bay for testing. * I requested and downloaded a developer key * disabled security (very important!) * installed f11-xo-1-py (fedora 11 gnome and sugar) http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/olpc/f11-xo1-py/os140py.img http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/olpc/f11-xo1-py/os140py.crc This is great software and expands the capabilities of the OLPC XO-1 that bernie has developed for the Paraguay deployment (english and spanish) In the Gnome desktop terminal program on the XO-1: su yum install liveusb-creator liveusb-creator runs using 2 USB sticks: 1-) Target USB 2GB or larger 2-) USB with Blueberry/strawberry.iso's (downloaded on another PC) DO NOT DOWNLOAD soas.iso's to the XO-1 It has too small a working solid state HD to do this. This is very similar to running a 3 stick solution on a EeePC900 The XO-1 is much slower (50min for Blueberry soas) than the EeePC900; but it makes Soas Live USB's fine. (Plus they boot on the XO-1, just leave them inserted and do a shutdown and restart.) I just did this with the soas-2-blueberry.iso and it boots on the XO-1 plus on the EeePC900. (A EeePC900 livecd-iso-to-disk script created live usb will not boot on the XO-1) This could be a nice way to demonstrate sugar and the OLPC XO-1 while it makes and runs Soas Live USB's Tom Gilliard satellit Caryl Bigenho wrote: Thanks Tom for the confirmation! I suspected it might work like that, but not being a PC person, I wasn't sure. Sounds like a piece of cake. Caryl Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:08:38 -0700 From: satel...@bendbroadband.com To: cbige...@hotmail.com CC: s...@lists.sugarlabs.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [SoaS] SoaS For Dummies? Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi Bert, Tom, and All, In case you are all wondering why I want to make this so easy, remember that while I am sort of a closet techie and could learn to do all these fancy work-arounds, I also have many years experience working with and training other educators who are very shy about using computers. For most of them it has to be very simple and work almost as a plug-'n-play. Even the boot-helper disk is a stretch, but I think it is doable with some very clear step-by-step instructions. It needs to be easy, and hopefully fun, with a high probability of success. Bert wrote: The iso file is a CD image. ISO is short for ISO 9660, a.k.a. CDFS (Compact Disc File System). It is a file system designed for CDs, which is read-only. So, I could save money and just use an image on a cd, but unfortunately the live CD will not boot on a MacBook. It needs a boot helper cd to run the usb stick version and there is only one optical drive on the machine. Probably about 50% of the teachers will have Macs. And, Tom suggested using Virtual Box: I really didn't want to use the Virtual Box again. I did that with an early version of Strawberry. I think the Virtual Box would be a deal breaker for a lot of teachers, whereas a usb version with the boot helper cd should be quite acceptable and easy to use. That is why I was hoping to get a usb version that could be used on both PCs and Macs. After all the advice I got from you folks, I ordered a refurbished eeePC 900 with Windows XP today. It will arrive Monday. I chose to get one with Windows XP because the Fedora Live USB Creator seems to be the easiest route to success... sort of SoaS for Dummies! So... according to the instructions at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/SoaS_Blueberry_Instructions you download the blueberry image while in the LiveUSB Creator. Rather than downloading all over again, can I just plug
Re: [IAEP] SoaS change of direction: heads-up on convos in other lists
I have to agree with Martin and Yama, here. Speaking for teachers working with students, the extra work to download the extra activities desired for over a hundred flash drives would be daunting at best. Gerald On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Yamandu Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.comwrote: Totally 120% with Martin here. I am completely unhappy with the usability of the concept of download your own activities for the total n00b. 20? Maybe as an option a stripped-down somewhere for power users who really want to do what is proposed. (I seem to recall there was a request for discussing this elsewhere, but I don't remember and erased the original email, so my apologies) Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Mel Chua m...@melchua.com wrote: The short version is that instead of include all Activites by default, we're thinking of shipping very few (6) Activities by default - the ones that help users get further Activities and help I read Sebastian's post... and is less drastic than that. He seems to say: include only the well tested, known to work, actively maintained activities, with an eye towards activitries that serve as a good intro to the platform and that demo well. But you say only 6... Which one is it? The initial proposal I like; makes a lot of sense and raises the bar. IT basically increases the chances of a satisfactory first use. Six activities not so much -- you need many steps + internet to add activities... and it'll be random activity from ASLO, may well be unstable or useless. It significantly _reduces_ chances of satisfaction. All IMHO... m ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Fwd: [Edu-sig] Computer Science For Kids Book Announcement
Walter, I am looking it over this morning, and seeing how to use it with some of our students. As soon as I have some feedback, I'll send it along. Gerald On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 5:36 AM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote: Looks nice :) Pretty good. A few places it could be improved. For example, in his compression example, Page 28, he gets confused about bits and bytes. And his page on Open Source is a bit off the mark IMHO. Still, it may appeal to some. I'd be curious to get some teacher reactions. -walter - Bert - Begin forwarded message: From: Andre Lessa an...@lessaworld.com Date: 19. März 2010 05:28:54 MEZ To: edu-...@python.org Subject: [Edu-sig] Computer Science For Kids Book Announcement Hey Python Community, I just self published this brand new book and I'm making its PDF available for (free) download on my web site. My goal is to explain some very basic fundamentals of computer science to kids who are starting to learn about computers at school and/or at home. For the tiny hints of programming, I referenced Python. If you (or a kid you know) ends up having access to this book, please send your feedback (suggestions/corrections) directly to me so I can start thinking about the next edition and how I can make it even cooler for kids. Thanks! Andre Lessa You can download the entire book here (no registration required). Computer Science For Kids http://www.LessaWorld.com/kids/ ___ Edu-sig mailing list edu-...@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Bert is working on Journal Support for Scratch!
I am also cheering! Gerald On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Claudia Urrea callaur...@gmail.comwrote: Yay!! On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:11 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.comwrote: Hip Hip Hooray!!! On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: Indeed I'm working on adding Journal support to Scratch, almost done in fact. But I can't say when John is going to make a release with that. I'm not working on sound or other issues, but Derek did something in that direction IIRC. Btw you can read about ongoing development at https://launchpad.net/~scratch - Bert - On 15.03.2010, at 19:32, Claudia Urrea wrote: Hi Bernie, Thanks for your email. I am waiting on the visa... but I shouldn't have any problems (I am still waiting for Cecilia to send a letter to me). I don't have the agenda yet, I am planning to work with the team of Formadores. Yes. Bert is working on the new version of Scratch (hired by OLPC). I think it is going to be ready very soon! See you soon! Claudia On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 9:17 PM, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org wrote: Continuing our earlier irc conversation on iaep@: bernie I need an updated version of Scratch for the XO... the current version has issues with sound ClaudiaU_ thanks for the report! You are in Paraguay? Indeed! I'll be working on field until August to bridge Sugar Labs with one of the best deployments out there. It's happening bidirectionally: 1) learn about real-world issues with our software and relay such information directly to the Sugar developers and community. 2) at the same time, deliver the latest and greatest of our software in the hands of local children. More than just a bridge, I'm hoping to build a self-reinforcing feedback loop, the kind of thing which powers successful free software projects. ClaudiaU_ bernie: I don't have a public version of Scratch yet, but I am hoping soon... Bern is working on it! You mean Bert? Or me? Or someone I don't know? Some kids here taught themselves Scratch and are doing great things with it: http://codewiz.org/wiki/blog/2010/03#fri-mar-12--interview-with-los-scratcheros It's incredible if you consider to children in Caacupè did not have easy access to computers and fancy electronic gadgets. Most children and teachers have been using computers for the first time less than one year ago. So I think we're just starting to... scratching the surface. (ok, please forgive me for this silly pun). ClaudiaU_ Bernie: I am coming to Paraguay next week let me know if you are there This is great news. Today Cecilia told me you'll be here on the 22nd. What's your schedule like for the week? Anything you would like to work on together? -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ - Bert - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Need ideas for 1 hour Sugar introductory lessons
Caroline, I like Edward's idea. If you use it, you can build to Etoys. There is a nice lesson in the Peru lesson book on animating a caterpillar that is really good. If you don't have the book, let me know and I'll send it to you. Gerald On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/0/0e/Gravity.odt Alan Kay's gravity lesson for ten-year-olds in Turtle Art and Record. On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 10:50, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: We are planning for April vacation week and working with the public library a few blocks from the GPA school. We will be doing 1 to 5 1-hour sessions with a few students during April vacation week. We will then extend that program to after school. My thought is to do focus on a different activity each session. Its a recreational setting. We can ask for different age ranges for different sessions when we advertise. I definitely want to do one with Physics. Do people have suggestions for what are some of the best 1 hour introductions for kids? Thanks, Caroline -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Anki - open source memorization tool.
I particularly like the ability to download existing decks. This would be a good thing for Sugar/XOs. Gerald On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 21:38, Caroline Meeks wrote: An open source memorization tool. Looks simple and cool and already runs on Linux, might be a good addition to Sugar. In fact, it's even written in Python, so supporting it in Sugar should be straightforward. Do we have a page on the Wiki where we can put such activity ideas? - -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Use GnuPG with Firefox : http://getfiregpg.org (Version: 0.7.10) iEYEARECAAYFAkuYWdEACgkQtrC51grHAgbmeQCgseBCDIvPaIft1t15Ao/sXgwa dfcAoLwmVoTedVWtxdQlzSIuqT7Ha/dv =ZRyD -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] sharing an interesting message
Gabriel, This is just fantastic. Thanks for sharing it with us. Gerald On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Gabriel Eirea gei...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Sometimes at ceibaljam.org we receive comments from children, always very interesting to read. I thought I should share the following. This kid created a new group in drupal with the following message (roughly translated from http://drupal.ceibaljam.org/?q=node/698): Let's improve Phisics (sic) together hi, my name is German Vargas and I'm thinking about a very good idea... I'm an 11-years-old kid, this year I turn 12 on December 3rd. One of my favorite games in the xo is: Phisics. I love this game beacause it's about logic, I love experiments and logic games, construction games, in this game, I play in version 4, I have created many things like: cars, motorbikes, houses, dolls, people, laberynths with marbles, etc. I realized that many things are missing, more tools for this game, to build more things, objects and tools are needed like: first of all arrows that would let you move the map and COMPUTE HOW MUCH SPACE YOU WILL NEED TO BUILD WHAT YOU WANT, also woods, bike wheels, car wheels, wheels of the size you want and need, rockets, gasoline, oil, diesel, fire, water, explosives, mortar, bricks, cannons, metal balls, wood balls, stone balls, many things are missing, motors with their speed, cables, wind, fans, propellers, small motors, batteries, sockets, electricity, one controller that controls everything, etc, many things, and for this a lot of effort is needed... I need you to help me and make a group that together, we could do all this and improve Phicics every day a little, so children and teenagers can use this activity in class and build what the teacher asks them. Phicics also has to have animals that move by themselves or that you can move, people that drive by themselves, or even that you drive them so they can drive trucks and cars, bikes, etc. Please, I need your help and that we all together can improve Phicics, let's work as a team, please!!! bye!!!... Regards, Gabriel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Math on Web
Caroline, I think that this can connect in some way to your RTI Project. What do you think? Gerald On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.comwrote: Yes it does. On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Maria, This looks very promising. Caroline, what do you think? Gerald On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.comwrote: Gerald, I talked to Nibipedia people about this. Here is the reply: --- On Sugar. Our hope all along was that we would build a giant semi automated aggregation tool that would make a giant video/text database that would work in Sugar. We're much closer than we've ever been to opening up for crowdsourcing. If you know some folks at Sugarlabs, we definitely would like to talk to them. In particular, we'd love to show them our upcoming iPhone App. Troy CEO Nibipedia 612 747 2730 --- I am CCing Troy and Terry, as well. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.comwrote: Gerald, Check out Nibipedia for that sort of software. The creators may be open for collaboration. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Caroline, Something else that may be worth considering is the development of an activity like Info Slicer, where teachers can provide annotations for the videos, and/or prompts for notes or reflections. Gerald On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.comwrote: Anybody know about this? I wonder whether he would be willing to let us adapt his materials to laptops. Good idea! What ideas do you have about how we would adopt it? We could start by asking him if he would make them CC license. I'm traveling to the Bay Area next month. If we can get some good ideas I'm happy to maybe team up with Cherry take him out to coffee and ask. Caroline -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Math on Web
Maria, This looks very promising. Caroline, what do you think? Gerald On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.com wrote: Gerald, I talked to Nibipedia people about this. Here is the reply: --- On Sugar. Our hope all along was that we would build a giant semi automated aggregation tool that would make a giant video/text database that would work in Sugar. We're much closer than we've ever been to opening up for crowdsourcing. If you know some folks at Sugarlabs, we definitely would like to talk to them. In particular, we'd love to show them our upcoming iPhone App. Troy CEO Nibipedia 612 747 2730 --- I am CCing Troy and Terry, as well. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.comwrote: Gerald, Check out Nibipedia for that sort of software. The creators may be open for collaboration. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Caroline, Something else that may be worth considering is the development of an activity like Info Slicer, where teachers can provide annotations for the videos, and/or prompts for notes or reflections. Gerald On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.comwrote: Anybody know about this? I wonder whether he would be willing to let us adapt his materials to laptops. Good idea! What ideas do you have about how we would adopt it? We could start by asking him if he would make them CC license. I'm traveling to the Bay Area next month. If we can get some good ideas I'm happy to maybe team up with Cherry take him out to coffee and ask. Caroline ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Math on Web
Iago, Thanks for this. Gerald On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 2:18 AM, itoral ito...@igalia.com wrote: On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:08:14 +0100, Tomeu Vizoso to...@tomeuvizoso.net wrote: On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 17:57, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Caroline, You do a good job outlining the problem. Even with bandwidth, the Browse activity is just not that great (at least on the XOs) for streaming video. An activity based on Grilo could be optimized for this use case: http://blogs.igalia.com/itoral/2010/02/10/grilo/ Grilo would not help with the bandwidth problems as much as it would help with allowing teachers organize the multimedia contents and simplifying the development of an activity focused on providing structured multimedia content to students. Grilo abstracts the location of the actual video feeds, which could then be stored on Youtube, some local streaming server, on a network share, usb storage,... anywhere, this would provide quite a lot of flexibility to teachers. Also, activity developers would not have to care about where the video file really is. Teachers would be able to organize the contents they are interested in so that this multimedia content can be browsed easily both by teachers and students. Also, teachers would be able to add metadata to the video files (again, no matter where the actual file lives), like summaries of the contents, hints to understand the video, additional work or other related content. All this information could then be grabbed by an activity and present it to the student appropriately, enriching the learning experience. Iago ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
Subbu, Thanks for this. Your idea about watchers is a really good one. Gerald On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 7:53 AM, K. K. Subramaniam subb...@gmail.comwrote: On Friday 26 February 2010 12:12:19 pm Cherry Withers wrote: It's definitely a balancing act trying to get them to focus on finishing up something and getting them to explore. Once they realize that they can affect the object by scripts they just want to do everything they can possibly do in one sitting (dragging and dropping tiles in one script window ..then I'm in fire fighting mode). Too much resulted in chaos in my class. Not doing THAT again. I now give them some time to go nuts on exploration then pull them back in to finish a project. Now I'm introducing just a max of two concepts (or tiles) in one 40min. session. When a new tile is introduced, kids tend to use it over and over many times before they get to a state where they can use it in a project. This is par for the course. Alan's car demo script starts with commands. When the script says forward 5 what exactly is 5 in that blank space? Introducing watchers before commands helps ease the up ramp. Learning about watchers for shapes (length/width/heading), color and border and then position (x,y,..) allows kids to grasp spatial and angular dimensions gradually. BTW, I wouldn't worry about kids finishing a project in the first few sessions. Curiosity and experimentation will dominate the sessions. Only when they reach a zone of comfort with the system will they become receptive to tips on saving their projects. My experience is limited to non-English students in rural India using the English GUI. I don't know how much it would apply to students in other regions. YMMV .. Subbu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Math on Web
Maria, Thanks for the tip. Gerald On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Maria Droujkova droujk...@gmail.comwrote: Gerald, Check out Nibipedia for that sort of software. The creators may be open for collaboration. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Caroline, Something else that may be worth considering is the development of an activity like Info Slicer, where teachers can provide annotations for the videos, and/or prompts for notes or reflections. Gerald On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.comwrote: Anybody know about this? I wonder whether he would be willing to let us adapt his materials to laptops. Good idea! What ideas do you have about how we would adopt it? We could start by asking him if he would make them CC license. I'm traveling to the Bay Area next month. If we can get some good ideas I'm happy to maybe team up with Cherry take him out to coffee and ask. Caroline http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/north_america/jan-june10/khan_02-22.html Feb. 22, 2010 Math Wiz Adds Web Tools to Take Education to New Limits -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Math on Web
Caroline, You do a good job outlining the problem. Even with bandwidth, the Browse activity is just not that great (at least on the XOs) for streaming video. I am imagining some combination of teachers providing scaffolding or a preview of some video(s), and then the students watching them from home (or outside of the classroom) and then reflecting/having classroom discussions. Gerald On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Here is a page on 4 YouTube Math Tutors http://www.squidoo.com/Youtube-Math-Tutors I think Gerald is right, we need a general way to help Sugar Teachers use YouTube resources. Can people help me brainstorm? Challenges to using YouTube Resources: 1. YouTube is blocked by the district 2. No internet access 3. Bandwidth if everyone is watching a video at once 4. Workflow/Classflow challenges how do we get the kids watching the video we want them to watch and doing the work before and after to make it a learning experience. 5. Legal issues, what is and isn't fair use of the a YouTube resource? On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Caroline, Something else that may be worth considering is the development of an activity like Info Slicer, where teachers can provide annotations for the videos, and/or prompts for notes or reflections. Gerald On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.comwrote: Anybody know about this? I wonder whether he would be willing to let us adapt his materials to laptops. Good idea! What ideas do you have about how we would adopt it? We could start by asking him if he would make them CC license. I'm traveling to the Bay Area next month. If we can get some good ideas I'm happy to maybe team up with Cherry take him out to coffee and ask. Caroline http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/north_america/jan-june10/khan_02-22.html Feb. 22, 2010 Math Wiz Adds Web Tools to Take Education to New Limits -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [FIELDBACK] Etoys
Edward, I know that my 5th graders who are using XOs and Sugar would love to participate with you in this project. Gerald On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: I would also like to hear any such ideas. I am writing about exploring the XO and its software, to be followed by a teacher's guide that will show how to introduce everything that children cannot discover for themselves in dependency order, and a bite at a time, with appropriate reinforcement. I need all of the real-world information I can get about both problems and solutions. Then, of course, I will need people to try out what I write and tell me what's wrong with it. ^_^ I would particularly like to hear from children who have issues, and be able to discuss those issues with them. On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 01:42, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote: Gerald, It's definitely a balancing act trying to get them to focus on finishing up something and getting them to explore. Once they realize that they can affect the object by scripts they just want to do everything they can possibly do in one sitting (dragging and dropping tiles in one script window ..then I'm in fire fighting mode). Too much resulted in chaos in my class. Not doing THAT again. I now give them some time to go nuts on exploration then pull them back in to finish a project. Now I'm introducing just a max of two concepts (or tiles) in one 40min. session. Kathleen Harness has really good lesson plans for teaching one concept at a time: www.etoysillionois.org I would like to hear more best practices/ideas, etc. for teaching Etoys in the classroom. Cheers, Cherry On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: I agree. Watching the car script is fun for a while. But when they make their own first script, it is exciting each and every time. I also find that the students (I work with 10 year olds) get overwhelmed by the number of choices they have. Anyone else have that experience? Thanks. Gerald On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:11 PM, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote: The very first time a child sees their object move with a simple forward script is always a magical moment for me and the kids. Never fails. Exploration and excitement explodes after that. I'm new to teaching Etoys as well. Definitely caught the bug. :-) On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: Hi, I am teaching on a regular basis in the Planetarium pilot in Berlin, Germany [1]. I have been using Etoys now for several weeks and here is some first feedback. First: The kids do like it a lot! I want to encourage everyone to include it in his curriculum. For example you can teach easily the concepts of the coordinate system with Etoys. You create an object and print out the X and Y values when moving it on the screen. Or you can use a joystick to alter the position of this object and use this method to deepen the coordinate system concept. Of course we did as well the famous car example. It was slightly changed in my class: A bug has to crawl a lane using one or two sensors to stay on the lane. A lot of interesting concepts to learn here, too (positive and negative numbers for example). And to bring this all together into a portfolio you can use the book tool (found in the treasure chest) to create a story including all your objects and games, pictures etc you created. I wrote down a few items I was missing when using the book tool and while doing so, I figured they were all there, just hidden by default. - resize all of the book not just one page - maybe that could be the default option? - duplicate a page - different background color - different sound when turning the page When you hit the little button at the far left you will get more options. And when you use the menu in the middle of the book toolbar you get all of these options and a lot of more. Just in case someone runs as well into this :) A few things that I came across, too: - German: When you drop the 'joystick up down' and 'joystick left right' option onto the world it will change to English. Not when you use it in a script though. - some buttons are hard to use: for example when you want to alter the behavior of the X value of an object (increase..). Those are hard to navigate. Or dropping options into the test script does not work as smooth. That's all for now - keep up the good work, team Etoys!. Thanks, Simon PS: Of course I am happy to turn items into bugs later. Just thought I give here a little summary first. [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployments/Planetarium ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
Re: [IAEP] SoaS deployment (1st grade) in CFS (Boston area)
Mel, This is just great. I look forward to see what happens next. If I can help at all, just let me know. Gerald On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 11:34 PM, Mel Chua m...@melchua.com wrote: Some of you may have seen this news come across Planet already, but we're doing a small SoaS deployment in a 1st grade classroom in Cambridge, MA. It's meant to be small, short-term (Feb-May) and very well-documented - basically, what is the simplest complete SoaS deployment mechanism you could set up? is the question we are trying to answer by doing it. More information at http://blog.melchua.com/category/soas/, http://sdziallas.com/blog/sebastian/2010/02/im-excited-seriously.html, and https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar. There's a wiki page up about the deployment at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mchua/SoaS_pilot, but this is a very temporary location until the students pick a name for the deployment - at which point we'll move to mainspace with that name. --Mel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] planet
Tomeu, This seems like a really good resource, and one I did not know about before. As with any blog, it is only useful if updated regularly, so that would be my only reservation about promoting it. My two cents. Gerald On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi, I'm under the impression that the SLs planet (http://planet.sugarlabs.org/) isn't well known even between the members in our mailing lists. What do people think about linking to it more prominently? Maybe in Walter's digest? Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Looking for Montreal XO/Sugar users
Tabitha, One of the teachers has an affinity for the city, and Canada is part of the 5th grade social studies curriculum. Did you have somewhere else in mind? Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 4:29 AM, Tabitha Roder tabitha.ro...@gmail.comwrote: 2010/1/21 Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com I have a classroom of 5th grade XO users and their teacher who are looking to become electronic pen pals with students in Montreal. Hi Gerald Any reason Montreal? Tabitha ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Looking for Montreal XO/Sugar users
Tabitha, I would like to be contacted by other XO using schools interested in pen pal arrangements. And yes, 5th graders are about 10 years old. Thanks for your help with this. Gerald On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 4:50 AM, Tabitha Roder tabitha.ro...@gmail.comwrote: One of the teachers has an affinity for the city, and Canada is part of the 5th grade social studies curriculum. Did you have somewhere else in mind? No where else in mind, just having the reasons helps people decide if they should put their hand up with alternatives - would you like to be contacted by other XO using schools if they are interested in a penpal arrangement? (what age is 5th grade? is that 10 year olds? we have different terminology here). Thanks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] EToys Saving Problem
Bert, I have been working with students to create EToys projects. Two of them were working yesterday on their projects, which I saw. Their work was very good, and almost done. When they went to finish it today, yesterday's work was not in the Journal, nor were there any other records in the Journal of earlier sessions on this project. So, I have some questions: 1. Under what conditions could this happen? 2. Is it possible that the project is on the XO, but not showing in the Journal? If so, where might I find it. 3. Can you suggest any way to recover this work? Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] EToys Saving Problem
Bert, Thanks. Which log should I look at? I'll try the other stuff on Monday when I am back at school. Gerald On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: On 08.01.2010, at 22:14, Gerald Ardito wrote: Bert, I have been working with students to create EToys projects. Two of them were working yesterday on their projects, which I saw. Their work was very good, and almost done. When they went to finish it today, yesterday's work was not in the Journal, nor were there any other records in the Journal of earlier sessions on this project. So, I have some questions: 1. Under what conditions could this happen? Don't know. Is there anything in the log? 2. Is it possible that the project is on the XO, but not showing in the Journal? If so, where might I find it. It's unlikely, but try su find /home/olpc/isolation -name \*.pr which would look for Etoys projects in the rainbow-jailed folders. 3. Can you suggest any way to recover this work? If you find a project file you can use copy-to-journal to add it to the Journal. - Bert - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sharing work between XOs/SOAS devices
Aleksey, I think option 1 is good. It keeps the favorites metaphor from elsewhere and allows for the sharing of multiple things at the same time. Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 12:30:22PM -0500, Gerald Ardito wrote: Hello all. As our 5th graders are doing more and more work with their XOs, their being able to turn in and share their work products (as opposed to collaborating with others) is becoming more and more important. My temporary solution is having them upload their work (along with reflections, if desired) to Moodle, which I can do because we have an XS implementation. However, this means that if a student has created a Memorize vocabulary game that s/he want to share s/he has to: 1. Create the game. 2. Save it to the Journal 3. Go to Browse 4. Navigate to Moodle 5. Find the right course/right assignment within the course 6. Upload game. S/he pretty much has to do the same thing to download and then play other games. This is certainly workable, but dramatically slows down the momentum of creating games and wanting others to play them. So, I am asking to create/offering to help create an Activity that allows users to share work products easily. I know that Bert was working on something called Distribute, which may be a starting place. It seems to share Journal objects, which seems right. I am happy to work with developers on this. I could create requirements, if need be. Just say the word. I look forward to what comes next. Thanks and best, Gerald What do you think about followed workflows, which is preferable 1) user, using search controls, minimize list of entries in Journal bookmark this entirely list(names it) share the whole list(bookmark) user can have several bookmarks other users see that 1st user shared some bookmarks and can open these bookmarks in theirs Journal(it could be separate icon like USB) (bookmarks could be useful not only for sharing) 2) there is no bookmarks user can share any object w/o bookmarking(e.g. by clicking star icon or so) other user see only one list of shared objects -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sharing EToys projects
Hello. I am working with 140 5th grade students who are using XOs (mostly) and netbooks with SOAS. About 50 of them are using Etoys to create projects. I am trying to find a way to share them with their teachers and each other. When I try to upload them to a Moodle course and them download them, the downloaded files can't be read by EToys. Any ideas? Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep