Re: [IAEP] Sugar on MacBook...still no go
On 24.04.2009, at 07:41, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi, I tried all sorts of things with the file that I have downloaded twice now. I seem to be able to unzip it, but it converts to .vdi and when I click on it to open it, this is the message I get: The document “soas-beta-1.vdi” could not be opened. The file is too large. This is the file that is supposed to have everything needed in one neat package that lives on the MacBook. It isn't supposed to be a document. You seem to have overlooked my response on what to do with the .vdi file. It's *not* as simple as double-clicking yet, but simpler than most of the other methods. Note that it will *only* run on one a Mac with Intel processor, not on a G4. Is there a secret to unzipping this thing so it can be used? No, simply unzipping is fine. Is there a way to open the .vdi file and run Sugar? Yes, you need to use it in VirtualBox. I replied yesterday with a step- by-step procedure: Begin forwarded message: From: Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de Date: 23. April 2009 13:15:38 MESZ To: Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com Cc: IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] .zip turned into .vdi What now? On 23.04.2009, at 08:14, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hello Again, Still trying to get SoaS going on my MacBook. I downloaded the soas-beta-1.zip. It took a long time (almost 2 hrs on dsl). It's big, 350 MB. So 2 hours would indicate a download speed of 400 kbit/sec. Depending on what DSL speed you pay for that might well be as fast as it goes. http://compnetworking.about.com/od/dsldigitalsubscriberline/f/dslspeed.htm On my DSL (6000 kbit/sec) it still took 9 minutes. I finally had time to look at it and try to use it and discovered that it no longer is a zip file. Somehow it turned into soas- beta-1.vdi Was that supposed to happen? What do I do with it now? It is asking what application I want to use to open it. The file is the same size as the zip file (357 MB) so it looks like the same file...just with a different extension. Is there a way to change it back? It's fine. The .zip contains a single file named .vdi so it is uncompressed automatically. VDI means Virtualbox Disk I guess. After downloading, run VirtualBox. Click New to open the New Virtual Machine Wizard. Click Next. Choose a name (SoaS), OS (Linux), Version (Fedora). Click Next. Choose the memory (256 MB is fine). Click Next. Choose the disk: click Existing The Virtual Media Manager opens. Click Add. Find soas-beta-1.vdi, click Open, then Select, then Next. Click Finish. You're done! Now whenever you run VirtualBox, just choose SoaS from the list and click Start to run it. Don't worry if it appears to hang after writing something about loading initrd0.img, it will continue eventually. Note that VirtualBox captures your mouse pointer, to escape, press the left Cmd key. Have fun with SoaS on your Mac :) - Bert - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 13, Issue 73
Hi Caroline, Bert, and everyone else, About 5 minutes ago I got SoaS to run on my MacBook. : ) I followed Bert's fine instructions again, adding one tiny detail (if Virtual Manager doesn't open, click on the little yellow folder at the right of the pull down bar...if it doesn't open, double click again). All I tried was Speak. It worked fine with English and Spanish. It seems like the mouth doesn't open as wide and it talksa little faster, but maybe that is my imagination. I have to refinish a 9 drawer dresser now, so I will have to wait until eveningto play more with SoaS on the MacBook. BTW...how do I add activities? (Greedy I guess). I will take my MacBook, 5 XOs, and the nice SoaS stick Walter sent, to the InfoTech event tomorrow. Someone there will probably have a PC we can use the stick on. I have been following the discussion about the length of time schools would continue to use PowerPC Macs.In my experience schools keep machines until lots of their keys fall off or they totally die. Then if they are thrown out, some enterprising teacher will go dumpster diving and rescue them to set up a computer lab in their classroom. I know of at least one instance of this actually happening! So, yes, IMHO it is worth it to spend the time to get to run on the PowerPC. Caryl P.S. In Latin America they call USB sticks pens. That means SoaS there would be SoaP!___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 13, Issue 73
On 24 Apr 2009, at 18:44, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi Caroline, Bert, and everyone else, About 5 minutes ago I got SoaS to run on my MacBook. : ) I followed Bert's fine instructions again, adding one tiny detail (if Virtual Manager doesn't open, click on the little yellow folder at the right of the pull down bar...if it doesn't open, double click again). All I tried was Speak. It worked fine with English and Spanish. It seems like the mouth doesn't open as wide and it talks a little faster, but maybe that is my imagination. I have to refinish a 9 drawer dresser now, so I will have to wait until evening to play more with SoaS on the MacBook. BTW...how do I add activities? (Greedy I guess). Using Browse, the default page has a link to the Activities web site, though only a portion of activities have been migrated there so far. Old, likely unsupported and untested activities, can also be downloaded from the wiki.laptop.org site as before. It's worth noting that the current Soas distributions come pre- installed in such a way that you can not update some of the activities from within Sugar... Though, if you know your way around terminal it is easily fixed. I think this currently covers all Fructose core activities. One way to tell is to hover your cursor over the activity icons in Home view, you'll notice some have Erase greyed out, these are the locked ones. Regards, --Gary I will take my MacBook, 5 XOs, and the nice SoaS stick Walter sent, to the InfoTech event tomorrow. Someone there will probably have a PC we can use the stick on. I have been following the discussion about the length of time schools would continue to use PowerPC Macs. In my experience schools keep machines until lots of their keys fall off or they totally die. Then if they are thrown out, some enterprising teacher will go dumpster diving and rescue them to set up a computer lab in their classroom. I know of at least one instance of this actually happening! So, yes, IMHO it is worth it to spend the time to get to run on the PowerPC. Caryl P.S. In Latin America they call USB sticks pens. That means SoaS there would be SoaP! ___ 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] [SoaS] A Hardware Effort: Please Help!
Hi everybody, we are now going to get a new hardware effort off the ground, to get some better QA done. This means that we ask you to submit the system specs of the machines you test SoaS - and that's actually pretty easy: * Just grab the latest snapshot (please don't use the beta!) from here: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-April/013984.html * Put it on your key and boot! Open the terminal. * Now become root and type the following command: smoltSendProfile * Once you agreed to submit your information, you'll be given a link to your hardware profile, as well as an admin password. You'll need those! Now please go to this wiki page (where you can also find these instructions) and add yourself together with the link to your profile: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Hardware This really helps us to get some feedback concerning the hardware that is used with SoaS. By the way, once you login on that profile page, you can also rate your experience with SoaS. That's basically it. Doesn't sound too hard, hu? Please give it a try! ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] A Hardware Effort: Please Help!
Hardware testing might be a good thing to do at Sugar gatherings such as Sugar Camp Europe next month. Invite participates to bring their favorite laptop and see if they can get it to work in that controlled environment. This would promote a number of on-ramp activities: Shift the focus from talking about Sugar to using and testing Sugar. Introduce the notion of filing bug against failed equipment. Bring bug triage team activities to the forefront. david On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com wrote: Hi everybody, we are now going to get a new hardware effort off the ground, to get some better QA done. This means that we ask you to submit the system specs of the machines you test SoaS - and that's actually pretty easy: * Just grab the latest snapshot (please don't use the beta!) from here: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-April/013984.html * Put it on your key and boot! Open the terminal. * Now become root and type the following command: smoltSendProfile * Once you agreed to submit your information, you'll be given a link to your hardware profile, as well as an admin password. You'll need those! Now please go to this wiki page (where you can also find these instructions) and add yourself together with the link to your profile: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Hardware This really helps us to get some feedback concerning the hardware that is used with SoaS. By the way, once you login on that profile page, you can also rate your experience with SoaS. That's basically it. Doesn't sound too hard, hu? Please give it a try! ___ 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] Group Protocols that support group learning and learning communities
On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: One of the topics in my class at HGSE this semester is the use of protocols to support group work by teachers and administrators in schools. What is a Protocol? It took me half the semester to figure this out! It is such a common practice in schools that apparently nobody bothers to definite it. It is basically any predefined series of steps that a group would go through to work more effectively. Its a lot like a lesson plan but for groups of adult peers. One Protocol we are probably all familiar with is Brainstorming where you put up ideas quickly without evaluating them, then as a separate phase evaluate them. There are lots of different protocols to facilitate different sorts of work and to solve different sorts of problems. The kind of problems they might help with are: a few people dominate the conversation; people just repeat what everyone agrees on already and there are no new ideas coming out; conflicts are making people uncomfortable and reducing group effeciveness; the group talks but there is no work product at the end of the time. Why do Educators Use Protocols? We were not explicitly taught this answer, its apparently well enough estabilshed that no one asks this question anymore. In the US teachers have traditionally been isolated in their classrooms doing thier own practice. Recently there has been an introduction of common planning time across grade levels and often subect based teams but getting a bunch of people who have always worked alone together in a room doesn't garentee effective collaboration. We have used many of these protocols in class. Once you try them its pretty easy to be sold that they can be effective then unstrutured meetings or one person in front with a powerpoint meetings. Why should we use protocols? We have a lot in common with educators. We mostly work alone and occasionally come together for common planning time. We want educators to learn from our Open Source processes, we should model that by learning from them. We want to understand our users, doing things the way they do it is a good step. They work. They can be more effective, fun, interesting and less stressful. How can we use protocols? First remember its not an all or nothing, its just another option, we don't have and to use a protocol for everything! Successful community building is premised on the notion of protocols. Sugar Labs primary protocol is 'Honor the release cycle and keep it on schedule!' A functioning Sugar Labs ecosystem requires many participants all working together to push and pull the necessary bits through the distribution chain. 1. Developers must know and agree on when the merge window opens and closes. 2. Localizers must know and agree on string freezes and ship date. 3. Activity developers must know when APIs freeze so they can update their activities. 4. Distribution and system integrators must know when Sugar ships so they can coordinate and plan for their releases. 5. The second protocol is 'Good results beat great ideas!' Good results tend to attract more participants who turn the good results into great results. Great ideas tend to languish in ivory towers and think tanks. The third protocol is 'Make it possible for others to learn something new, do something useful, and have some fun!' People who are learning, doing, and enjoying, tend to attract like minded people. On a less meta level, Sugar Labs also has several protocols which we follow on a daily basis. The over sight board makes decisions based on consensus. If the board can not come to consensus, the Executive Directory has final say. Interestingly, I don't think Sugar Labs has ever gotten to the point where Walter had to use his executive authority to settle a dispute. Problems and reported and tracked via a bug tracker. Because of the large number of new participants we a bit relaxed on this issue. Bug reports often come in the form of mailing list posts. A good portion of the time, Tomeu, or someone else, will ask the ml poster to follow up with a formal bug report to insure that the issues does not get lost. Mailing list discussions should be respectful and useful. Are there any regular contributors who have not gotten a 'Please let this thread lie' request from me? As soon as a thread starts to develop into a flame, I try to ask the participates to wait at least 12 hours before posting a follow up to let the thread settle down. Protocols are interesting in that good ones become invisible. Mel Chua is the master of protocols. She calls it 'Capacity Building.' Basically, she takes a 'good enough' process, simplifies it, and shares it with others working on similar problems. I did my first practice at Olin last week: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/April_17_Olin_Play_Session If anyone presenting in Paris would like to try some group protocols to
[IAEP] Advanced search on ASLO
Hey everyone, I've finally started a style sheet for ASLO. You can see what I have so far at http://activities-devel.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/ . It's not much, but I'm moving forward. Just wondering if there was a consensus to ditch the advanced search options? I think it might be a good idea for the sake of simplicity and ease of use for kids. However, I don't know if it's something some users actually need. I think at the very least within categories should be removed even if we do keep the advanced options. Any thoughts? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] advanced search image
It's better to attach. Just so you know what I'm talking about. inline: search.png___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Advanced search on ASLO
On 25 Apr 2009, at 03:46, Josh Williams wrote: Hey everyone, I've finally started a style sheet for ASLO. You can see what I have so far at http://activities-devel.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/ . It's not much, but I'm moving forward. Fab :-) Just wondering if there was a consensus to ditch the advanced search options? I think it might be a good idea for the sake of simplicity and ease of use for kids. However, I don't know if it's something some users actually need. I think at the very least within categories should be removed even if we do keep the advanced options. Any thoughts? I'd never even noticed the advanced search feature until you just mentioned it! FWIW, I'd be happy with just the plain search input box over on the top right (no 'advanced', no 'within'). The simpler the better, given our target audience. Every UI feature you can get away with removing... is one less item of distraction/confusion/ maintenance :-) Regards, --Gary ___ 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] State of Soas?
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Dear all, even though I've tried to keep a close eye on the breathtaking development of SoaS over the past few weeks there are still some basic questions I'm wondering about, all related to how well SoaS runs on the various netbooks. * Have the resolution issues, which used to be a major issue w/ running Sugar on a non-XO, been solved? * What about font sizes? * Do all the activities (incl. collaboration) work reliably on SoaS these days? * Does SoaS allow for power-management to kick in on netbooks? This will be one of the issues that the developers will look at and plan for in the up coming SugarCamp Paris 2009 next month. With some luck and volunteers, 0.86 to be release this fall should pick up more of the cool XO features that got left out of .84 due to lack of time. We have invited Chris Ball, the primary laptop software developer at OLPC, to come and make sure that those features have an knowledgeable advocates as we plan priorities for .86. * What exactly are the networking and audio issues that Walter described in yesterday's Sugar-Digest? What I'm basically trying to find out is whether *today* running SoaS on a netbook is a *real* alternative to XOs with build 767 when it comes to classroom settings? At this point I would have to recommend not referring SoaS as classroom ready. The classroom is an extremely demanding environment: 1. One teacher - 25 squirmy kids. 2. Almost no system administration resources. 3. Little formal SoaS teacher training available. 4. Very distinct, often testable, learning objectives of a given class period. In a classroom environment, the system must be rock solid! david Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ 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] (no subject)
Next on the list of administrative issues is establishing a Sugar Labs code of conduct. The purpose of the code is to establish a general tone of expected behavior for project participates. Your comments, suggestions, and edits are welcome. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Legal/Code_of_Conduct david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs Code of Conduct
Sorry, I forgot a subject... really long week. On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 11:18 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Next on the list of administrative issues is establishing a Sugar Labs code of conduct. The purpose of the code is to establish a general tone of expected behavior for project participates. Your comments, suggestions, and edits are welcome. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Legal/Code_of_Conduct david ___ 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
