[IAEP] soas install to hard disk
I have soas2 beta dated 14 April burned to a cd and booting/working fine on a PC. I now want to install the software onto the hard disk - cd is slow and temporary. hd would be faster and more permanent. I could run soas off a USB, but since the PC will be dedicated to running soas it makes more sense to use the hd. Ashar ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] personalisation and collaboration
Something has been in the back of my head for a while now, ever since I've seen the impressive capabilities of being able to share an activity with your neighbourhood. Being able to cooperatively use applications brings a new level of playability to it all, and it reminds me of when I first saw the ability for a computer game to be 'multi-player.'This gave it an extra dimension, and with it came the idea of awards for completing certain things, which would be displayed in your dashoard somewhere.The award system seems even more relevant for education than it did for games. We'v aleady mentioned the benefits of an award sysem so I'm not going to regugitate that, but what hasnt''t really been spoken about is, how and what kind of personal details should the journal store and share. I see this as a customisable option, something that can be as simple as only sharing first names, or sharing the name of your pet, your favorite colors and foods, the languages you speak. This detailed information about a person is extremely valuable to the underlying system, as it can potentially match people against each other. This would allow for some interesting possibilities when it comes to collaboration, such as the system suggesting users to challenge/collaborate with based on personal information. I thought about having a robot that lives on an irc channel capable of helping with the collaboration procedure, as well as listing achievements, giving data on which users want to collaborate, giving help on how collaboration works with particular activities, listing which servers have open collaboration, showing the most used/highest rated collaborating activities, etc. I havent thought about this too much in depth, but I know coding a bot is not too hard. I see it as an extension to the speak AI, and encouragement to join irc. We can even get the bot to accept uploads of raw learning materials categorised by subject, which can then be used by content creators. it itself could give out quizzes based on particular subjects, or interesting pieces of information/knowledge. It could be taught new information, by feeding it localised knowledge. It would be important to know where we set the limits to what it can do. Just some food for thought... David (nubae) Van Assche ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] personalisation and collaboration
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 7:00 AM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: Something has been in the back of my head for a while now, ever since I've seen the impressive capabilities of being able to share an activity with your neighbourhood. Being able to cooperatively use applications brings a new level of playability to it all, and it reminds me of when I first saw the ability for a computer game to be 'multi-player.'This gave it an extra dimension, and with it came the idea of awards for completing certain things, which would be displayed in your dashoard somewhere.The award system seems even more relevant for education than it did for games. We'v aleady mentioned the benefits of an award sysem so I'm not going to regugitate that, but what hasnt''t really been spoken about is, how and what kind of personal details should the journal store and share. I see this as a customisable option, something that can be as simple as only sharing first names, or sharing the name of your pet, your favorite colors and foods, the languages you speak. This detailed information about a person is extremely valuable to the underlying system, as it can potentially match people against each other. This would allow for some interesting possibilities when it comes to collaboration, such as the system suggesting users to challenge/collaborate with based on personal information. I thought about having a robot that lives on an irc channel capable of helping with the collaboration procedure, as well as listing achievements, giving data on which users want to collaborate, giving help on how collaboration works with particular activities, listing which servers have open collaboration, showing the most used/highest rated collaborating activities, etc. I havent thought about this too much in depth, but I know coding a bot is not too hard. I see it as an extension to the speak AI, and encouragement to join irc. We can even get the bot to accept uploads of raw learning materials categorised by subject, which can then be used by content creators. it itself could give out quizzes based on particular subjects, or interesting pieces of information/knowledge. It could be taught new information, by feeding it localised knowledge. It would be important to know where we set the limits to what it can do. Just some food for thought... David (nubae) Van Assche ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep In general, the idea of bots living in the Sugar neighborhood is a theme we haven't explored very much. It would be nice to come up with a simple, consistent framework for creating such a resource. Making it available through IRC as well is a cool idea. -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] Programming Needs?
Hi Caryl, I am listing the most important tickets for the Gardner Pilot here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues Lots of Linux issues right now. Sugar on a Stick works on the school computers but there are a bunch of things that will help it work more smoothly. I also have another hardware project idea that I will post in its own thread. If they like the activities more then the base OS work I think just pick and activitey, get good at it, ask the list what they would like improved and go for it. For instance many of the activities (like Paint) don't have collaboration working to its full potential. Thanks Caroline On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 11:41 PM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi... On June 25 I will be taking my Roadshow in a Box to the Bozeman MT LUG. I would like to know if you have any special programming needs these folks might like to help with. Some of the members are with the CS dept at MSU, and all seem to be Linux programmers from what I can tell. Can you suggest any fun projects for them? Do you have a list of needs somewhere on the Sugar wiki? Any other suggestions? Caryl ___ 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] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Hmmm I'm not sure a BIOS will be wiling to boot from a USB port on a card. However, combined with a CD boot helper might do the trick. I have to use the CD at this point anyway. My goal is to have it boot more quickly and respond more quickly once its booted. Reconditioning older PCs (even just adding RAM or a USB card) is a bit of a thankless job :-( But one that makes many high school and young at heart computer geeks pretty happy on a Saturday, especially if you add pizza and donuts. If a school IT person has to do it, its never financially feasible, but I could see a lot of volunteers actually enjoying the work, and getting a lot of satisfaction about getting faster computers into kids hands and keeping computers out of the land fill. I'm wondering if there's a way for SoaS to automatically report what it has booted on. Computer labs are prime candidates for SoaS and are often populated with a single PC model; it would be great if we could offer good upgrade advice x30. Ah actually Sebastian already wrote that! I forgot to do it when I was in the computer lab. I will remember next time. It would be cool to turn that into an Activity so its super easy. My work trying to get a Work Study student for GPA looks like its going to generate a bunch of volunteers without the correct paperwork to get paid as Work Study students. Let me echo Caryl's question. Do we have a page with tasks for new volunteers? Sean On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Caroline Meekscarol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: This week, thanks for installing the Broadcom drivers separately, we got Sugar on a Stick up and running on the GPA computers. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Current_computers_at_GPA They are older computer and they run faster then an XO but still not that snappy. A big part of SoaS is using existing computers and donated computers. I wonder what it would take to upgrade older computers, and make them snappier. I don't know if we will get permission to open up these particular computers, (which are owned by Boston Public Schools) but there are certainly tons of older computers like them around. I think there are two things that might make them perform better. 1. Add a USB 2.0 port. They are almost certainly USB 1 right now. I see that if the box has the right slots for it, USB 2.0 cards are less then $10. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815123010 2. Add more RAM. Earlier this year I worked with a group that specialized in repairing and recyclying computers. They had lots of RAM they had scavanged. It would be very cool if someone had some old computers and could try Sugar, then do motifications like add a USB 2.0 port and RAM and document the results. Caryl, this is another potential project for someone who wants to help. -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- 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] [Marketing] [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen
Hi Sebastian, On 7 Jun 2009, at 14:37, Sebastian Dziallas wrote: Hi all, looking at the wiki page, I'm really impressed - great work! :) I also really like the idea of switching the logo color for each release - this shouldn't be hard and is an interesting approach. Has there already been some kind of agreement on which version we're going to use for the LinuxTag release? Yes I was wondering this also, given the weekend was the deadline :-) Is the one with the progress bar something everyone could agree with? FWIW, my two current favourites are the grey progress bar, or the grey circle of dots: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Image:XO-sugar-boot-with-progress-bar.gif http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Refined-XO-sugar-boot-with-overlap.gif And could I possibly get the .png files, so that I can compose a new snapshot with a preview of the new boot screen (we can still change it afterwards, but I'd like to have some snapshot to test it)? I don't want to short circuit a decision making process, but let me kick out their PNGs and email to you (will do that now). That way you at least have a couple of the possible candidates to experiment/test with now. Regards, --Gary Walter: Have you heard anything regarding the use of the XO in our boot screen? Is this okay with OLPC? --Sebastian Sean DALY wrote: Actually the logo color linked to a version idea was in my long mail the other day about communicating the version :-) I too think 2 changes a year will give us time to cycle through the twelve variants. To make that work, the actual place where the version number is communicated (Control Panel / About my computer) would need to have the matching color Sugar Labs (not just Sugar) logo. I like this progress bar boot screen because: * ultrasimple, unobtrusive, fits perfectly with Sugar HIG * bar is universally easy to understand, no possibility of confusion with graphic elements. * keeping logo around that long=strong branding, which is vital for Sugar to be recognized by name rather than just the system running on XOs, netbooks, etc. I miss the iconic ring treatment though. And, no matter how clean we would like it to be, we still need to address the questions of school/sponsor co-branding (if they have a logo, they won't feel like jst putting their name in grey) and distro co-branding. Perhaps we could solve those problems by putting them in the About my computer page as well? Awful as far as co-branding goes (partners would not be happy), but will keep boot minimalist and functional. For a shining example of how more-is-less packaging is ruinous, may I direct your attention to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k Sean On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 4 Jun 2009, at 16:35, Gary C Martin wrote: On 4 Jun 2009, at 15:45, Sean DALY wrote: Yes that would be very helpful I think I was just going to start tinkering again, I'll make an animated version of Eben's XO and progress-bar for evaluation. Just uploaded an animated version showing Eben's boot with progress bar treatment: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Image:XO-sugar-boot-with-progress-bar.gif FWIW: +1 on Eben's suggestion for changing the colour of the Sugar logo for each major new Sugar release. It nicely avoids what looks like jumping through lot's of technical burning hoops of fire, trying to set up a boot anim that dynamically changes to match the owners own colours (nice idea but I think a big ask at this point in time). FWIW2: Just incase any one was wondering, the colour dot versions were based on the 1-12 official Sugar Logo treatment colour pairs, i.e definitely not not random :-) Regards, --Gary If we can reach consensus by tomorrow and finish the actual PNG frames over the weekend we will meet the deadline but, we need a volunteer to do the frames (unless Gary what you have is nearly ready; my stuff is cut/pasted mockup no color control etc) Sure, getting a series of PNGs from any of my mock-ups is just a save for web away. Regards, --Gary thanks Sean On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Eben's points below... Maybe it would help if one of us mocked up the alternative he is describing? Christian On Jun 4, 2009, at 10:35 AM, Eben Eliasoneben.elia...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Eben Eliasoneben.elia...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 7:24 AM, Sean DALYsdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo Christian - I myself prefer the rays to dots which I feel too closely resemble networks in the Neighborhood view, confusion is possible (networks being connected to at startup?) Fred - I'm willing to try that sunrise metaphor, tonight if I can (travelling today) Re splash page
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen
Yes Gary by all means, the deadline is this weekend Sebastian, earlier in the thread we discussed how part of keeping a clean-looking boot involves getting more information (logos) on the About My Computer page, is that difficult to do? Sean On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Sebastian, On 7 Jun 2009, at 14:37, Sebastian Dziallas wrote: Hi all, looking at the wiki page, I'm really impressed - great work! :) I also really like the idea of switching the logo color for each release - this shouldn't be hard and is an interesting approach. Has there already been some kind of agreement on which version we're going to use for the LinuxTag release? Yes I was wondering this also, given the weekend was the deadline :-) Is the one with the progress bar something everyone could agree with? FWIW, my two current favourites are the grey progress bar, or the grey circle of dots: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Image:XO-sugar-boot-with-progress-bar.gif http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Refined-XO-sugar-boot-with-overlap.gif And could I possibly get the .png files, so that I can compose a new snapshot with a preview of the new boot screen (we can still change it afterwards, but I'd like to have some snapshot to test it)? I don't want to short circuit a decision making process, but let me kick out their PNGs and email to you (will do that now). That way you at least have a couple of the possible candidates to experiment/test with now. Regards, --Gary Walter: Have you heard anything regarding the use of the XO in our boot screen? Is this okay with OLPC? --Sebastian Sean DALY wrote: Actually the logo color linked to a version idea was in my long mail the other day about communicating the version :-) I too think 2 changes a year will give us time to cycle through the twelve variants. To make that work, the actual place where the version number is communicated (Control Panel / About my computer) would need to have the matching color Sugar Labs (not just Sugar) logo. I like this progress bar boot screen because: * ultrasimple, unobtrusive, fits perfectly with Sugar HIG * bar is universally easy to understand, no possibility of confusion with graphic elements. * keeping logo around that long=strong branding, which is vital for Sugar to be recognized by name rather than just the system running on XOs, netbooks, etc. I miss the iconic ring treatment though. And, no matter how clean we would like it to be, we still need to address the questions of school/sponsor co-branding (if they have a logo, they won't feel like jst putting their name in grey) and distro co-branding. Perhaps we could solve those problems by putting them in the About my computer page as well? Awful as far as co-branding goes (partners would not be happy), but will keep boot minimalist and functional. For a shining example of how more-is-less packaging is ruinous, may I direct your attention to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k Sean On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 4 Jun 2009, at 16:35, Gary C Martin wrote: On 4 Jun 2009, at 15:45, Sean DALY wrote: Yes that would be very helpful I think I was just going to start tinkering again, I'll make an animated version of Eben's XO and progress-bar for evaluation. Just uploaded an animated version showing Eben's boot with progress bar treatment: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Image:XO-sugar-boot-with-progress-bar.gif FWIW: +1 on Eben's suggestion for changing the colour of the Sugar logo for each major new Sugar release. It nicely avoids what looks like jumping through lot's of technical burning hoops of fire, trying to set up a boot anim that dynamically changes to match the owners own colours (nice idea but I think a big ask at this point in time). FWIW2: Just incase any one was wondering, the colour dot versions were based on the 1-12 official Sugar Logo treatment colour pairs, i.e definitely not not random :-) Regards, --Gary If we can reach consensus by tomorrow and finish the actual PNG frames over the weekend we will meet the deadline but, we need a volunteer to do the frames (unless Gary what you have is nearly ready; my stuff is cut/pasted mockup no color control etc) Sure, getting a series of PNGs from any of my mock-ups is just a save for web away. Regards, --Gary thanks Sean On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Eben's points below... Maybe it would help if one of us mocked up the alternative he is describing? Christian On Jun 4, 2009, at 10:35 AM, Eben Eliasoneben.elia...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Eben Eliasoneben.elia...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 7:24 AM, Sean DALYsdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo Christian - I
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.comwrote: Let me echo Caryl's question. Do we have a page with tasks for new volunteers? http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO has been restored and is ready to be updated, perhaps restructured to cover this need. --Fred ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
When it come to older pcs, it really makes sense to try and use LTSP. We have created a kiwi-ltsp usb stick for openSUSE, which gives a portable ltsp server wherever u plug it in. In most cases it would make sense for this to be the most powerful computer. It is as easy as installing the sugar and sugar activities meta packages on this usb image and the users on the ltsp network then have access to Sugar from any computer in the network, and they are bound to load faster than from a usb image. The advantage is u need one usb stick per network, as opposed to one for each terminal... that saves costs, and time. Also, u dont need any of the old hardware, such as cdrom drives, hard drives, etc. Networking and internet is also no issue as if it works on the server, it has to work on each of the terminals too... kind Regards, David (nubae) Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Frederick Grose fgr...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Let me echo Caryl's question. Do we have a page with tasks for new volunteers? http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO has been restored and is ready to be updated, perhaps restructured to cover this need. --Fred ___ 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] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 12:24 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: When it come to older pcs, it really makes sense to try and use LTSP. We have created a kiwi-ltsp usb stick for openSUSE, which gives a portable ltsp server wherever u plug it in. In most cases it would make sense for this to be the most powerful computer. It is as easy as installing the sugar and sugar activities meta packages on this usb image and the users on the ltsp network then have access to Sugar from any computer in the network, and they are bound to load faster than from a usb image. The advantage is u need one usb stick per network, as opposed to one for each terminal... that saves costs, and time. Also, u dont need any of the old hardware, such as cdrom drives, hard drives, etc. Networking and internet is also no issue as if it works on the server, it has to work on each of the terminals too... SoaS is also working on a slightly different issue. I didn't understand it until Caroline explained it for about the 100th time yesterday:) In addition to all the technical hurdles. Sugar on a Stick is tackling the _bureaucratic_ issue of installing and running Sugar (or any software) on systems which one doesn't have admin access. In many schools it can be difficult to get the authority to install software or modify the configuration on their computers. SoaS circumvents that problem by replacing 'install a new OS' with 'insert the stick and turn it on.' The piece that I was _misunderstanding_ was that all of the technically hurdles that SoaS introduces are worth the ability to circumvent the bureaucratic hurdles. FWIW, at least in developed nations Once you get the bureaucratic permission to 'install' Sugar, a client-server configuration is most palatable to the existing generation of elementary school sysadmins. david kind Regards, David (nubae) Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Frederick Grose fgr...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Let me echo Caryl's question. Do we have a page with tasks for new volunteers? http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO has been restored and is ready to be updated, perhaps restructured to cover this need. --Fred ___ 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] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
That's a good point, and I understand the thinking behind it, as if you are not 'changing' anything in an existing setup, people are less afraid that things might go terribly wrong. That's the reason we have ltsp on a usb stick... because you can stick in a server, and test it without installing anything. Think of it as SoaS server with beaurocratic advantages included (taking care of networking, providing Sugar images, setting up user accounts, providng collaboration if necessary. It is by no means the XS server, nor should it try to be that, its just the desktop environment part with ejabberd, if needed.. of course, it only works in wired environments. kind Regards, David (nubae) Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 8:19 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 12:24 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: When it come to older pcs, it really makes sense to try and use LTSP. We have created a kiwi-ltsp usb stick for openSUSE, which gives a portable ltsp server wherever u plug it in. In most cases it would make sense for this to be the most powerful computer. It is as easy as installing the sugar and sugar activities meta packages on this usb image and the users on the ltsp network then have access to Sugar from any computer in the network, and they are bound to load faster than from a usb image. The advantage is u need one usb stick per network, as opposed to one for each terminal... that saves costs, and time. Also, u dont need any of the old hardware, such as cdrom drives, hard drives, etc. Networking and internet is also no issue as if it works on the server, it has to work on each of the terminals too... SoaS is also working on a slightly different issue. I didn't understand it until Caroline explained it for about the 100th time yesterday:) In addition to all the technical hurdles. Sugar on a Stick is tackling the _bureaucratic_ issue of installing and running Sugar (or any software) on systems which one doesn't have admin access. In many schools it can be difficult to get the authority to install software or modify the configuration on their computers. SoaS circumvents that problem by replacing 'install a new OS' with 'insert the stick and turn it on.' The piece that I was _misunderstanding_ was that all of the technically hurdles that SoaS introduces are worth the ability to circumvent the bureaucratic hurdles. FWIW, at least in developed nations Once you get the bureaucratic permission to 'install' Sugar, a client-server configuration is most palatable to the existing generation of elementary school sysadmins. david kind Regards, David (nubae) Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Frederick Grose fgr...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Let me echo Caryl's question. Do we have a page with tasks for new volunteers? http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO has been restored and is ready to be updated, perhaps restructured to cover this need. --Fred ___ 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] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
Thanks David great explanation. and David, I totally agree that LTSP is the right technical solution for this computer lab. Next year, perhaps we will have the level of trust and political clout to implement it. There is yet another reason I want to know if we can speed up these computers and ones like it. Part of the Sugar on a Stick vision is the kids having a computer at home. So next year, when we replace the computer lab with LTSP, we will probably send the existing boxes home with kids who don't have computers. If for less then $10 and a hour of volunteer time we can send a kid home with a snappy system vs a pokey one, I think that is totally worth it and that we will not have trouble finding the volunteers to do the work. On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 2:19 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 12:24 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: When it come to older pcs, it really makes sense to try and use LTSP. We have created a kiwi-ltsp usb stick for openSUSE, which gives a portable ltsp server wherever u plug it in. In most cases it would make sense for this to be the most powerful computer. It is as easy as installing the sugar and sugar activities meta packages on this usb image and the users on the ltsp network then have access to Sugar from any computer in the network, and they are bound to load faster than from a usb image. The advantage is u need one usb stick per network, as opposed to one for each terminal... that saves costs, and time. Also, u dont need any of the old hardware, such as cdrom drives, hard drives, etc. Networking and internet is also no issue as if it works on the server, it has to work on each of the terminals too... SoaS is also working on a slightly different issue. I didn't understand it until Caroline explained it for about the 100th time yesterday:) In addition to all the technical hurdles. Sugar on a Stick is tackling the _bureaucratic_ issue of installing and running Sugar (or any software) on systems which one doesn't have admin access. In many schools it can be difficult to get the authority to install software or modify the configuration on their computers. SoaS circumvents that problem by replacing 'install a new OS' with 'insert the stick and turn it on.' The piece that I was _misunderstanding_ was that all of the technically hurdles that SoaS introduces are worth the ability to circumvent the bureaucratic hurdles. FWIW, at least in developed nations Once you get the bureaucratic permission to 'install' Sugar, a client-server configuration is most palatable to the existing generation of elementary school sysadmins. david kind Regards, David (nubae) Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Frederick Grose fgr...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Let me echo Caryl's question. Do we have a page with tasks for new volunteers? http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO has been restored and is ready to be updated, perhaps restructured to cover this need. --Fred ___ 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 -- 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] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 7:24 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: When it come to older pcs, it really makes sense to try and use LTSP. We LTSP is an excellent path. Note that a happy LTSP adventure is conditional on a good network infra and a decent TS machine. Wireless won't do. Sound and video used to be almost impossible to setup, or plainly unusable -- I hope that it has improved with the help of pulseaudio and other bits and pieces. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Which is better for the environment recycling computers or LTSP?
Answer - Our vision of Sugar on a Stick! :) First off, I think on this list we probably agree that whats most important for our planets health is educated kids that grow into adults that can develop and implement and make good polical decisions around future environmentally friendly technology and find peaceful solutions to the worlds problems because war does incredible environmental damage. On this list, our means to achieve this goal is ubiquous access to Sugar, not just for an hour in the computer lab, but access that allows hours of time to explore individual interests and to create artifacts you can be proud of. But we can still think about environmental efficiency. I think Sugar on a Stick, especially the way we are going technically where you can use either LTSP or a stand alone computer with the same stick is a very green solution. LTSP saves electricity. Extending the life of old computers keeps them out of landfills and saves the power and resources used to make a new computer. At the Gardner School the computer lab is used pretty much all day and all afternoon. Call it conservatively 8 hours a day, the school is actually open 7am to 5pm at least. There is 180 school days plus 30 days of 8am-5pm. So lets say 210 days x 8 hours = 1680 hours/year. If a kid has a computer at home they will use it less then 8hours a day because they are mostly out of the house. Does anyone have any data on how many hours per day kids use their XOs outside of school? I'm going to make a guess at an average of 10 hours per week x 52 weeks per year. So that is 520 hours/year. Thus energy effieciecy is 3 times more important in the school computers then for the computers the kids use at home. If a school is in a warm climate and is air conditioned it becomes even more important. Thus as a school gets money for new computers, first it should goto LTSP for high usage computer labs and move older computers in kids homes and low usage areas. -- 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] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 2:38 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: That's a good point, and I understand the thinking behind it, as if you are not 'changing' anything in an existing setup, people are less afraid that things might go terribly wrong. That's the reason we have ltsp on a usb stick... because you can stick in a server, and test it without installing anything. Think of it as SoaS server with beaurocratic advantages included (taking care of networking, providing Sugar images, setting up user accounts, providng collaboration if necessary. It is by no means the XS server, nor should it try to be that, its just the desktop environment part with ejabberd, if needed.. of course, it only works in wired environments. Very cool. I had not heard of LTSP on a usb stick before. It sound like another great, low impact (I am trying to think of a term like 'carbon foot print' to properly reflect the impact) way of bringing LTSP into the class room. david kind Regards, David (nubae) Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 8:19 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 12:24 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: When it come to older pcs, it really makes sense to try and use LTSP. We have created a kiwi-ltsp usb stick for openSUSE, which gives a portable ltsp server wherever u plug it in. In most cases it would make sense for this to be the most powerful computer. It is as easy as installing the sugar and sugar activities meta packages on this usb image and the users on the ltsp network then have access to Sugar from any computer in the network, and they are bound to load faster than from a usb image. The advantage is u need one usb stick per network, as opposed to one for each terminal... that saves costs, and time. Also, u dont need any of the old hardware, such as cdrom drives, hard drives, etc. Networking and internet is also no issue as if it works on the server, it has to work on each of the terminals too... SoaS is also working on a slightly different issue. I didn't understand it until Caroline explained it for about the 100th time yesterday:) In addition to all the technical hurdles. Sugar on a Stick is tackling the _bureaucratic_ issue of installing and running Sugar (or any software) on systems which one doesn't have admin access. In many schools it can be difficult to get the authority to install software or modify the configuration on their computers. SoaS circumvents that problem by replacing 'install a new OS' with 'insert the stick and turn it on.' The piece that I was _misunderstanding_ was that all of the technically hurdles that SoaS introduces are worth the ability to circumvent the bureaucratic hurdles. FWIW, at least in developed nations Once you get the bureaucratic permission to 'install' Sugar, a client-server configuration is most palatable to the existing generation of elementary school sysadmins. david kind Regards, David (nubae) Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Frederick Grose fgr...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Let me echo Caryl's question. Do we have a page with tasks for new volunteers? http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO has been restored and is ready to be updated, perhaps restructured to cover this need. --Fred ___ 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] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 04:40:31PM -0500, David Farning wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 2:38 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: That's a good point, and I understand the thinking behind it, as if you are not 'changing' anything in an existing setup, people are less afraid that things might go terribly wrong. That's the reason we have ltsp on a usb stick... because you can stick in a server, and test it without installing anything. Think of it as SoaS server with beaurocratic advantages included (taking care of networking, providing Sugar images, setting up user accounts, providng collaboration if necessary. It is by no means the XS server, nor should it try to be that, its just the desktop environment part with ejabberd, if needed.. of course, it only works in wired environments. Very cool. I had not heard of LTSP on a usb stick before. Great indeed. It sound like another great, low impact (I am trying to think of a term like 'carbon foot print' to properly reflect the impact) way of bringing LTSP into the class room. polite or gentle perhaps? or non-invasive? Emphasizing what is avoided: invading - potentially taking over, accidentally or on purpose, the computers Or did I misunderstand the kind of term you had in mind? Kind regards, - jonas - -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREDAAYFAkosQp0ACgkQn7DbMsAkQLhCXQCgnD7wIbtV99DEe6cHJOkcHqQj djEAnjWsys5SJGSoD9zo1XefN9GpGwP+ =yKke -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Getting data about the upgrading older machines and SoaS responsiveness.
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 18:43, Jonas Smedegaard d...@jones.dk wrote: It sound like another great, low impact (I am trying to think of a term like 'carbon foot print' to properly reflect the impact) way of bringing LTSP into the class room. polite or gentle perhaps? or non-invasive? Emphasizing what is avoided: invading - potentially taking over, accidentally or on purpose, the computers Granted, you would *need* to check with your local systems administrator before implementing LTSP. (as opposed to a lower-risk USB-local-booting solution) At my school, for example, netbooting a workstation starts the recloning process of loading a new Windows XP image; setting up LTSP without asking would cause major problems with their work. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] personalisation and collaboration
Having pondered this a bit more, I came up with a practical example. Lets say we have a student in Uruguay, lets call him Fernando, and lets say we have a student in the UK, lets call her Suzy. Suzy's Spanish is not great, as she hasn't had the chance to delve into it practically, nor is she getting the right idea about how everyday Spanish is used in Spanish countries, having relied on terrible cliched examples of her antiquated text books. Fernando's English is not very good, seeing as the only English he is subjected to are pirate movies he buys from the local market, so he's learned more slang than real English. His school isn't even teaching English, but he desperately wants to learn it. Colabot knows both of these users, as it has analysed every willing user's e-portfolio, and knows they would compliment each other perfectly say by sharing the Speak activity. Colabot could suggest times at which these 2 students could meet virtually and collaborate in order to improve their language skills. Colabot could keep track of their on going meetings, showing the amount of hours spent on language learning. Colabot could even give out an award or recognition after the students had spent X amount of hours learning together. The great thing about this example is that it seems to me to be pure construcionism with technology at its simplest and its best. The 2 students are teachers to each other, and colabot is there purely in the capacity a teacher normally should be, to guide the learning process. kind Regards, David Van Assche On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 7:00 AM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: Something has been in the back of my head for a while now, ever since I've seen the impressive capabilities of being able to share an activity with your neighbourhood. Being able to cooperatively use applications brings a new level of playability to it all, and it reminds me of when I first saw the ability for a computer game to be 'multi-player.'This gave it an extra dimension, and with it came the idea of awards for completing certain things, which would be displayed in your dashoard somewhere.The award system seems even more relevant for education than it did for games. We'v aleady mentioned the benefits of an award sysem so I'm not going to regugitate that, but what hasnt''t really been spoken about is, how and what kind of personal details should the journal store and share. I see this as a customisable option, something that can be as simple as only sharing first names, or sharing the name of your pet, your favorite colors and foods, the languages you speak. This detailed information about a person is extremely valuable to the underlying system, as it can potentially match people against each other. This would allow for some interesting possibilities when it comes to collaboration, such as the system suggesting users to challenge/collaborate with based on personal information. I thought about having a robot that lives on an irc channel capable of helping with the collaboration procedure, as well as listing achievements, giving data on which users want to collaborate, giving help on how collaboration works with particular activities, listing which servers have open collaboration, showing the most used/highest rated collaborating activities, etc. I havent thought about this too much in depth, but I know coding a bot is not too hard. I see it as an extension to the speak AI, and encouragement to join irc. We can even get the bot to accept uploads of raw learning materials categorised by subject, which can then be used by content creators. it itself could give out quizzes based on particular subjects, or interesting pieces of information/knowledge. It could be taught new information, by feeding it localised knowledge. It would be important to know where we set the limits to what it can do. Just some food for thought... David (nubae) Van Assche ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep In general, the idea of bots living in the Sugar neighborhood is a theme we haven't explored very much. It would be nice to come up with a simple, consistent framework for creating such a resource. Making it available through IRC as well is a cool idea. -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] Sugar Labs Colombia
Hello all. SugarLabs Colombia is now legally established! and we are going to tell you about what we have been doing. In the last months we have been consolidating works, making contacts, doing project proposals divulging, and seeking ways to bring the spirit of Sugar and free software to children in our country, trying to transmit our ideas (ideas that cheer us) to more people. Results have been very good so far. In this moment we have in our hands our first deployment escenario.Along with the bunaima fundation, we have a project approved by Bogota's secretary of education, for installing and using Sugar in 12 public schools: 7 from Ciudad Bolivar (María Mercedes Carranza, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Ciudad Bolívar Argentina, Bosco I, Rafael Uribe Uribe, Paraíso Manuela Beltrán y Buenos Aires) and 5 in other localities (Sorrento, Florentino González, Marco Fidel Suárez, San Pablo y Morisco). In these schools Sugar will be installed in informatics classrooms of primary grades. This step is the continuity of a process begun with 30 professors, which have been already trained on Sugar use. Now with the possibility of having installed software, we are starting our second phase: making a follow-up of classroom works using investigation projects as pedagogical tool. Next six months will be accompanying professors in their use of Sugar for classes development and we will be helping them with use of wikis, blogs ans LMS (i.e moodle) . towards the end of this process we hope that teachers will be an active part of Sugar's community and we hope to have results of projects made by children of these schools. Of course we are counting that this experience can be replicated on other institutions and schools of Bogota and Colombia. We will be telling you the advances and difficulties in this process. Regards, Rafael Ortiz ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Telementoring, cybertutoring and iMentor
There has been some promising research about remote mentoring. The study I read was grad students in History mentoring high school students to do projects on local history. The place I've seen it brought to some sort of scale is an organization called iMentor in NYC. Again high school students, but I think we can learn from their implementation: http://www.imentor.org/imentor_interactive/product_demo.php I'm bringing it up now because the GPA school has access to tutoring/mentoring through Harvard because Harvard is building a new facility in the school's neighborhood (Allston) and its part of Harvard's community outreach program for the neighborhood. Another part of the program is apparently a computer lab that Allston residents can use. I also think it relates a bit to the students teaching students use case mentioned today. One of the winning plans at Harvard's educational business idea contest was an idea for a program that paid low performing high school students to tutor younger students. They said they can pair up a teen reading at a third grade level with an elementary school kid reading at a 1st grade level and see both radically improve reading skills. I think one of the big potentials of computers have the potential of making one-on-one tutoring and mentoring practical, scalable, convenient and affordable. Does anyone have examples of computer based tutoring/mentoring via computers or mixed that have research results? -- 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] Una mirada crítica a OLPC por Piscitelli
Del blog de Piscitelli traigo una interesante mirada a la evolución de OLPC. http://www.filosofitis.com.ar/2009/05/21/asi-paso-la-gloria-de-la-computrasiora-de-los-100-dolares/ Pato Acevedo _ Gratis Internet Explorer 8 optimizado para MSN http://www.ie8.msn.com/microsoft/internet-explorer-8/es-cl/ie8.aspx___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Programming Needs?
One programming project that would help us is described in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495727 Essentially, Firefox 3.5 will ship with beautiful support for Ogg Theora+Vorbis video in every webpage, using the HTML5 video tag. Unfortunately, it will almost certainly be deadly slow on the XO and other low-power computers we care about, because it uses a pure software, completely unaccelerated playback pipeline, just like Flash. The fix is to implement a Firefox/Xulrunner extension that plays back videos in a separate window using XVideo, with the option to go full-screen, etc. For anyone familiar with Firefox extensions this would not be hard at all, and would be a big win for us, thanks to sites like openvideo.dailymotion.com. The educational implications are substantial, in my opinion. --Ben signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
