Re: [IAEP] A Fine Tradition...
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 07:40, Michael Stonemich...@laptop.org wrote: Carrying on a fine tradition of July-based Sugar reflections [1, 2], I'm going to offer some mostly unsolicited advice. (Sorry, Tomeu, but you asked me to write. :^) Dear Sugar Labs, In the past year, you succeeded in removing two important barriers to entry for new developers: you have created a distinctive brand and you freed Sugar from the XO. What's next? Here's a four-part RFC: All sound pretty good to me, any concrete steps you can suggest? Regards, Tomeu 1. Could we embrace POSIX and the RESTful Web throughout our software [3]? POSIX and HTTP are the mother tongues of our ecosystem and developer base. By embracing them, we make our software much cheaper to explore and to modify. 2. Could we live more within our packaging? This way, our packaging gets tested more quickly, we become more expert /at/ packaging, we make friends in our distros, we get better packaging, and our releases become easier! 3. Could we make ourselves more interesting to be around, for example by saying maybe we could... or I have... (and you can too...!) more frequently than we say I can't.? Our strengths lie in our big, sexy, /powerful/ ideas. We can't shrink from these ideas; they sparked our desire to contribute and they will do so for others. (Otherwise, we will fade.) 4. We could do more to help one another to develop as may be necessary to advance those big, sexy ideas. (Anecdote: I don't think any of us here today started off understanding much about communities, UI design, networking, release management, quality assurance, or large-scale coding; I just see lots of people who looked for people who were smarter and more knowledgable than they were and who worked really hard to catch up. We should do more of that.) xoxoxo, Michael P.S. - In the spirit of walking the walk, I'll also share one of my own recent puny efforts in the direction outlined above: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Network2 Regards, Michael [1]: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007304.html [2]: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007390.html [3]: (With suitable hacks under the covers of FUSE and DNS.) ___ 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] Sugar on Ubuntu Jaunty (was: Re: etoys, moodle, gcompris, kde-edu and other sister projects)
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 08:51:48PM -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sugar/+bug/396200 Bug #396200 reported by Edward Cherlin on 2009-07-06 Looks like SL #310 [1] / Ubuntu #325706 [2] to me. Opened on 2009-02-05, i.e. about one Ubuntu release cycle ago and still not fixed. As a workaround, please try downloading [3] and putting it into /etc/dbus-1/system.d : sudo wget -O /etc/dbus-1/system.d/xorg-server.conf http://sascha.silbe.org/patches/xorg-server.conf Jaunty ships a prerelease of Sugar 0.84, so not sure how much joy you'll have with it. [1] http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/310 [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/325706 [3] http://sascha.silbe.org/patches/xorg-server.conf CU Sascha -- http://sascha.silbe.org/ http://www.infra-silbe.de/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi Bill, I'm excited that you are doing pilot. How old are the kids? From the blog posts it looks like you have some XOs, are you using SoaS on other computers too? thanks for the mail, Caroline one xo standard usage is SoaS, for this course year 10 approx 15yo course outline involves critical evaluation and building some useful software details: http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html We don't have a system for feedback yet so until people complain about the volume lets talk here on the list. I think feedback falls into 4 categories. 1. Sugar bugs 2. Sugar on a Stick specific bugs and barriers to deployment 3. Activity specific feedback and bugs 4. Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans What seems to work best is to post about problems in general then after discussion post a bug in Trac. Sometimes I find that I just don't understand something or can't find the right button and its not actually a bug. I have decided that I really want more SoaS pilots so I'm going to focus for a few weeks on problems that are barriers to teachers using SoaS this fall (#2 above). I would like your input on this. My current working document is: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO Just read that, it's a good start, covers a lot of ground A few issues (dumb questions, saves time if I put them up here) 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release 2) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users For Window User point 5 Set the *Persistent Storage* slider to the maximum so you can save your Sugar work onto the USB device; (You may allocate as much storage as there is capacity on your device. You may allocate less than the maximum, if you want to use some of the device storage when not booting Sugar.) I ended up setting the Persistent Storage to maximum. Now I'm wondering that if I had allocated less than the maximum then could a student copy a file from the journal onto the SoaS (rather than their own USB) and it would save in some of that non allocated storage. This is an issue because not all students bring their own USBs to class. Sometimes there is a need to swap in and out of the Sugar environment back to the Windows environment (found in most schools) so ability to easily save on a USB is an issue. Actually, this ended up being the first major thing I taught my students to do. 3) the information about failed sticks not rebooting is valuable - some sticks have failed for me but I haven't worked out any real pattern yet, quite complex to keep track when teaching a class, just tell the kids to try a different stick and / or different computer - but the sticks are numbered and now each student uses the same one each lesson so patterns will become clearer soon 4) some of my sticks (about half) are card readers 2GB cards, they work fine 5) the brand of stick of stick makes a difference, LASERS are very slow (and cheapest), KINGSTON seem good 6) collaboration did not work out of the box - is it meant to? - I have a jabber server from last year which I have yet to setup but will do so soon 7) Had to type about:config into Browse and muck around with proxy settings to get internet access - I had never done this before and needed assistance http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html 8) I noticed when I loaded Pippy on my dell mini inspiron that the run button in the middle of the screen was not visible - ie. does not work with all screen configurations (it looked ok on school machines though) Greg Smith is gravitating towards documenting the lesson plans etc and creating, organizing and prioritizing tickets that will help in actual usage based on field experience (#3 above). So coordinate with him on getting your lesson plans on the wiki and your bugs filed, categorized etc. I'm not really developing lesson plans for the xo target age group (6-12 yo) at the moment, see course outline link above Nevertheless, some general curriculum development principles might transfer, eg. find tasks that reward initiative, independent exploration As you've already seen physics has an active following! I think your kids are older then the ones we are working with (7-9) but we will be working with slightly older kids (8-11) and science in the fall so I'll be interested in how we can fit it in with their curriculum. Tony Forster suggested physics modification and that would be a suitable goal for my age group http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics hope that some of this
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi Bill, I'm excited that you are doing pilot. How old are the kids? From the blog posts it looks like you have some XOs, are you using SoaS on other computers too? thanks for the mail, Caroline one xo standard usage is SoaS, for this course year 10 approx 15yo course outline involves critical evaluation and building some useful software details: http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html We don't have a system for feedback yet so until people complain about the volume lets talk here on the list. I think feedback falls into 4 categories. Sugar bugs Sugar on a Stick specific bugs and barriers to deployment Activity specific feedback and bugs Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans What seems to work best is to post about problems in general then after discussion post a bug in Trac. Sometimes I find that I just don't understand something or can't find the right button and its not actually a bug. I have decided that I really want more SoaS pilots so I'm going to focus for a few weeks on problems that are barriers to teachers using SoaS this fall (#2 above). I would like your input on this. My current working document is: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO Just read that, it's a good start, covers a lot of ground A few issues (dumb questions, saves time if I put them up here) 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release You can update individual activities from activities.sugarlabs.org. You can add new activities from the same site. One caveat: a handful of activities are installed with .rpm instead of .xo. These cannot be updated on the fly without jumping through several hoops. This will change on the next release of SoaS. (See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Roadmap#Fructose_modules_.28F11.29). 2) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users For Window User point 5 Set the Persistent Storage slider to the maximum so you can save your Sugar work onto the USB device; (You may allocate as much storage as there is capacity on your device. You may allocate less than the maximum, if you want to use some of the device storage when not booting Sugar.) I ended up setting the Persistent Storage to maximum. Now I'm wondering that if I had allocated less than the maximum then could a student copy a file from the journal onto the SoaS (rather than their own USB) and it would save in some of that non allocated storage. This is an issue because not all students bring their own USBs to class. Sometimes there is a need to swap in and out of the Sugar environment back to the Windows environment (found in most schools) so ability to easily save on a USB is an issue. Actually, this ended up being the first major thing I taught my students to do. As far as I know, this should work, but I haven't tested it. That said, in the long-term roadmap, we want the journal files more readily accessible from outside of Sugar. (They are in a squash filesystem right now, not easy to access.) 3) the information about failed sticks not rebooting is valuable - some sticks have failed for me but I haven't worked out any real pattern yet, quite complex to keep track when teaching a class, just tell the kids to try a different stick and / or different computer - but the sticks are numbered and now each student uses the same one each lesson so patterns will become clearer soon Failed sticks often get a second life, which also complicates things. 4) some of my sticks (about half) are card readers 2GB cards, they work fine 5) the brand of stick of stick makes a difference, LASERS are very slow (and cheapest), KINGSTON seem good 6) collaboration did not work out of the box - is it meant to? - I have a jabber server from last year which I have yet to setup but will do so soon It should have worked. Is Internet access working out of the box? 7) Had to type about:config into Browse and muck around with proxy settings to get internet access - I had never done this before and needed assistance http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html But then it worked? 8) I noticed when I loaded Pippy on my dell mini inspiron that the run button in the middle of the screen was not visible - ie. does not work with all screen configurations (it looked ok on school machines though) Pippy may still be suffering from some screen-size-related problems. Greg Smith is gravitating towards documenting the lesson plans etc and creating,
[IAEP] Lets Get Satisfaction (was: Community Influence)
Hi everybody, it's really good to see this discussion getting off the ground. While being at LinuxTag, we discussed with some folks how to improve the way of getting feedback from our users, without putting too much barriers in their way. So while looking around and at various issue tracking systems, I discovered GetSatisfaction. I had seen that before already, but wasn't sure of its current state. There you go: http://getsatisfaction.com/ GetSatisfaction is also used by other open source projects like Songbird (which might also be a good place to an idea how such an instance looks like): http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird So as you can see, users gain various possibilities of interacting with the developers here. They can ask questions, report issues and so on. Others go ahead and comment and vote an entry up and down so that developers can see what's more and what's less important. Finally, a developer can also put a we're working on it or we're aware of this problem flag on an entry, to make the current state more obvious. In my opinion, this might be a good way of inviting more people to give us feedback (I'm not suggesting to abandon trac, I guess we should use that to track issues ourselves, too). For example, if we created such an instance and mentioned it in the next press release, I'm pretty sure it could work out well. Well, GetSatisfaction is a company. So they have various plans (also a free one, which looks like it would probably already be enough), while I guess we could also contact them directly. So. What do you think? Is this worth trying out? Any alternatives? I've already a personal account with them, but how do we proceed? Cheers, --Sebastian ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Lets Get Satisfaction (was: Community Influence)
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 09:35, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.comwrote: So while looking around and at various issue tracking systems, I discovered GetSatisfaction. I had seen that before already, but wasn't sure of its current state. There you go: http://getsatisfaction.com/ We had actually bounced a few ideas around on this same topic on syst...@lists.sl.o a week ago, and had looked at GS, but were leaning towards an alternative: http://uservoice.com/. UserVoice has nice plans for FOSS http://uservoice.com/for/opensource, and is a bit more digg-like in terms of tracking. I'm not sure what (if any) limits GS puts on their gratis plan. I've created both a UserVoice and GS site for IAEP readers to play with, you can find them at http://sugarlabs.uservoice.com/pages/25031-general, and http://getsatisfaction.com/sugarlabs. My employee status at GS hasn't been confirmed yet, and won't be for a couple of days, but when it is, I'll make anybody who needs to an employee on the site as well. -- 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] Lets Get Satisfaction (was: Community Influence)
Luke Faraone wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 09:35, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com mailto:sebast...@when.com wrote: So while looking around and at various issue tracking systems, I discovered GetSatisfaction. I had seen that before already, but wasn't sure of its current state. There you go: http://getsatisfaction.com/ We had actually bounced a few ideas around on this same topic on syst...@lists.sl.o a week ago, and had looked at GS, but were leaning towards an alternative: http://uservoice.com/. UserVoice has nice plans for FOSS http://uservoice.com/for/opensource, and is a bit more digg-like in terms of tracking. I'm not sure what (if any) limits GS puts on their gratis plan. I've created both a UserVoice and GS site for IAEP readers to play with, you can find them at http://sugarlabs.uservoice.com/pages/25031-general, and http://getsatisfaction.com/sugarlabs. My employee status at GS hasn't been confirmed yet, and won't be for a couple of days, but when it is, I'll make anybody who needs to an employee on the site as well. Heh, maybe we should bug them to proceed a little bit... ;) Their plan comparison is here (http://getsatisfaction.com/features), while the free plan already looks rather sensible to me. From looking at the sites, I, myself, have a slight preference for GetSatisfaction: I like the division into problems, ideas and questions, which could make a developer's life much easier. But you can't always get what you want, right? ;) --Sebastian ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Lets Get Satisfaction (was: Community Influence)
Walter Bender wrote: It isn't obvious at first glance why this particular site appeals to you. Could you describe its features and the problems you think they address? It is the one I came across and a quick research (not very deep, admittedly) didn't result in many comparable alternatives - that's also why I asked for alternatives in the end. What I believe is: *we need to make it easy to submit feedback* The feedb...@sl.o address was a beginning, but I think we need to explore other possibilities, too. GetSatisfaction looks - to me - like a good way of offering our users an easy, well designed interface, where they can enter their requests issues. I mentioned some of its features already below (like the various kinds of feedback, the possibility of making the current state on an issue easily clear enough,m...). However, I think if we promote such a solution well enough, it might help us to get feedback even from those people, who're probably not that experienced with open source projects or even feared of entering a ticket in trac (what the heck is a bug?, why do I need an account here? what's this all about?,...). --Sebastian thanks. -walter On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Sebastian Dziallassebast...@when.com wrote: Hi everybody, it's really good to see this discussion getting off the ground. While being at LinuxTag, we discussed with some folks how to improve the way of getting feedback from our users, without putting too much barriers in their way. So while looking around and at various issue tracking systems, I discovered GetSatisfaction. I had seen that before already, but wasn't sure of its current state. There you go: http://getsatisfaction.com/ GetSatisfaction is also used by other open source projects like Songbird (which might also be a good place to an idea how such an instance looks like): http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird So as you can see, users gain various possibilities of interacting with the developers here. They can ask questions, report issues and so on. Others go ahead and comment and vote an entry up and down so that developers can see what's more and what's less important. Finally, a developer can also put a we're working on it or we're aware of this problem flag on an entry, to make the current state more obvious. In my opinion, this might be a good way of inviting more people to give us feedback (I'm not suggesting to abandon trac, I guess we should use that to track issues ourselves, too). For example, if we created such an instance and mentioned it in the next press release, I'm pretty sure it could work out well. Well, GetSatisfaction is a company. So they have various plans (also a free one, which looks like it would probably already be enough), while I guess we could also contact them directly. So. What do you think? Is this worth trying out? Any alternatives? I've already a personal account with them, but how do we proceed? Cheers, --Sebastian ___ 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] Read Etexts now supports highlighting, annotations, and multiple bookmarks
I just posted version 14 of Read Etexts on ASLO: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4035 This version has new features I refer to collectively as annotations. This includes: 1). Multiple bookmarks, so you can navigate quickly to important content. 2). Annotations, which are short notes you can add at the bottom of the screen which are associated with the current page. Whenever you view a page that you created a note for the note will be visible. 3). Highlighting passages, which means you can select a passage with the mouse and press an Underline button to have that passage highlighted and it will be displayed with a yellow background and a single underline. The effect is like using a yellow hi-lighter pen on a passage in a textbook. You can highlight more than one passage per page, and you can easily remove highlights too. These annotations become part of the book and when you share a book, either using the Neighborhood or by copying the Journal entry to a thumb drive, the annotations go with it. So you could have a situation where a child who was absent can get another child's notes on a book, or a teacher could create an annotated book for her students, etc. This is on top of the other features which include text to speech with word highlighting and an offline book catalog that lets you easily find and download some 28,000 titles. I consider Read Etexts to be about feature complete at this point. Anything after this should only be polishing what is already there. I would be very interested in the opinions of the educators on this list. Opinions of actual children would be even better, but I'll take whatever I can get. As always, if you like it tell your friends, if not tell me. And if you know any of the 2,000 children who downloaded the previous release find out what they're reading. James Simmons ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Lets Get Satisfaction (was: Community Influence)
http://idea.laptop.org/drupal5/ideatorrent is a resource that OLPC's Volunteer Infrastructure Group have experimented with. A sugarlabs.org variant may be an easy step. It has the idea, solution, voting features, and possibly could be configured to segregate questions, problems, praise, etc. --Fred On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.comwrote: Walter Bender wrote: It isn't obvious at first glance why this particular site appeals to you. Could you describe its features and the problems you think they address? It is the one I came across and a quick research (not very deep, admittedly) didn't result in many comparable alternatives - that's also why I asked for alternatives in the end. What I believe is: *we need to make it easy to submit feedback* The feedb...@sl.o address was a beginning, but I think we need to explore other possibilities, too. GetSatisfaction looks - to me - like a good way of offering our users an easy, well designed interface, where they can enter their requests issues. I mentioned some of its features already below (like the various kinds of feedback, the possibility of making the current state on an issue easily clear enough,m...). However, I think if we promote such a solution well enough, it might help us to get feedback even from those people, who're probably not that experienced with open source projects or even feared of entering a ticket in trac (what the heck is a bug?, why do I need an account here? what's this all about?,...). --Sebastian thanks. -walter On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Sebastian Dziallassebast...@when.com wrote: Hi everybody, it's really good to see this discussion getting off the ground. While being at LinuxTag, we discussed with some folks how to improve the way of getting feedback from our users, without putting too much barriers in their way. So while looking around and at various issue tracking systems, I discovered GetSatisfaction. I had seen that before already, but wasn't sure of its current state. There you go: http://getsatisfaction.com/ GetSatisfaction is also used by other open source projects like Songbird (which might also be a good place to an idea how such an instance looks like): http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird So as you can see, users gain various possibilities of interacting with the developers here. They can ask questions, report issues and so on. Others go ahead and comment and vote an entry up and down so that developers can see what's more and what's less important. Finally, a developer can also put a we're working on it or we're aware of this problem flag on an entry, to make the current state more obvious. In my opinion, this might be a good way of inviting more people to give us feedback (I'm not suggesting to abandon trac, I guess we should use that to track issues ourselves, too). For example, if we created such an instance and mentioned it in the next press release, I'm pretty sure it could work out well. Well, GetSatisfaction is a company. So they have various plans (also a free one, which looks like it would probably already be enough), while I guess we could also contact them directly. So. What do you think? Is this worth trying out? Any alternatives? I've already a personal account with them, but how do we proceed? Cheers, --Sebastian ___ 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 Labs Elections at SPI
Luke Faraone wrote: We were planning to have our second annual board election, and were wondering if SPI would be willing to hold/host it as a neutral third party. We would be able to provide SPI with a list of member email addresses, as well as a list of candidates, and would ideally like a randomized ballot which was tallied under the Schulze_methodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method. Last year we used http://selectricity.org/ , largely without incident. Do you have a reason to do otherwise this year? Also, the Schulze method can only be used to elect a single winner. It does not describe any mechanism for multi-winner elections such as this one. --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
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] community influence on development
On 28.07.2009, at 07:22, Martin Dengler wrote: On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 03:24:13PM +0545, Daniel Drake wrote: However, I feel like it could be better if the community (who I might even stretch to call customers) could have more influence. [...] What are the options for the community having more of an influence here? Influence on whom? Developers? There are no SugarLabs employed developers. But if we get feedback from the front line, from teachers actually using our software in the field, the volunteer developers I know struggle to find a way to make it easier for them. Nothing beats direct contact with children of course, but even meeting teachers from the deployments and hearing first-hand accounts of the problems (and successes!) is rather motivating. Reading these reports on a mailing list is less emotionally moving but still a great hint at how to prioritize one's spare time. The problem is we get way too few feedback. - Bert - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Elections at SPI
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:19, Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu wrote: Last year we used http://selectricity.org/ , largely without incident. Do you have a reason to do otherwise this year? This reason: On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 17:51, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: there was some concern that Selectricity had some flaws and security holes Also having a 3rd party allows for greater accountability and transparency. Also, the Schulze method can only be used to elect a single winner. It does not describe any mechanism for multi-winner elections such as this one. Ok, then. What would you recommend? -- 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] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 4:55 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release Installing from packages and from .xos are incompatible. To upgrade Physics, 1 Delete or rename ~/Activities/Physics.activity. 2 In Browse, go to http://Activities.sugarlabs.org and search for Physics. 3 Click Download. The .xo bundle is saved to the Journal and installed automatically. I am documenting such issues in [[The undiscoverable]]. We need to integrate these solutions into our curriculum and lesson plans. -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Edward Cherlinecher...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 4:55 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release Installing from packages and from .xos are incompatible. To upgrade Physics, 1 Delete or rename ~/Activities/Physics.activity. This step should not be necessary. 2 In Browse, go to http://Activities.sugarlabs.org and search for Physics. 3 Click Download. The .xo bundle is saved to the Journal and installed automatically. I am documenting such issues in [[The undiscoverable]]. We need to integrate these solutions into our curriculum and lesson plans. -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ 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] GPA Class Notes July 29 - GS
Hi All, Here are some notes from my 1.5 hours in the computer lab at GPA with 10 3rd graders. They are also posted here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes Comments before class: - We usually boot up each computer with USB stick but Caroline mentioned that its better to let the kids insert and boot. That way they can choose who sits together. - We saw one kid putting a USB cap in his mouth which is a choking danger. - We reviewed the TA lesson plan from Walter and decided to have someone prepare the computers while Walter presented. Walter showed his TurtleArt game designs which should allow the kids to create the games they defined in the previous class. He put up a turtle and asked the kids to say where various places were by saying North, South , East or West. They enjoyed that. One kids noticed that Walter had two USB icons at the bottom of his frame and asked about that. One of the kids pointed to the Maze icon and asked is that a maze game? They wanted to play games and saw that Walter computer had more than they had. After the overview, Caroline had each computer running Turtle Art without the new Game examples loaded. We went to the computers and the kids played with Turtle Art for a while. I was very impressed by how quickly they took to playing with it and moving the turtle around. They also found the prebuilt turtle examples and liked looking at what those created. However, without specific instructions, many started to tire and asked to play games. I worked with some kids to find pictures they had saved before and to download new ones in preparation to make their games. Two follow up items on that: - I think the Star will work to flag a set of content for quick access later. The kids didn't try it but I did and it looks OK. - Download images appear with the approximately following name in the Journal: FILE: 86 px http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Map_of_USA_MA.svg [more stuff]. I think the challenge to find things is that there is too much data there to easily find and compare. Maybe we should start with the file name (no path). Then the rest of the data? Not a deal breaker but it seemed to cost some time. Meanwhile Walter and Caroline worked on delivering the new TA programs. We also did that after class. It was not pretty, but I'll leave the details to a follow up e-mail by Walter. Next class Walter and Caroline will not be there. So Anurag will run the class and I will be backup. We thought we had two more classes but turns out that next week is the last. So we will put the game building on hold and come back to it in the fall. Next class we will just download games (e.g. maze) and play. Thanks, Greg S ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Elections at SPI
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Luke Faraonelfara...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:19, Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu wrote: Last year we used http://selectricity.org/ , largely without incident. Do you have a reason to do otherwise this year? This reason: On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 17:51, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: there was some concern that Selectricity had some flaws and security holes Also having a 3rd party allows for greater accountability and transparency. Also, the Schulze method can only be used to elect a single winner. It does not describe any mechanism for multi-winner elections such as this one. on the contrary, it works very well for multi-winner elections. -walter Ok, then. What would you recommend? -- 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 -- 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] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On 29 Jul 2009, at 18:25, Edward Cherlin wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 4:55 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release Installing from packages and from .xos are incompatible. To upgrade Physics, 1 Delete or rename ~/Activities/Physics.activity. Physics is not part of Fructose, so its inclusion in the Strawberry release should be as a regular .xo (in ~/Activities with normal permissions) that you can upgrade from using Browse (or sugar-install- bundle if you prefer the command line). Regards, -Gary P.S Very glad to hear that all Activities are going to be installed as .xo bundles in future SoaS releases :-) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Fwd: [support-gang] FW: OLPC Projects/VideoEditing and Video Edit
Hello George, Carol, ... , On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 02:41:11PM -0400, George Hunt wrote: This seems to be a project worth supporting. I'm not sure that my skills are up to the task. But I'd like to explore further what is needed and whether there are others who would be willing to fill in the pieces which I am missing. I agree that this is a very important project. I'm not sure yet how much time I'll be able to commit to the project, but I would like to stay involved as it moves forward. I'd be interested If Robert could say a little more about what is needed. Is the code posted? Or could you package it and send it to me? I haven't touched this in over a year, but my documentation is still online at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/VideoEditing Where I left off, I had instructions for updating the system GStreamer to cutting edge (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Compiling_GStreamer_On_The_XO) and a branch of PiTiVi with some of the Sugar filestore interface integrated into PiTiVi. It's worth trying anew to see how PiTiVi and GStreamer have improved in the past year, and then evaluating whether it still makes sense to base our efforts on that toolkit. I'm on vacation in California for the next two weeks, so may not respond immediately. I'll be back in NY and more available after Aug 4. Let's continue this conversation after you return, and see what we can come up with. Best, Robert ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi Bill, I'm excited that you are doing pilot. How old are the kids? From the blog posts it looks like you have some XOs, are you using SoaS on other computers too? thanks for the mail, Caroline one xo standard usage is SoaS, for this course year 10 approx 15yo course outline involves critical evaluation and building some useful software details: http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html This looks amazing!!! http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html We don't have a system for feedback yet so until people complain about the volume lets talk here on the list. I think feedback falls into 4 categories. 1. Sugar bugs 2. Sugar on a Stick specific bugs and barriers to deployment 3. Activity specific feedback and bugs 4. Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans What seems to work best is to post about problems in general then after discussion post a bug in Trac. Sometimes I find that I just don't understand something or can't find the right button and its not actually a bug. I have decided that I really want more SoaS pilots so I'm going to focus for a few weeks on problems that are barriers to teachers using SoaS this fall (#2 above). I would like your input on this. My current working document is: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO Just read that, it's a good start, covers a lot of ground A few issues (dumb questions, saves time if I put them up here) 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter involves waiting for the official release Did you get the answer? If you actually understood it maybe you can write it up in the FAQ :) Cause I'm not sure I do. I think the answer is. You can easily update all activities, except for a few known bugs that effect a lot of important activities but will be fixed next release. Your students may want to stay cutting edge of the code anyway. 2) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users For Window User point 5 Set the *Persistent Storage* slider to the maximum so you can save your Sugar work onto the USB device; (You may allocate as much storage as there is capacity on your device. You may allocate less than the maximum, if you want to use some of the device storage when not booting Sugar.) I ended up setting the Persistent Storage to maximum. Now I'm wondering that if I had allocated less than the maximum then could a student copy a file from the journal onto the SoaS (rather than their own USB) and it would save in some of that non allocated storage. This is an issue because not all students bring their own USBs to class. Sometimes there is a need to swap in and out of the Sugar environment back to the Windows environment (found in most schools) so ability to easily save on a USB is an issue. Actually, this ended up being the first major thing I taught my students to do. Nod, also I am working on a project to move the USB to a more accessible file structure. 3) the information about failed sticks not rebooting is valuable - some sticks have failed for me but I haven't worked out any real pattern yet, quite complex to keep track when teaching a class, just tell the kids to try a different stick and / or different computer - but the sticks are numbered and now each student uses the same one each lesson so patterns will become clearer soon 4) some of my sticks (about half) are card readers 2GB cards, they work fine 5) the brand of stick of stick makes a difference, LASERS are very slow (and cheapest), KINGSTON seem good 6) collaboration did not work out of the box - is it meant to? - I have a jabber server from last year which I have yet to setup but will do so soon Yes, lots of bugs but lets work on trying to identify and squash them. Also we are close to having SoaS backup and restore working with the XS if you want to try the patch when we finally get it working. 7) Had to type about:config into Browse and muck around with proxy settings to get internet access - I had never done this before and needed assistance http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html 8) I noticed when I loaded Pippy on my dell mini inspiron that the run button in the middle of the screen was not visible - ie. does not work with all screen configurations (it looked ok on school machines though) file a ticket in dev on this one I think. Greg Smith is gravitating towards documenting the lesson plans etc and creating, organizing and prioritizing tickets that
[IAEP] Letter to GPA Parents
We found out today that summer school ends a week sooner then we thought! It ends next week. We want to send the sticks home with the kids. We need to write a letter to the parents explaining what the stick is. Does anyone have any suggestions or sample letters? 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
Re: [IAEP] Letter to GPA Parents
We found out today that summer school ends a week sooner then we thought! It ends next week. We want to send the sticks home with the kids. We need to write a letter to the parents explaining what the stick is. Does anyone have any suggestions or sample letters? What would be good, but probably impractical at short notice, is to invite the parents to the last session, so the kids can show what they have achieved. That would give the opportunity to explain the sticks. (It has also a sound base in constructionist and social constructivist pedagogy, the creation of public entities) Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
