Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 81, Issue 23
Tony, I don't want to speak for the teachers in Nepal, but I think, Speaking as an educator, that more real data is better than the red light green light scenario you propose. I would be happy to participate in the design if that would be helpful. Gerald On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.netwrote: Hi, I am taking a simplistic approach to this problem. KA-Lite has a simple coach report which basically shows a table with a row for each registered student and a column for each activity. The cell is blank for no attempts, a light green for attempts which did not reach 'proficiency', and a dark green to show proficiency in that task. I think this is adequate for teachers, particularly if they can click on a cell to get more detail (e.g number of items completed, number of questions answered correctly, and so forth). Many of the sites I am supporting do not follow the one laptop per child model. In one case, the teachers pass out laptops without regard to who used it previously. In other cases, a set of laptops are used in more than one class. This means recording data against the laptop serial number is insufficient. The implementation strategy is to have the site provide a list of students (currently first and last name with the username as a concatenation of the two). The student logs in (By using the Journal activity, login is assured at boot time. After that, students must login as laptops are passed from class to class). A modification to activity.py adds id, start, stop, and outcome to the metadata. The id is the db id of the student (not the username). The outcome is a string - empty by default. A procedure 'write_outcome' added to activity.py, analogous to read_file and write_file enables a Sugar activity to add specific outcome information (either a string or a json with one of the keys: 'comment':''). The ds_backup.py is modified to save objects in the datastore to the school server (item by item, not rsync). A data collection script on the school server can go through the saved Journals adding this information to a database so that reports (such as the coach report) can be created on demand. Similar to KA Lite, the goal is to make information available to teachers on the progress of their students so that teachers can provide extra help and encouragement as appropriate. Currently, KA Lite does not provide feedback directly to the students but the main Khan Academy site has many examples of this (badges, points, etc.). Tony On 01/12/2014 04:31 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote: Send Server-devel mailing list submissions to server-devel@lists.laptop.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org You can reach the person managing the list at server-devel-ow...@lists.laptop.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Server-devel digest... Today's Topics: 1. Re: [Sugar-devel] The quest for data (Sameer Verma) 2. Re: [Sugar-devel] The quest for data (Walter Bender) -- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 20:27:21 -0800 From: Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu To: Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org Cc: Devel's in the Details de...@lists.laptop.org,XS Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org,Sugar-dev Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org, Nina Stawski m...@ninastawski.com, Leotis Buchanan leotisbucha...@exterbox.com Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] The quest for data Message-ID: CAFoGK8Go=Fh+Z0v7u+cj8yBqNhnPPz8hMupi_ZcrHD-e0f=N o...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 We had our January meeting at OLPCSF (and our 6th birthday). We talked about contributions to this project. Introducing Nina Stawski to the thread. She works with HTML and Javascript and is familiar with visualization. She suggested d3js.org as one of the options. Has anyone created the wiki page as yet? cheers, Sameer On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:37 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote: On 7.1.2014 01:49, Sameer Verma wrote: On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote: For visualization, I have explored using LibreOffice and SOFA, but neither of those were flexible to allow for customization of the output beyond some a few rudimentary options, so I started looking at various Javascript libraries, which are much more powerful. Currently, I am experimenting with Google Charts, which I found the easiest to get started with. If I run into limitations with Google Charts in the future, others on my list are
Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] The quest for data
Just to add my $.02, I agree with Walter and Claudia's approach in this paper. Making the specifics of learning visible to teachers and students, and doing the development from this perspective, I think is the best way to go. Thanks. Gerald On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 9:33 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote: On 7.1.2014 01:49, Sameer Verma wrote: On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote: For visualization, I have explored using LibreOffice and SOFA, but neither of those were flexible to allow for customization of the output beyond some a few rudimentary options, so I started looking at various Javascript libraries, which are much more powerful. Currently, I am experimenting with Google Charts, which I found the easiest to get started with. If I run into limitations with Google Charts in the future, others on my list are InfoVIS Toolkit (http://philogb.github.io/jit) and HighCharts (http://highcharts.com). Then, there is also D3.js, but that's a bigger animal. Keep in mind that if you want to visualize at the school's local XS[CE] you may have to rely on a local js method instead of an online library. Yes, that's a very good point. Originally, I was only thinking about collecting and visualizing the information centrally, but there is no reason why it couldn't be viewed by teachers and school administrators on the schoolserver itself. Thanks for the warning. In fact, my guess would be that what the teachers and principal want to see at the school will be different from what OLE Nepal and the government would want to see, with interesting overlaps. You left out one important constituent: the learner. Ultimately we are responsible for making learning visible to the learner. Claudia and I touched on this topic in the attached paper. Just to place all my cards on the table, as much as I hate to suggest we head down this route, I think we really need to instrument activities themselves (and build analyses of activity output) if we want to provide meaningful statistics about learning. We've done some of this with Turtle Blocks, even capturing the mistakes the learner makes along the way. We are lacking in decent visualizations of these data, however. Meanwhile, I remain convinced that the portfolio is our best tool. regards. -walter cheers, Sameer ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] The quest for data
Agreed. On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 6:02 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 6:33 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote: On 7.1.2014 01:49, Sameer Verma wrote: On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote: For visualization, I have explored using LibreOffice and SOFA, but neither of those were flexible to allow for customization of the output beyond some a few rudimentary options, so I started looking at various Javascript libraries, which are much more powerful. Currently, I am experimenting with Google Charts, which I found the easiest to get started with. If I run into limitations with Google Charts in the future, others on my list are InfoVIS Toolkit (http://philogb.github.io/jit) and HighCharts ( http://highcharts.com). Then, there is also D3.js, but that's a bigger animal. Keep in mind that if you want to visualize at the school's local XS[CE] you may have to rely on a local js method instead of an online library. Yes, that's a very good point. Originally, I was only thinking about collecting and visualizing the information centrally, but there is no reason why it couldn't be viewed by teachers and school administrators on the schoolserver itself. Thanks for the warning. In fact, my guess would be that what the teachers and principal want to see at the school will be different from what OLE Nepal and the government would want to see, with interesting overlaps. You left out one important constituent: the learner. Ultimately we are responsible for making learning visible to the learner. Claudia and I touched on this topic in the attached paper. Thanks for the paper. While we did point out to Portfolio and Analyze Journal activities in our session at OLPC SF Summit in 2013, I didn't include it in the scope of the blog post. I'll go back and update it when I get a chance. Just to place all my cards on the table, as much as I hate to suggest we head down this route, I think we really need to instrument activities themselves (and build analyses of activity output) if we want to provide meaningful statistics about learning. We've done some of this with Turtle Blocks, even capturing the mistakes the learner makes along the way. We are lacking in decent visualizations of these data, however. I haven't had a chance to read the paper in depth (which I intend to do this afternoon), but how much of this approach would be shareable across activities? Or would the depth of analysis be on a per activity basis? If the latter, then I'd imagine it would be simpler for something like the Moon activity than the TurtleBlocks activity. Meanwhile, I remain convinced that the portfolio is our best tool. I think the approaches differ in scope and purpose. In the RFPs I've been involved in, the funding agencies and/or the decision makers either request or outright require dashboard style features to report frequency of use, time of day, and in some cases even GPS-based location in addition to theft-deterrence, remote provisioning, etc. The same goes for going back to an agency to get renewed funding or to raise funds for a new site expansion. In a way, the scope of the learner-teacher bubble is significantly different from that of the principal-minister of edu. One is driven by learning and pedagogy, while the other is driven by administration. Accordingly, the reports they want to see are also different. While the measurements from the Activity may be distilled into coarser indicators for the MoE, I think it is important to keep the entire scope in mind. Don't get me wrong: satisfying the needs of funders, administrators, etc. is important too. They have metrics that they value and we should gather those data too. My earlier post was just to suggest ultimately we need to consider the learner and how making learning visible can be of use. That theme seemed to be missing from the earlier discussion. I am mindful of the garbage in, garbage out problem. In building this pipeline (which is where my skills are) I hope that the data that goes into this pipeline is representative of what is measured at the child's end. I am glad that you and Claudia are the experts on that end :-) cheers, Sameer regards. -walter cheers, Sameer ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] offline a.sl.o
This is very interesting. I have a kind of related question. Has there been any work done for a non-internet based email server (and XO based client)? I know that Tony Anderson (now in Rwanda) is working in a school with no internet access, but with the need for email-type communication. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 08:04:36PM -0800, Sameer Verma wrote: Has anyone looked into running an offline copy of activities.sugarlabs.orgon a server that isn't on the Internet (a la XS)? To run ASLO copy on a standalone server, you need to install ASLO/AMO php application (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Library/Devel but instructions might be outdated) and clone MySQL data with activity files (~9G). Some time ago, SL used 2nd ASLO node, but it used the same MySQL and files storage. There is the same need in ASLO on a school server in the field. But in my mind, trying to adapt ASLO/AMO to this scheme is an overkill. The real environments might assume lack of maintaining or restricted school servers (for example XO laptops in offline schools), i.e., Apache+MySQL+PHP+ASLO/AMO is a real misuse. In this regard, Sugar Network[1] was initiated a ~year ago, i.e., content sharing system (in contrast to ASLO, SN will provide non-software content like books or Journal objects). Sugar Network functionality is explicitly split into server side and client application(s). Server side is capable for running even on XO laptops (XO-1.5 is preferable) in pure offline case (e.g. one-teacher schools in Peru when people have only XO laptops) with further offline synchronization[2]. Clients might be any applications that use REStful API provided by Sugar Network node (master server like ASLO or any distributed node). For now there are two clients[3] written as a lightweight Web application and one that is pure JS application. The centralized scheme (like ASLO) is available right now[3] (it is being assumed to be used in Peruvian pilot). The offline model is in progress and should be ready, in some stage, during this year. [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployment_Platform/Sneakernet [3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network#Try_it -- Aleksey ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Hidden SSID and Proxy settings
Jerry, The one I set up for testing has no security. The real one in the school has security. Clearly, this method (either one -- GNOME or NetworkManager) works. The issue is the persistence. To ask teachers to do this with 100 students every time they want to access the internet makes either one unworkable. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks. Gerald On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 10:55 PM, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: On Thu, 2011-03-03 at 14:47 +1100, James Cameron wrote: On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 10:38:07PM -0500, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: Both methods work within a session. In GNOME, I can connect to the hidden network. And, if I change back to Sugar, the connection is intact. Yes. NetworkManager still has knowledge of the hidden network connection request in memory, having been told about it by the GNOME nm-applet. (Restarting NetworkManager at this point causes the connection to drop and not be re-established.) Well sort of, if you restart MN in a terminal in GNOME, the connection is re-established, switch over to sugar the AP icon has the ESSID populated. This works if Available to all users was ticked as NM sees this as a system connection under root's control. Now open terminal in SUGAR and restart NM, now the ESSID is set to None. While un-ticked you will be prompted for the info, which is saved in connections.cfg. The difference might be that in GNOME you have gnome-keyring running while in SUGAR it's not. There is the question of who owns the connection while setup as an ifcfg file, root or olpc? When I reboot, however, while the Wireless Connections UI (iin either GNOME or Sugar using nm) shows the connection properly, it does not actually connect to the hidden ssid. Yes, I agree. After reboot, NetworkManager is restarted, and therefore no longer knows about the hidden network connection request. Agreed, I'll look for how Connect to Hidden Wireless network runs its re-scan for the hidden network in the code. The ONBOOT setting doesn't appear to work either. On an un-hidden network it does, or at least loaded as the UI becomes usable. Gerald, does your AP have any security or is it just hidden? Jerry ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Hidden SSID and Proxy settings
Jerry and James, Thanks. Both methods work within a session. In GNOME, I can connect to the hidden network. And, if I change back to Sugar, the connection is intact. When I reboot, however, while the Wireless Connections UI (iin either GNOME or Sugar using nm) shows the connection properly, it does not actually connect to the hidden ssid. Jerry, I have attached the file you requested. Looking forward to making this work. Gerald On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 9:10 PM, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: On Wed, 2011-03-02 at 20:54 -0500, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: Hello again, I am just getting back to this. I have tried the instructions on the wiki at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wifi_Connectivity#SSID_Network_Name But these instructions do not seem to work. After making the changes, nothing shows up in the Neighborhood view. I had success starting in Gnome, then connecting to the hidden network. And this kept when I switched back to Sugar. But, when I restarted, the hidden network was still hidden, and I had to do this again. Is there anyway to make this change permanent? Fire up the nm-connection-editor before you reboot, Find the connection under the wireless tab, tick both Connect automatically and Available to all users. This creates a file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, forcing NM to bring up the connection on boot, before the UI loads and should be available in both Sugar and Gnome. You don't need to go into gnome to run the tool, in terminal: nm-connection-editor If you could send me the resulting ifcfg file from /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, I'd be grateful for the example. Jerry ifcfg-xonet2 Description: Binary data ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Hidden SSID and Proxy settings
Jerry, I am not sure. It is whatever version they were shipped with. They are XO 1.5s, and they arrived in October. I am not where they are, so I can't check the version. Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: On Mon, 2011-01-31 at 15:15 -0500, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: I am trying to connect XOs in a school which as a wireless network with a hidden SSID. Additionally, the school requires proxy settings to establish internet connections. Can someone help me with this? Can you tell us what os version is installed on the XOs? Jerry ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Hidden SSID and Proxy settings
Jon, The school is in NYC, the land of hidden SSIDs. I will check out this page and try to make it work in the school. And, congrats to your grandma. Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Jon Nettleton jon.nettle...@gmail.comwrote: This wouldn't happen to be in NYC, would it? I remember reading a long time ago that the schools there have a policy that SSIDs can't be broadcast. You might deter my Grandma with that, but it's almost pointless as a security measure. http://olpcnyc.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/connecting-to-hidden-wifi-networks/ That workaround is likely deprecated now, though. If this is a newer image, one based on F11 then you should be able to use nmcli to connect. Take a look at this page. http://blog.nixpanic.net/2011/01/connect-automatically-and-immediately.html Hope that helps. My grandma would still hack it in 2 seconds though :-) Jon ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Hidden SSID and Proxy settings
I am trying to connect XOs in a school which as a wireless network with a hidden SSID. Additionally, the school requires proxy settings to establish internet connections. Can someone help me with this? Thanks. Gerald ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Schoolserver and eth1
Will do. How do I do that? Thanks. Gerald On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Tom Parker t...@carrott.org wrote: On Sun, 2011-01-16 at 10:38 -0500, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: I did install a third nic in one of the Dells, thinking that this would fix the problem. But only one was recognized by the XS. Either one could be recognized as eth0, but neither was recognized as Eth1. Post the output of lspci, ifconfig -a and the contents of /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules With this information we will be able to help you. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Schoolserver and eth1
Tom, Here's what's weird. The server came with one nic (the box is a Del Vostro). I added the second. Now, only the second works, and only as eth0. And, when it works as eth0, I have an internet connection. I tried installing two new nics, but only one shows up. I would imagine that I don't have the drivers for the first (original) one. Does that make any sense? If so, what could I do? Thanks. Gerald On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 12:40 AM, t...@carrott.org wrote: On Fri, January 14, 2011 5:08 pm, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: Even though there is physically a second nic, the school server doesn't seem to see it. When I ifconfig eth1, I am told there is no device present. Does the nic show up when do lspci? If not then it's likely broken. Does the nic show up with another name when you do ifconfig -a If so, you ought to be able to map it back to eth1 by modifying the persistent net rules in /etc/udev/rules.d. If not, then it is likely that the nic isn't supported by the kernel. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Connecting the a Schoolserver via SSH
Hello. I have my schoolserver up and running (at last!). I want to connect to it from one of the XOs using SSH. I have read what is on the wiki, but I must be missing something. Can someone provide some detailed instructions? Thanks. Gerald ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Connecting the a Schoolserver via SSH
Anna, Thanks. I'll try this out tomorrow. I have another question for you. I was testing the server with about 12 XOs today. They all connected fine and had internet connections. But the performance seemed slow. It took several seconds for pages to load at times. Also, when I tried to have shared Activities (I opened a chat session, for example), the performance was horribly slow, and not every computer could connect. Do you have any ideas about why this might be happening and how to make it better? Thanks. Gerald On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Anna ascho...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I have my schoolserver up and running (at last!). I want to connect to it from one of the XOs using SSH. I have read what is on the wiki, but I must be missing something. Can someone provide some detailed instructions? Thanks. Gerald Gerald: Though you're supposed to use keys, and I still do from my main desktop, it's convenient when you're sshing from multiple XOs or other computers to go ahead and enable password based ssh login. That way you don't have to fool with keys all the time. Since my XSs are exposed to the internet, I do run ssh on a non-standard port, which keeps out the script kiddies. If you're worried about that, it's really simple to change the port. Anyway, it's just a config file edit to allow password based ssh logins. As root, create a regular user on the XS. adduser gerald passwd gerald You'll be prompted for the new password. That's it for setting up a user. Enable password authentication in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and /etc/ssh/ sshd_config.in I think you're supposed to be able to edit only sshd_config and then run make -f /etc/xs-config.make sshd_config to do up sshd_config.in properly, but I just go ahead and make this minor change to both files, as I've never gotten xs-config.make to work consistently for me. In both those files, uncomment PasswordAuthentication yes and comment out PasswordAuthentication no so it looks like this: # To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here! PasswordAuthentication yes #PermitEmptyPasswords no #PasswordAuthentication no Restart the ssh service. service sshd restart Now from an XO connected to the XS, you can ssh ger...@172.18.0.1 or ssh gerald@XS's hostname Enter in your password and you should be greeted with the motd! After you successfully ssh in, you can su root. Sometimes that's not root enough, though and you might have to 'sudo su -' if it says you can't do something. Anna Schoolfield Birmingham ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
