Re: [Testing] New OLPC Process and Rules for Builing Activities, Releases, and Firmware Builds
2008/4/4 Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED]: present it yourself via the dialin number, that would be ideal; otherwise someone else will present for you (though perhaps not as passionately) and You haven't been sitting quite close enough to my corner of the office if you still think that I won't present build/process improvements passionately. =) --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC Networking] RSSI value questions
Just to address a few other issues/questions raised... If there is only one antenna on a server, then as long as 3 other nodes are considered relatively stationary, I think their 2D locations can be deduced from each node's measurements of the other 4. An easy to use interface can allow the user to orient the generated map with respect to whatever reference point they like; ideally, the final program would allow for a floor plan of the building to be displayed underneath the topological mapping. With respect to granularity of different measurements, I think inaccurate measurements can be averaged over time, since some would necessarily be more accurate than others, allowing for a more accurate map as time passes. Ben stated that the dynamic gain isn't available in user space. I'm just wondering if there's a way to passively determine the gain and if this would even be helpful in determining location. Any ideas? I'm not so experienced in RF tech that I can come up with how knowing the gain would be useful, but if it is useful, then I think it'd be easy enough to figure out some sort of indicator that's relative to the fluctuations in whatever measurements the gain affects. Again, let me know if I'm that kid out in left field wearing his glove on his head and facing away from the bases... I feel pretty optimistic about the feasibility of this kind of project. There seem to be a few good measurement techniques to go by, as well different methods to compute the data. If the XOs pitch in and tell the server where they think other nodes and themselves are, relative to each other, that would provide another set of input to include when averaging out measurements. For those of you that would like some light reading on the topic of modeling this information and computing it, here are a couple of papers that attempt to do similar things with GSM signals and neural networks: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/9603/30336/01394788.pdf?isnumber=30336prod=CNFarnumber=1394788arSt=+133ared=+136arAuthor=Debono%2C+C.J.%3B+Buhagiar%2C+J.K . http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4222741/4222742/04222782.pdf?arnumber=4222782 - Crawford ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Testing] New OLPC Process and Rules for Builing Activities, Releases, and Firmware Builds
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:04 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/4/4 Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED]: present it yourself via the dialin number, that would be ideal; otherwise someone else will present for you (though perhaps not as passionately) and You haven't been sitting quite close enough to my corner of the office if you still think that I won't present build/process improvements passionately. =) --scott Fair enough! It is true, you are likely to have rather greater absolute passionvalue; I should say though perhaps with a different hue of passion -- it would still be great to have real-time input from Charles. SJ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Phone-in # for mini-conference; video chat info, too.
On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:15 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Phone-in info: From the United States 866-213-2185 From Outside the United States 1-609-454-9914 accesscode: 8069698 I'll try to keep this open during all the talks. We may have to mute the speaker on our end if there's too much background noise. We'll also be on #olpc-devel on irc.oftc.net. If you'd like to make a comment and don't seem to be being heard in-room, a brief msg on #olpc-devel should suffice to ensure you get the floor. Noah's setting up a groovy flash video streaming server thingy, so you shouldn't need anything but a web browser flash to view the real-time video. Will the live stream be Gnash-compatible? But you might want to download VLC tonight just to be safe ( http://www.videolan.org/ ). We'll transcode to Ogg Theora afterwards, of course, and post the files. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Connecting a non python activity to sugar
On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Paul Fox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: bert wrote: On 31.03.2008, at 14:52, Paul Fox wrote: bert wrote: Also, try the sugarize script and library: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-January/009387.html (maybe that should be added to the Wiki) indeed -- that would be a nice addition. i'm using that script, ... Well, just add it then. It's a Wiki :) i will do that. I did it a few days ago. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Factory Sugar maintains a strict 1:1 relation between top-level windows marked as activity and activities. Any other top-level window should get an unknown icon, currently a gray circle. I guess marking an arbitrary top-level window as activity would severely confuse Sugar. What you currently i don't think i'm seeing the unknown icon, but i also wasn't looking for it. it seems to me that in an ideal world, alt-tab would cycle through all top-level windows, whether they're known to sugar or not. (be lenient in what you accept, and all that.) the fact is that not all programs running under sugar will be fully sugarized, and to some extent sugar should behave like just a window manager where necessary. (in any case, based on what you've said, i've re-coded my app so that the gps console is now just an alternate display mode for the main mapping window. the second process and window, are no longer needed. there were other reasons that this change was overdue -- thanks for the nudge. :-) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arlington, ma, where it's 40.1 degrees) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Becoming involved in XO software development?
On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 5:13 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Janine, Coming at your question from the user requirements side, I have one request from the deployment in Uruguay. They want to make it easier for kids to blog. And people like me want to have easier ways to hear from teachers, students, anybody involved with XOs in target countries. I need to be able to feed this kind of information to PTAs and politicians, and we all need it in order to know which way to move OLPC next. Description of the requirement is at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Uruguay Click on the link called: Requiremientos Para XO It has surprisingly broad implications which may require new code on XO, XS or the Internet. I'm putting together a team to address that requirement. I want to make anything we develop available to all XO deployments. I also want to stay in touch with Uruguay to gather more requests from them. I think we can develop a mutually beneficial dialogue where developers learn from the users and vice versa. We'd love to have your support! If you are interested, send me an e-mail or join the list I setup on Google at: http://groups.google.com/group/uruguay-XO-coordination The success of the whole organization is more important than any one project so you should give extra weight to responses from OLPC employees (I'm a volunteer). For example, below is a request for help from the server list. It has a few specific suggestions you may want to consider. Thanks, Greg S Message: 1 Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:49:35 -0400 From: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Server-devel] The road towards xs-0.3 To: server-devel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi all, I am just settling down in my temporary office in Buenos Aires. Before leaving Cambridge, I cranked out some a private test build of the XS fixing #6678. Tomorrow I will finish setting up my portable build machine to crank out a few more with related fixes. Is anyone else (other than Wad I guess) actively working on XS-related bugs, are there any patches or easy fixes that I could trivially include in the 0.3 release? Any bugs that you have seen or not reported? *Now* is the time to file those unfiled bugs, vote for the unvoted bugs; show your love for XS and show your patch ;-) Where/how to do this? 3 Easy steps: 1 - Familiarise yourself with the xs-0.3 goals and general roadmap here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Roadmap 2 - Have a read of the currently open bugs, have a look at the ones listed for xs-0.3 - if you have patches you know what to do with them! https://dev.laptop.org/query?status=assignedstatus=newstatus=reopened; group=milestonecomponent=school+serverorder=prioritycol=idcol=summar ycol=statuscol=typecol=priority 3 - Help triage the bugs! What is bug triage? Read this article - and Eric Sink's one too! http://blogs.msdn.com/tonyschr/archive/2006/01/12/512164.aspx cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: 24 teachers start OLPC training
Ed, I will have to get back to you in a couple days, have to run off to the pilot site. Bipul Gautam on our team or Edith Ackermann of the OLPC Learning Team would be the right person to give the guided tour. On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 00:15 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: I wonder whether there is enough interest to put something together for all the volunteers. I could certainly do with a guided tour of both theory and practice. Can somebody figure out how we can discover Constructionism together on our laptops (with appopriate guidance), and perhaps set up a jabber server for that purpose? If we could make it work, we could perhaps offer it to interested people in education, government, and the general public. Presumably some tailoring to particular audiences would be needed. On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey Edward, Papert built on the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. Co-learning, experiential learning - these ideas were pioneered by Piaget and Vygotsky. David Cavallo and Edith Ackermann talked extensively of Piaget and Vygotsky at the OLPC Learning conference I attended in January. Thanks. My mother majored in Child Development at Chicago, so I got a fair amount of background while growing up, particularly on Piaget and Bruner, but I need a lot more detail now. I am particularly a big fan of Vygotsky as I agree with him that learning is fundamentally a social process and that culture plays a large role in our social interactions, hence learning. All of our materials are in Nepali. I hope to post them in a publicly accessible place later. Right now we are in a crunch because we start the pilot at Bashuki and Bishwamitra very shortly. Can we invite some other volunteers to translate them to English, or can you point to the English sources for the material? Constructionism is a broad term that encompasses ideas from many different theorists and many different elements such as: social cognition co-learning scaffolding Experiential learning The single best resource I have found is this web site: http://www.funderstanding.com/engaging_kids.cfm and especially this page http://www.funderstanding.com/theories.cfm Bipul Gautam wrote a nice, short post about some of Piaget's theories on our blog: http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/200 I'll check them out. Perhaps you would be willing to add them to the OLPC Wiki page on Constructionism? On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 22:38 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: 2008/3/31 Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 24 teachers from Bishwamitra and Bashuki schools started 4-day long OLPC training organized by OLE Nepal. http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/193 At the start of the Nepali school year, OLE Nepal will distribute 150 laptops to children in grades two and six at Bashuki and Bishwamitra schools. Teachers from both schools are currently in four days of training how to use the laptops in the classroom. Can you tell us what the training materials are and where to access them? Are they in Nepali? Can we get English translations? For example, we have nothing in the Wiki about this: On the morning of the second day Bipul focused on the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky that underpin constructionism. The afternoon of the second day returned to the activities in the XO and how they reflect the ideas of Piaget and Vygotsky. In fact, it is the first I have heard of the connection between Piaget and Vygotsky and the XO. Which of their publications are most relevant? Who knows about any of this? The Constructionism page in the Wiki is feeble. OLE Nepal has developed a completely open-source set of learning activities for both grades. Mahabir Pun, OLE Nepal's Director of Networking has set up Internet access for both schools. Excellent. We regularly update our blog with more details http://blog.olenepal.org/ Bryan Berry Systems Engineer, OLE Nepal ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Choosing defaults for the activity ring
The new Home design contains a ring of a child's favorite activities. It's a shocking experience to find oneself at a home screen with no activities at all in the ring, and ensuring that some proper subset of all the activities available are shown in the ring by default will aid in discoverability of the favorites system. For this reason, we need to institute a policy for declaring activities as favorites by default, which will, in general, occur through the installation of activity packs such that countries can choose their own set of favorites in addition to choosing their larger set of installed activities. That is, activity packs will contain a file which indicates which of the activities they contain are to be favorited by default. Hopefully what I've stated thus far is not controversial. There's on key question regarding the method of application we use when installing a new activity pack. Note that this only becomes a question after the user has interacted with their laptop, and has chosen to add (and more importantly remove) favorites from their ring. The two options are: 1. Set the USER_FAVORITES file to a boolean OR or of USER_FAVORITES and PACK_FAVORITES. In other words, retain the users favorites, and *add* any favorites that the pack specifies to them, and therefore to their ring. Once a pack is installed, we can completely forget about the PACK_FAVORITES file. 2. Store the USER_FAVORITES as a diff from a stored copy of the OLD_PACK_FAVORITES file. This allows us to know what files the user has added and removed since the last pack was installed. We then create an updated USER_FAVORITES by applying the diff to the NEW_PACK_FAVORITES file. This means that we add new favorites to the USER_FAVORITES, and hence the child's ring, but *only* if the child has not previously declared it to be a non-favorite. Option (2) is somewhat more complex, but ensures that the user doesn't have to repeatedly un-favorite activities which they don't want in their ring. Option (1) is rather simple, but allows the activity pack to enforce that all of its default favorites appear in the users ring, even if the user has previously stated (via un-favoriting) that they don't like it. This, from the perspective of the countries/schools, may actually be a benefit, as it could allow them to ensure that, at a minimum, a particular set of activities appears in every child's ring at the beginning of a given semester, year, etc. We'd like some feedback on which perspective is the most rational so we can implement the solution as soon as possible to prevent the empty ring phenomenon. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Olpc-open] Games for XOs in Nepal
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Rena Brar Prayaga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Bryan, Here are some of the games that I used with 8-12 year olds at a GlobalThink summer camp last year. They tend to focus on global issues (ecology, peace, etc.), and may be less action oriented, but the kids seemed to enjoy them. Perfect. We need more like this. I hope someone will take these on to create XO activities. Peacemaker http://www.peacemakergame.com/ Food Force (UN World Food Programme) http://www.food-force.com/ Water Alert (created for UNICEF) http://www.unicef.org/voy/wes/ Ayiti: The Cost of Life (Global Kids) http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html Climate Challenge (BBC) http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/ Good luck and hope this is what you had in mind.. Rena Brar Prayaga ___ Olpc-open mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Javascript not working right on Web activity
Hi everyone! We're having problems here in Uruguay with Web activity. Kids can't upload images to their blogs at www.blogger.com or send mails using their accounts at www.adinet.com.uy. Both sites (and plenty more) use javascript for its user interface, but last versions of Web activity won't show some buttons on those sites. We know that previous versions don't have such issues, so we need to fix that ASAP. Who shall I contact to help us with this problem? Or if anyone knows how to solve it quicly, please let us know! Thanks! Emiliano Pastorino Plan Ceibal ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Olpc-open] Games for XOs in Nepal
there is an ongoing FoodForce project for the XO already!! Please jump in to help. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Food_Force -walter On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:44 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Rena Brar Prayaga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Bryan, Here are some of the games that I used with 8-12 year olds at a GlobalThink summer camp last year. They tend to focus on global issues (ecology, peace, etc.), and may be less action oriented, but the kids seemed to enjoy them. Perfect. We need more like this. I hope someone will take these on to create XO activities. Peacemaker http://www.peacemakergame.com/ Food Force (UN World Food Programme) http://www.food-force.com/ Water Alert (created for UNICEF) http://www.unicef.org/voy/wes/ Ayiti: The Cost of Life (Global Kids) http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html Climate Challenge (BBC) http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/ Good luck and hope this is what you had in mind.. Rena Brar Prayaga ___ Olpc-open mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Walter Bender One Laptop per Child http://laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Javascript not working right on Web activity
what build? what version of Web? -walter 2008/4/4 Emiliano Pastorino [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi everyone! We're having problems here in Uruguay with Web activity. Kids can't upload images to their blogs at www.blogger.com or send mails using their accounts at www.adinet.com.uy. Both sites (and plenty more) use javascript for its user interface, but last versions of Web activity won't show some buttons on those sites. We know that previous versions don't have such issues, so we need to fix that ASAP. Who shall I contact to help us with this problem? Or if anyone knows how to solve it quicly, please let us know! Thanks! Emiliano Pastorino Plan Ceibal ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Walter Bender One Laptop per Child http://laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Choosing defaults for the activity ring
Hi Eben, On 4 Apr 2008, at 17:46, Eben Eliason wrote: We'd like some feedback on which perspective is the most rational so we can implement the solution as soon as possible to prevent the empty ring phenomenon. Another slightly different option for a 'fallback' mode – for when no favourites have been set – could be simply to default the home view to the list mode when no favourite activities are set. It would also be good if the 'favourites activities appear in ring mode' concept were a little more visually discoverable. I guess either the ring view frog's egg icon could be more favourite icon like (perhaps circle with are small star inside?). Or the frog's egg ring view icon could be used instead of the favourite star icon used in list view (make 'add to ring' the explicit function). Also a few quick misc. observations: - The ring of activities appears vertically unbalanced with the XO + activity icon. Lot's of white space above the XO, cramped space below. Potential improvement would be to move the XO and activity icon up by 50% height of the below activity icon. Would likely need a similar small upward shift to the other two zoom mode XO icons so they align when switching zoom views. - I vote for making the ring activity icons much larger when they are few in number. Start with them really rather large (and with a larger starting radius circle layout). Icons scale down as number increases, as you have already. Might as well use that screen space, and make the click targets as large as is within reason, given all the feedback about twitchy track pads and lack of fine motor control for young kids. - When in Neighbourhood, Group, or Home view, the new frame activity icon for the current activity is no longer clickable (you can't click it to switch back from a zoom view). Feels like a bug or omission rather than intention, though this does make the Activity zoom level frame icon feel almost redundant now. Just thinking out loud, it is really nice to see the Sugar UI moving onwards! Gary ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New Activity Proposal -- Your voice on XO
Hi Everyone, I just created a page on the OLPC wiki detailing my activity proposal--Your voice on XO http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Your_Voice_on_XO. I hope to develop this activity via GSoC 2008. A brief abstract of my proposal follows. This is a proposal for the creation of a new activity for the XO that would advance localization efforts in TTS development, as well as promote the involvement of the local community overall. Your voice on XO would consist of a long-term, community-based project to build and/or further development of a synthetic voice for the language used locally (for more on synthetic-voice building, see http://www.festvox.org/bsv/p710.html, and http://espeak.sourceforge.net/add_language.html). This activity would entail integrating the voice-building capabilities of eSpeak http://espeak.sourceforge.net/, or perhaps Festivalhttp://festvox.org/festival/, into Sugar on the XO, as well as working to facilitate synthetic-voice building in a classroom, or community setting (for an overall view of how the voice building process might proceed, see http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/emasters/summer_school_2005/tutorial3/tutorial.html ). Your feedback and comments are much appreciated! Best, Alex Escalona (vergueishon on OLPC wiki, IRC) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO experience in the classroom - Carol Lerche's daughter
Hello everyone, My name is Robin Lerche, and I am a kindergarten teacher at a charter school in the South Bronx (I'm using my mom's e-mail to be able to write to this list). This is my first year as a head teacher, so I am still getting a feel for things, but as of right now, things are going very well. My mom, Carol, bought four XOs to have in my class as a center, and for the past week she has been in my class teaching my kids how to use them. I thought I would write about how it went. Let me just give a little rundown of the kids in my class: There are 20 5- and 6-year olds, but I think their experience could easily be applied to a 1st grade class as well, since all of them except two are reading on at least a first grade level, and most of them have very good handwriting, so good fine motor skills. First of all, let me say that they certainly are durable! Of course, Karissa, while trying to take a picture of my reading group, dropped it on the floor, and it was quite fine afterwards. She's not very tall, but still :-) They were all very intrigued by the rabbit ears and the little people on the back, and several of them incorporated the logo into their pictures during writing time, which was cute. They really liked the computers. They were so excited when they went to use them, they couldn't wait until they started up to start pressing all the buttons. Each group had four kids at a time, and my mom was constantly supervising them so if they had any problems, she could troubleshoot. Which happened quite a lot, as they are very impatient. Their main problem was that they didn't want to wait for the programs to come up; when it didn't pop up immediately, they would click on something else to try it, which of course made it start even slower, and so they got very frustrated and my mom had to close out everything before they would be able to try again. They loved taking pictures of everything, but some of them had trouble getting the mouse to sit well enough on the little button to take the picture, especially when they were trying to do it semi-upside down so that the subject of the picture was looking at the screen and the taker was not (it would be great if the picture was taken no matter where on the screen you clicked). However, they all got very into the chat feature, though there was really only one group that was patient enough to learn the orientation of the keyboard in order to write messages. The other ones just got excited when they made something come up on the other screen, and pretending to type really fast (one of my kids kept saying, Oh look, I got e-mail!). A few of them figured out how to do the puzzle, and they liked messing around with Paint for a few minutes, but their fine motor skills weren't good enough to get anything recognizable out of it, and they were especially frustrated with the difficulty of switching colors. They really liked Tux because of the sounds and the stamps; unfortunately, my mom said it didn't work on the new release. But ultimately, even that didn't hold their interest for that long, because they couldn't really draw pictures. They loved the memory game and the cartoon builder, but there weren't enough pre-built images for them to explore for long. Some of them understood pretty well how to open the computers and get them started, but less of them understood that they needed to close out their applications and shut them down before they closed them. I could see that this could be a big classroom management issue unless they were either completely independent on the computers, or like me, the teacher had a full-time person in the room whose job it was to troubleshoot. Sadly, since I don't have the luxury of having such a full-time person in the classroom (my mom does have to go home), I will not be continuing to use these in my classroom, at least not this year. I don't think that at this age, it would be a useful tool to have the whole class on at the same time, since they need really concrete, hands-on methods to figure things out, rather than more abstract things on the computer. I do think this could be a great way to reteach concepts to a small group, especially with math concepts like patterning if there was a program for this sort of thing. My mom also says that a lot of the issues I experienced in class are probably going to get better with new releases, so maybe next year we can try again! I wish I had a full time person in the room to handle them because they really did have fun and they will be sad to see them go. Sincerely, Robin On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 1:40 AM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I imagine it would be interesting to the devel and sugar lists to hear a summary of your observations in the kindergarten classroom as well. -walter 2008/4/2 Carol Lerche [EMAIL PROTECTED]: For the hangers-on such as myself, it wouldn't be necessary to have a video record if that's too difficult...an audio recording plus slideware might
Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC Networking] RSSI value questions
A guiding design principle for any XO activity is that it be designed to work without a school server. Learning doesn't stop at the school gate! The only thing special about an XS (or any access point) is that we can know (absolutely) where it is. Whatever system is designed should allow arbitrary peers to declare that they know where they are (and should handle the fact that some of them either lie or have a very hazy idea of where they are...) Perhaps an XS Active Antenna or Access Point is simply an example of a certifiably trusted position beacon. I still prefer the idea of using audio, a la Acoustic Measure by Ben or a three-D, multiple device version: http://web.media.mit.edu/~vmb/papers/AES05.pdf (longer version at http://web.media.mit.edu/~vmb/papers/DaltonMS.pdf) Research into less intrusive methods (using ambient noise, or sounds generated by the systems while doing other tasks, as the basis for obtaining the location information) is needed. Cheers, wad On Apr 4, 2008, at 4:39 AM, Oliver Mattos wrote: why exactly is an XS needed at all - what about just a mesh of laptops with no XS. I agree then there are NO refrence points at all, so orientation and world-position of the generated map can't be determined, but the rest of the info still remains useful. The XS is simply another node - there is no reason it should be required. In terms of an algorithm for calculating positions from a series of metrics with no known points, the best I can think of is successive approximation. Basicly, place all the nodes randomly on a map, attach virtual springs between nodes that have connectivity, where the springs ideal length is determined by the signal strength/ other metric, and springgyness is determined by the metrics margin of error, and then do a physics simulation of where they all end up when released. Using that algorithm, multiple types of metric can be used to generate the same map. After generating the map once, future generations would require many fewer iterations of the physics simulation, therefore less processing time even for big meshes, so it would probably be possible to update the map in real time as new results come in. There are quite a few optimisations for the above, for example replusion springs with a negative force could be used for nodes that are currently close together on the map but have no connectivity. - that would provide much more accurate mapping in sparse meshes where some laptops have 2 or fewer neighbors. On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 7:06 AM, Ryan Crawford Comeaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just to address a few other issues/questions raised... If there is only one antenna on a server, then as long as 3 other nodes are considered relatively stationary, I think their 2D locations can be deduced from each node's measurements of the other 4. An easy to use interface can allow the user to orient the generated map with respect to whatever reference point they like; ideally, the final program would allow for a floor plan of the building to be displayed underneath the topological mapping. With respect to granularity of different measurements, I think inaccurate measurements can be averaged over time, since some would necessarily be more accurate than others, allowing for a more accurate map as time passes. Ben stated that the dynamic gain isn't available in user space. I'm just wondering if there's a way to passively determine the gain and if this would even be helpful in determining location. Any ideas? I'm not so experienced in RF tech that I can come up with how knowing the gain would be useful, but if it is useful, then I think it'd be easy enough to figure out some sort of indicator that's relative to the fluctuations in whatever measurements the gain affects. Again, let me know if I'm that kid out in left field wearing his glove on his head and facing away from the bases... I feel pretty optimistic about the feasibility of this kind of project. There seem to be a few good measurement techniques to go by, as well different methods to compute the data. If the XOs pitch in and tell the server where they think other nodes and themselves are, relative to each other, that would provide another set of input to include when averaging out measurements. For those of you that would like some light reading on the topic of modeling this information and computing it, here are a couple of papers that attempt to do similar things with GSM signals and neural networks: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/9603/30336/01394788.pdf? isnumber=30336prod=CNFarnumber=1394788arSt=+133ared= +136arAuthor=Debono%2C+C.J.%3B+Buhagiar%2C+J.K. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4222741/4222742/04222782.pdf? arnumber=4222782 - Crawford ___ Networking mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Activity Proposal -- Your voice on XO
This is an awesome idea. A couple of people have contacted me to ask how to add new voices to Speak. It would be great to make this process easier. Have you actually tried the existing process for adding a voice? -josh On Apr 4, 2008, at 5:58 PM, Alex Escalona wrote: Hi Everyone, I just created a page on the OLPC wiki detailing my activity proposal--Your voice on XO. I hope to develop this activity via GSoC 2008. A brief abstract of my proposal follows. This is a proposal for the creation of a new activity for the XO that would advance localization efforts in TTS development, as well as promote the involvement of the local community overall. Your voice on XO would consist of a long-term, community-based project to build and/or further development of a synthetic voice for the language used locally (for more on synthetic-voice building, see http://www.festvox.org/bsv/p710.html , and http://espeak.sourceforge.net/add_language.html). This activity would entail integrating the voice-building capabilities of eSpeak, or perhaps Festival, into Sugar on the XO, as well as working to facilitate synthetic-voice building in a classroom, or community setting (for an overall view of how the voice building process might proceed, see http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/emasters/summer_school_2005/tutorial3/tutorial.html) . Your feedback and comments are much appreciated! Best, Alex Escalona (vergueishon on OLPC wiki, IRC) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XO experience in the classroom - Carol Lerche's daughter
On 5 Apr 2008, at 03:18, Carol Lerche wrote: They were so excited when they went to use them, they couldn't wait until they started up to start pressing all the buttons. Each group had four kids at a time, and my mom was constantly supervising them so if they had any problems, she could troubleshoot. Which happened quite a lot, as they are very impatient. Their main problem was that they didn't want to wait for the programs to come up; when it didn't pop up immediately, they would click on something else to try it, which of course made it start even slower, and so they got very frustrated and my mom had to close out everything before they would be able to try again. Thanks for taking the time to write this up Robin – I've heard very little front line feedback like this so far so it's great to read. So... a suggestion to improve the new Sugar UI launching behaviour: When an activity is launched, immediately take over the full display with 'fake' activity placeholder, while the real activity is launched. The display would be a plain white (or black maybe), with a large, pulsing icon for the activity in its centre (large XO icon size as you're now at a close-up activity zoom level). No other buttons immediately visible to click, though the frame would continue to be accessible if a user really needed to switch away and do something else. If we do get to have an efficient compositor at some point, sugar could do a lovely icon zoom transition, from where ever it had been launched from, to the large centred display, and fade out the rest of the display content. Think that extra eye candy can wait a while for now though ;-) Regards, Gary ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC Networking] RSSI value questions
On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, John Watlington wrote: A guiding design principle for any XO activity is that it be designed to work without a school server. Learning doesn't stop at the school gate! The only thing special about an XS (or any access point) is that we can know (absolutely) where it is. Whatever system is designed should allow arbitrary peers to declare that they know where they are (and should handle the fact that some of them either lie or have a very hazy idea of where they are...) Perhaps an XS Active Antenna or Access Point is simply an example of a certifiably trusted position beacon. I still prefer the idea of using audio, a la Acoustic Measure by Ben or a three-D, multiple device version: http://web.media.mit.edu/~vmb/papers/AES05.pdf (longer version at http://web.media.mit.edu/~vmb/papers/DaltonMS.pdf) Research into less intrusive methods (using ambient noise, or sounds generated by the systems while doing other tasks, as the basis for obtaining the location information) is needed. you could take three laptops and have them do acoustic measures from each other and then work out from that. I don't think it's worth trying to deal with system lieing about their location (at least not for the first cut) one thing to keep in mind is that each measurement has an error band accociated with it, so as you get secondary positions and work out from there the locations become less precise. one question about the XO hardware. are the two antennas directly connected inside the machine, or is there some way (possibly requiring a firmware modification) to find the difference between a given signal between the two antennas? David Lang Cheers, wad On Apr 4, 2008, at 4:39 AM, Oliver Mattos wrote: why exactly is an XS needed at all - what about just a mesh of laptops with no XS. I agree then there are NO refrence points at all, so orientation and world-position of the generated map can't be determined, but the rest of the info still remains useful. The XS is simply another node - there is no reason it should be required. In terms of an algorithm for calculating positions from a series of metrics with no known points, the best I can think of is successive approximation. Basicly, place all the nodes randomly on a map, attach virtual springs between nodes that have connectivity, where the springs ideal length is determined by the signal strength/other metric, and springgyness is determined by the metrics margin of error, and then do a physics simulation of where they all end up when released. Using that algorithm, multiple types of metric can be used to generate the same map. After generating the map once, future generations would require many fewer iterations of the physics simulation, therefore less processing time even for big meshes, so it would probably be possible to update the map in real time as new results come in. There are quite a few optimisations for the above, for example replusion springs with a negative force could be used for nodes that are currently close together on the map but have no connectivity. - that would provide much more accurate mapping in sparse meshes where some laptops have 2 or fewer neighbors. On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 7:06 AM, Ryan Crawford Comeaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just to address a few other issues/questions raised... If there is only one antenna on a server, then as long as 3 other nodes are considered relatively stationary, I think their 2D locations can be deduced from each node's measurements of the other 4. An easy to use interface can allow the user to orient the generated map with respect to whatever reference point they like; ideally, the final program would allow for a floor plan of the building to be displayed underneath the topological mapping. With respect to granularity of different measurements, I think inaccurate measurements can be averaged over time, since some would necessarily be more accurate than others, allowing for a more accurate map as time passes. Ben stated that the dynamic gain isn't available in user space. I'm just wondering if there's a way to passively determine the gain and if this would even be helpful in determining location. Any ideas? I'm not so experienced in RF tech that I can come up with how knowing the gain would be useful, but if it is useful, then I think it'd be easy enough to figure out some sort of indicator that's relative to the fluctuations in whatever measurements the gain affects. Again, let me know if I'm that kid out in left field wearing his glove on his head and facing away from the bases... I feel pretty optimistic about the feasibility of this kind of project. There seem to be a few good measurement techniques to go by, as well different methods to compute the data. If the XOs pitch in and tell the server where they think other nodes and themselves are, relative to each
Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC Networking] RSSI value questions
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:18 PM, John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...I still prefer the idea of using audio... The effective acoustic range is probably similar to the line of sight for XO users. Far more interesting, in my opinion, would be locating other users in radio or network ranges that are not apparent from looking around the room. I wouldn't want to continually burden communications or continually expend too much of my energy store to achieve this feature. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
