RE: thread summary: On Cerebro, Telepathy, yokes and whites
Hi Kim, Thanks for the comments and links. FYI I didn't make any representation about what is supported or what should work now or in the future. I just asked what they want to do. Wad did get the Latu people on the list and they have started participating, somewhat. We need to keep working the proper support channels and using them to improve the communication of what will work. I'll focus on that. In the mean time, I hope to maintain a good relationship with the teachers to help uncover more desired use cases, without interfering in the support process. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kim Quirk Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 10:51 AM To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; joe Subject: Re: thread summary: On Cerebro, Telepathy, yokes and whites Greg, I am adding the 'testing' mailing list. We can use this 'real life' information for generating Use Cases and test cases but we will probably need to simplify it. There are too many things going on in this particular case. We have some use cases for school scenarios in some of these links: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tests/Connectivity_and_Collaboration - use cases in classroom http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Networking_scenarios - major types of scenarios http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Collaboration_Network_Testbed - 100 laptop testbed As well as generating use cases, this 'real life' scenario tells us that we have not conveyed what SHOULD work properly to people on the ground - as what they are trying to do is not even possible in today's builds. We've known that communications is a problem, but it emphasizes that we need to figure out some solutions... and telling this particular teacher, for instance, that what they are trying to do won't work, is not the right answer. Also, from a support perspective, it is really important when we get feedback or help requests directly from teachers in country that we try to get them in touch with their local support people - or we try to include the local tech support people. As Wad as identified in the past, if we try to help people where we really don't understand the local constraints or the RF layout we are more likely to make things worse than to actually provide help. With large country deployments, the first level of help needs to come from in house support. Thanks for bringing this up, Greg. It emphasizes a lot of things we need to address. Kim On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 8:49 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Poly et al, Thanks for the summary and documentation. After the last round on this subject http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/thread.html#13898 I exchanged some e-mails with a teacher in Uruguay to get a better sense of exactly how they want to use the XO in class to collaborate. See: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/2008-May/000118.html Here is the use case I got out of that exchange: - The class has 10 - 25 kids in the second grade each with an XO. There are 100 - 200 Xos in the school. Each class can join a different channel and time share (TDM :-)to keep the number of Xos per channel to a minimum. - One class (10 - 25) connects its Xos to the mesh (they do it by clicking the round mesh icon but they will do whatever works) - There is a wireless access point in the school and they see several other wireless Aps so there is some RF background. - One kid opens write (also want to use paint) sets it to share and starts writing. - In the neighborhood view the other students see the write icon and join the activity by clicking on it. - All the children start to write text and add pictures at more or less the same time - Each kid wants to save the file in their own journal at any time (this is where it crashed when they tried it with write) - After saving to the journal they want to see the shared document again. Its OK to require them to leave the share to open their own local copy as long as it doesn't crash if they do it out of order (what is supposed to happen if you are sharing a document then open a new one too?) Is that a well defined use case that you can turn in to an end to end test case? If not, what additional information or details do you need? My impression is that the teachers don't really care about the technology as long as they can do what is described above. I don't know exactly what software they have on their school servers (e.g. not sure about jabber). If we can tell them what software, configuration and steps they need to take in order to run a class as described that would be a very good start. I understand there is a write bug which is probably responsible for their issue. You can substitute paint or another activity if it helps isolate the collaboration aspects from the activity aspects. This can be something we test for a future release if its not something
[Server-devel] EDuBlog XS Beta/Development Server
Hi Tony, I think we should finalize the Fedora + XS server and get it shipped to Glen by the end of next week. My list of SW is: PostGreSQL Moodle XS Apache 2.0 PHP Networking should be setup to plug and play at Glen's hosting site. If we can get an image on CD too that let us boot and install it back to default config (preferably without overwriting new stuff but not critical) that would be helpful too. Tarun, Marcel et al, Let me know if there is any other SW needed. Can you also fill in the version numbers and let's document this server HW and SW here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Educational_Blogger_Project#Beta_Server_Hardwa re_and_Software_Details Debian is a stretch goal. I want to make sure we get it to the hosting site in time to have a full week of config/debug before you go back on the road (June 30?). If we have enough info and can make it dual boot to Debian that's the stretch goal, but must hit the install in PA date of June 23. I don't think we need to share data between the two distros so it can be a completely different image/partition for Debian. Marcel will be lead sys admin so he will need user/pass access. Tarun needs SU access too and I could us a login. Please don't send any passwords on this list. I'll open a separate thread with Glen to work out the logistics. I hope that's doable. Let me know if you have any questions, concerns or need more info. I wonder if we need a terminal server? I hope we can run it without that but if its needed and Glen will host it, I can look for one (probably need to buy it :-(. Lastly, we need to pick a domain name. Root name is one of these: totaluruguay.com, venango.org or olpcuruguay.com. We can pick a third level name. Yama, Can you pick a good name that will resonate with kids in Uruguay? Also, does EduBlog sound good in Spanish and can kids say it easily? We can call it the code name but once you use a name it sticks so if needed, we should change it now and only once. BTW please use [EMAIL PROTECTED] for me as of Wed. June 18th. I'll subscribe that to the list so you can reach via server-devel too. Thanks, Greg Smith ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] EduBlog v0.1 Available for Comment!
Hi Tarun, Which blog do you mean on this? The blog link takes the kid to the sitewide standard Moodle blog page. I don't want to over design this. I think it needs more user testing but here are the options I can see. If there's one blog (call it frog blog) then it should be trivial: Enter text, click post on link that says: post to frog blog or send frog blog post to teacher. If there are two blogs one internal and on external also trivial: Enter text, click post to frog blog internal or post to frog blog external plus teacher or no teacher as configured. If there are many blogs (frog blog, class blog and student blog) it could be: - Radio button, drop down or multiple links to choose right blog and the same links as above. In all cases it there should be a link next to the blog name to see the current blog. Make sure that if they start typing then click that link then click back they don't lose their text! One challenge is that after you post, if you made a mistake you can't easily take it down. Do the APIs have an option to delete? E.g. see: http://cardal-ceibal.blogspot.com/ where he accidentally posted then had to re-post. Those are my thoughts but let's get it working in a primitive way and then get feedback. We can have an option for many blogs then recommend that the teacher only enable one or two at a time so its up to them. Let's nail the 1 or 2 blog case and just be ready to add many more if needed. Also, I don't think the teacher should have to configure a customized student page for each kid. Better if they set it once and then their whole class sees the same thing. However, that makes it hard to have a blog for each kid... Maybe same config for all with option to show 1 or 2 kid specific blogs and you just set that option for all (stretch goal for sure :-) Lastly, after post it would be nice to redirect to the blog site to see your post. If there is latency that may not be easy. If the API can come back and say posted then you redirect or then you show a link that may be better. HTHs. Not sure about Moodle home blog page but if that's the way Moodle does it and no kids or teachers complain its OK with me. Let me get the hosted XS online ASAP so we can see that and try it out. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Tarun Pondicherry [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 10:46 AM To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: [Server-devel] EduBlog v0.1 Available for Comment! Hi Greg, Here's my thinking. An admin (probably a teacher) sets up a bunch of blogs on blogger.com and in moodle. Makes sense, will have that mock up done in the next couple days. Martin may have some ideas on this, but this is what I am thinking for now. The blog link takes the kid to the sitewide standard Moodle blog page. That page at the bottom will have all the where to post options. This can post to ou blog if there are course specific blogs with ou blog or to Blogger.com. What do you think? Also, the confusion I have with blog specific info is that we don't know where the kid wants to post until after they select it in the client side GUI. How do we determine that? Thanks, Tarun ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] EduBlog Revised Project Plan (Tarun Pondicherry)
Hi All, Thanks for the comments and great progress! I'll try to respond to all open items in one pass. - On group edit. Thanks to Alex for the link and sanity check on collaboration support in Browse. I think we should let it go for this first implementation. When Browse does collaborate at OS/sugar level we can just use that. Here is one fall back idea. Assume one editor at a time. Add an additional post status of available for edit. Add a link to the available for edit to all students default blog post page. Clicking an available to edit link goes to the edit page for the post. Then you can tweak it and re-submit. This would only be available for posts not sent to a blog yet. Teacher page can take a submitted post and flag it to allow that serial editing. Let me know if that makes sense and how hard it is. If its possible we can run it by some teachers. Best case, we call it a stretch goal. - On full featured formatting and options vs. simple. Power user access is done by just going to the blog and doing it there. We should start super-simple and see what else people want. Super simple to me is: enter text, add image and post. If Tarun wants to include more formatting and make it hidden for default that's OK, but simple, clean and elegant is the primary goal. - On auth. User name entered once then cookie sounds good. Zero auth (aka no user or pass) is even better but enter once should be fine for now. That's my take but I'll try to get more feedback too. We need to discuss security, especially if its hosted on the Internet. Within a school I think we could say that EduBlog URLs are only accessible from LAN. If EduBlog is over the Internet, how do we prevent other people from using it? My goal is that it be as secure as the blog being posted to. E.g. blogger.com. How do we get that level of protection with user name and cookie only? Also, how do we prevent sniffing of passwords between XO and EduBlog? - On Debian and Uruguay XS config. We got a first pass of info from Latu. They have MySQL right now :-( I have to talk to Pablo some more and see if they will install Moodle + PostGreSQL once we can prove demand for this app. In any case, first pass is Fedora + Moodle + XS build served via Internet. I'd like to hear more comments on how we get to zero touch Moodle install for EduBlog. The teachers in Peru are actively discussing how to install and use Moodle. See: http://www.innovavirtual.org/moodleperu/mod/forum/view.php?id=1088 Bottom line for me is to see an update on Yuri's Lora by the end of August :-) http://cardal-ceibal.blogspot.com/2007/10/prueba-de-segundo-ao_8330.html We're on the right track, thanks for all the great work. Thanks, Greg S ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Problems installing XS on new system for
Hi All, We have a disconnect about the target OS! Its my fault for not having tighter synch with tech leads in Uruguay. Sorry. I'm forking a private thread and I'll get it ironed out ASAP. Please hold the XS bring up until I can nail down the correct target XS. If Uruguay is on a non-standard OS we may have to build this app for more than one flavor of Linux :-( The fundamental web app design is still applicable so we can continue with the design of that. I'm just glad we caught it early. I'll come back as soon as I get it squared away. Thanks, Greg S *** Edublog != Ceibal. If this was Ceibal, I suspect you'd be installing Debian ;-) cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Edublog notes (was: Re: The road towards xs-0.3 - update)
Hi Martin, You're right we are closer than I thought on first read. Thanks for the added comments. I want to minimize the scope but I see feature creep coming so we better plan for it in advance. Here are some comments on these: - understand a simple level of identity roles (provided by XS facilities, as we've discussed) GS - Agreed. - let users blog, tag, etc - let users mark entries as draft/public/etc - show user's blogs locally GS - On these three: I want the blog hosted elsewhere. There will only be two states for a blog post: draft (AKA stored local or maybe on XS) and Posted (AKA done and sent to blog or sent to teacher for approval). Maybe that's three, Draft, Posted, and Pending approval. Once Posted all posts will only available on the hosted blog. Perhaps a list of URLs to previous posts can be stored for the user but the actual blog posts themselves are only saved at blog hosted site. - allow teachers to approve something for publication GS - Definitely a core requirement. - push queued entries to a remote blog GS - Good point about queuing. We need the right algorithm for retries if connectivity is intermittent. On these: 1 - the school is super-connected to the internet, and everybody publishes _directly_. In that case, we don't need the software - let's just use blogger.com GS - We still need the EduBlog SW in this case. The kids can't easily use blogger.com as it stands now. Problems reported are: User/pass, too many steps to post, can't find URL and no teacher approval/edit. All flagged as critical problems by the user. Good BW and target blogger.com is the use case which first initiated the project. 2 - the school has spotty or no connectivity, and perhaps you want to run a local school blog, not visible for all the world to see. _Some_ entries are tagged public to the world and those get pushed to blogger.com/drupal/moodle GS - This is the secondary use case but clearly a critical need. The intention is to treat it exactly the same as the first but with the target blog being local to XS or LAN. Great comments, thanks! I want to find a minimum achievable set of features that still meets a critical need. Like all successful SW it will live long beyond my time on it so now is the time to architect it for extensibility. I see we need a really good DB data design. I'm not sure that the current team has that experience. If anyone out there wants to help with that let me know ASAP. The replication/queuing posts problem will be a tough one too. Is there any core XS work planned to handle queuing HTTP or other traffic aimed at the WAN? I'd like to pass the buck on that :-) but if nothing is planned we can try something basic like try three times then wait an hour and repeat. I hope we come out of this project with a recipe and key decision points for build any XS hosted Web App... Thanks, Greg S ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Edublog notes
Hi Yama and Wad, Give us a blog hosting app. and an API. EduBlog adds a one click HTML front end with an option for teachers to approve posts. The blog can be hosted anywhere routable from XS (e.g. on XS itself), no internet needed. That's the idea, we'll see how it turns out :-) I'll leave it to others to comment on what blog hosting tools are planned for XS. I believe Moodle has or will have a blog tool and if Moodle is in default XS build that's an obvious choice. Drupal is another option. Ceibal jam people investigated this and client side ideas a little. See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ceibal_Jam/Blogs My suggestion is to use Moodle, let teachers and sys admins set it up. Then use EduBlog to allow kids to post. If kids are comfortable posting right to Moodle Blog UI then you don't even need EduBlog. HTHs. BTW I need more people to test out the EduBlog GUI during Beta test, target late July. You're going to need internet and preferably an XO for the Beta. I need a teacher, a kid and an admin so let me know if you have any contacts who are interested. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Yama Ploskonka [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 10:23 AM To: John Watlington Cc: Greg Smith (gregmsmi); [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Edublog notes I second this request for off-internet solutions. I am currently cooperating with a Bolivian Ministry of Education project for community/school centers which depends largely on blogging and such tools, so I am following this thread closely for concepts / ideas / solutions that would be obsessively user friendly. It would be just the best of both worlds if the same tool were used for XOs when we do get a deployment there! Yama John Watlington wrote: What do we provide for the schools which don't have internet access right now ? Should the XS contain some blog hosting software which can actually host the pages created by this tool ?(Pardon my ignorance of whether Moodle already contains such.) wad On Jun 3, 2008, at 9:27 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) wrote: Hi Martin, On the sanity check, that's not it :-( It my fault for not explaining it better! I really hope Tarun, Marcel and Pablo are more in synch... It will be more clear once we get some draft/static HTML pages in place. I'll take some HTML editing help if anyone thinks they can mock up 3 static HTML Pages based on the text here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Blog_Educativo_Plan_del_Proyecto Here's another earlier write up which includes a network diagram which may help explain the parts. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Educational_Blogger_Project We do not plan to code, host, share or serve any blogs! All we will build is a simple front end that let's users create a blog post and click once to have it appear on a Moodle Blog, Blogger.com, Drupal etc. Kids enter content, clicks post and that's it. The back end SW running on the XS takes that post and puts it on the blog e.g. http://centenarioescuela38sg.blogspot.com/ The SW we will build on the XS may include Apache + PHP + DB for HTML towards client and probably XML + RPC or SOAP towards blog API. There will be three main web pages and we will build no client code on the XO at all, just support Browse! I need it to be simple so we can build in 7 weeks. Three web pages towards the client then APIs towards supported blog systems on XS. That's everything. Let me know if that explains it better or its still not clear. I'll think about the database comments too. Let me see what fields and tables Tarun thinks he needs and I'd like to get his input. Tarun and Marcel, let me know ASAP if the description above is not clear. I think we are in synch but it never hurts to re-ack (there's a reason why TCP is a triple handshake :-). BTW better book mark those two links. The main Uruguay page just got a major re-edit and those links are now very hard to find. Other than that the new page is packed with info and links thanks to Pablo! http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Uruguay Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 02, 2008 5:38 PM To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Edublog notes (was: Re: The road towards xs-0.3 - update) On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 7:09 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sanity check on our high level concept. The core idea of this software is to present an easy to use interface so kids can post to blogs. Enter text, click post you are done. Yes, and that's fantastic. But if I understand it right, we are talking about 3 stages: 1 - Blogging tool on the XO - Something like Drivel, lets the user blog on the XO even while disconnected. New articles and edits get placed in a queue and pushed out when we see the XS. This needs Sugar integration work so it's a candidate for a write-from-scratch effort
Re: [Server-devel] Edublog notes (was: Re: The road towards xs-0.3 - update)
Hi Martin, Thanks a lot for the review. I copied your reply to the Uruguay edublog volunteer list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I will use that list to work with end users and for internal project tracking. That said, anyone can join. It's Spanish and English and occasionally I post in Spanglish :-) Tarun is traveling to India this week. Hopefully he or an engineer in Montevideo can reply in a few days and we will work out the technical details and server related software questions here. A few preliminary questions. 1 - I'm not clear on what you are saying here: DB - assume Postgres 8.x series, support mySQL Is it PostGres or MySQL? (btw we already brought up a box w/MySQL, so hopefully it will be easy to copy tables and queries over). 2 - Should we have our own table in a single DB that is shared by Moodle and all other apps or do need our own DB. I think the DB will be used for storing who posted what blog where, pending blogs and all that kid of persistent data. Tarun may have other comments on what he needs in the DB. We'll do no user auth or identity tracking until we know your high level plan. Fall back in case that's not cooked by August is cookies or worst case no identity and everyone looks the same. 3 - We will bring up another XS and will put it on the internet. This will be our primary pre-production server (e.g. we may use it for final beta test). Let me know if anyone has any concerns about that. Tony who worked on Nepal early on will image it and ship it to a co-lo and we'll manage it from there. Tony needs the recommended specs: HW - memory, capacity disk drives, USB ports, NICs, etc. SW - Moodle, Squid, etc. Anything beyond what you get with the XS image (e.g. do we need to install Apache and PHP). I'm not sure how we will track the F7 dependencies, but I hope the sys admins can think about that (still accepting more volunteers too ;-). Tony has notes from the first time, so he says its no problem to take Wad's (or Martin's now) latest build and go from there. The HW and SW specs answer may be RTFM so don't hesitate to send a link. I'm asking to get the latest thinking. I'll update the wiki as needed once I'm sure I have the right info. Also, does anyone have the HW specs of the XS boxes deployed in Uruguay? I'll ask elsewhere if no one on this list has it. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 11:04 PM To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Edublog notes (was: Re: The road towards xs-0.3 - update) On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 1:47 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the school server plan, keep us posted on identity scheme. I'm moving ahead with EduBlog project. One intern (Tarun) is on board and a probably a few volunteer programmers in Montevideo. I hope we can send much more details on the design proposal and get your comment and buy in soon. Current thinking (Spanish and English below) is at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Blog_Educativo_Plan_del_Proyecto Comments and questions welcome. Here's my notes Blogging proj review Good blueprint :-) My notes are complementary to what you have there. Most are general webapp XS-fication rules :-) we should polish a bit and move to a wikipage * Don't count on an admin UI. I am trying to minimise those - and no special admin UI is a goal here. Technical options must be automatically preset (perhaps with the country customisation of the XS), less technical options are under the control of teachers. * Users can just go to school (resolves to homepage of the XS - we should have that localised - escuela - too) and click on the blog link :-) * Keep track of dependencies - be conscious of whether F7 has the modules/libraries you need or they need to be packaged, and whether the current XS build has them. * Webserver - assume apache for the time being, but we may change this later. Not a big problem hopefully - * DB - assume Postgres 8.x series, support mySQL. This is what we have right now, performance is on par w mySQL and has an excellenttrack record where it comes to data preservation in the face of power loss and kernel panics. Bonus points if you can support Pg 8.3 (which changes some CAST semantics - ouch) * Languages: XS will have mod_php and mod_python, as well as libs to make both languages usable. If you can, stick to those. * Avoid daemons and heavy cronjobs - if you have cronjobs, make them check whether there's a job for them to do in the cheapest way possible. Blog sync notes: When you are working on the sync of blog entries, I would suggest to keep a queue of actions/blogs/comments that need to be sync'd from the XS to the external blog. Assuming the XS-to-internet connection is unreliable, high latency and low bandwidth, that queue can drive the proces with minimum traffic, and simple retry strategies. The remote end should make the retries safe because the XS could be retrying actions
Re: Frame Decision (was [sugar] OLPC priorities for Sugar in
Hi All, A few more comments: - I read the new design more carefully: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Frame I see how important the frame will become in the future! I left a bunch of questions and comments on the talk page. My time will be severely constrained so don't spend a lot of effort answering the questions unless you think they help you make a decision. - In build 656, everything in the frame is also on the keyboard or within the activity. Be 100% clear if that is going to change. E.g. can I do everything I need without the frame or do I need the frame? The answer to that gives a lot of direction about when and how the frame is available. - Unless someone says otherwise assume the cursor control wont get a lot better. Ask the lead on HW or mouse pad engineer if anything beyond severe bugs will get fixed. Then pick a variance in pixels between where user wants the cursor and where it will end up. Use that as working assumption for design. You're lucky to develop for a single, specific HW platform, take advantage of that. - I believe the new design implies some changes in the whole application centric vs. document centric vs. activity centric paradigms. Activity focus is interesting but make sure the activity development is in synch. The current data store - activity development challenge is an important lesson about what it takes to change the user paradigm. - Input from one user: My 8 year old son picked up the XO Saturday. I saw him playing cartoon builder (btw kudos to MaMa Media, great apps!). When the frame popped up I asked him what is that and do you want to keep it or should we get rid of it? He immediately said its where the options are and he said I like it. I should have asked him when does it come up and what does it do? :-( - Definitely must reduce the frame on/off time. Performance is a consistent complaint (e.g. see: http://sextosdela37.blogspot.com/2008/04/analizando-el-uso-de-las-laptop -en-el.html ). Sounds like Tomeu has a plan for that. If performance is the same as now or still slow on accidental frame flap, that's a deal breaker. - If the frame pops via a key stroke, people may not find it. The GUI will train the user, but if its not visible and no one tells you, people will miss a whole set of functionality. - Having lots of complex and confusing options is a pain. I hate to waste time reading and thinking about the endless MS check boxes that say do not show me this dialog box in the future. - If you aren't ready, give yourself more time. Pick a small pilot to try the new design. To buy time, figure out the pressure to release now (e.g. must fix bugs) then see if you can address only those and roll out the rest later. There's cost to forking but it may be worth it. As the carpenters say: measure twice, cut once. - That said, usability discussions never end and everyone has an opinion. Usability tests help but they aren't definitive. Get the input, add your design sense, warn the customers and then call it closed until the next round. - I need to learn more but as it stands I vote install default off, key stroke enable, GUI option to change default, great documentation, training and user outreach effort :-) HTHs. Thanks, Greg S ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Frame Decision (was [sugar] OLPC priorities for Sugar in the August release)
Hi Simon, Marco, Eben et al, I think the key decision is to default the frame on or off. In addition we should have a long term vision for the frame. For example, is it a short cut to find things or a first place to look for key features? The only key feature I have heard so far is copy and paste. Task switching is more commonly done with the function keys. What else is central to the frame concept? My main concern is that it pops up. When you don't have good cursor control that's a challenge. All activities have UI elements at the edge so you spend time trying to get the cursor on the keep button without popping the frame. Lastly, its a sudden, in your face thing that happens without you really knowing why. Setting a longer hover time or only opening on some edges helps but it makes the problem of discoverability worse (aka user wonders why did the computer do that?) If we default off you can still activate it via key stroke. That would be my preference. That way you get expansion of space without the mouse control issues. Initial research shows that there are FAQ entries for how to disable this. I also found these relevant threads in the forums saying they want it default off: http://en.forum.laptop.org/viewtopic.php?f=2t=154224p=546464hilit=fra me#p546464 http://en.forum.laptop.org/viewtopic.php?f=17t=154514p=547914hilit=fr ame#p547914 http://en.forum.laptop.org/viewtopic.php?f=2t=150573p=531274hilit=fra me#p525210 http://en.forum.laptop.org/viewtopic.php?f=3t=150343p=524796hilit=fra me#p524796 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=935.0 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=904.0 Several degenerate in to complaints about having to use the CLI :-). So enable/disable should be configurable via GUI but we should design with an assumption about the default install. We need more input from users (e.g. a small usability study would be great!). I think Nepal is on record to make it default off. Any other comments? BTW we brought up a new e-mail list for Spanish speakers in multiple countries: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur A dozen teachers have already commented saying they want to share experiences. Can someone who writes Spanish well can post a question there to get feedback from teachers re: frame experiences? I'll use a translation tool to do it myself if no one gets to it by the end of next week. I hope this is not seen as a negative criticism of your work. The UI is great overall. We can live with whatever frame solution is agreed and there is a solid case to be made on all sides. Let's get the maximum info to make an informed decision, then its your call :-) Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Simon Schampijer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:42 PM To: Marco Pesenti Gritti Cc: Greg Smith (gregmsmi); devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: [sugar] OLPC priorities for Sugar in the August release Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote: On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thinking about the hot corners pop-up frame thingy, Nepal asked that be deprecated and I agree based on my personal experience and that of my kids. The only thing I have heard people use it for is the copy and paste functionality. Waveplace lead mentioned that and its used in the Uruguay training presentation linked above. Simon is working on making this an option. We would still need to decide about the default obviously... Marco These sugar rpms include a control panel option to set a delay for the frame activation and an option to toggle the top of the screen to activate the frame. http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/cp/ You need to install sugar and sugar-toolkit (rpm -U [package] should work fine). I tested on joyride 1918. The control panel can be accessed with the palette on the XO in the home screen. Best, Simon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] OLPC priorities for Sugar in the August release
Hi Tomeu, Walter, et al, FYI Uruguay already posted some presentations and training based on the existing UI. See: http://www.ceibalflorida.blogspot.com/ posts from April. I'm not up to speed on proposed Sugar changes so it may have minimal impact. Thinking about the hot corners pop-up frame thingy, Nepal asked that be deprecated and I agree based on my personal experience and that of my kids. The only thing I have heard people use it for is the copy and paste functionality. Waveplace lead mentioned that and its used in the Uruguay training presentation linked above. If you do take out the popup frame make sure to come up with a new copy and paste mechanism. Uruguay also has a multi-day training planned for June: http://www.inscripcioncursotics.8m.com/programa.htm They're probably OK with updating their docs but you should bring them in the loop ahead of time, if possible. BTW can you ask Peru to post their manual somewhere? Colombia just asked for Spanish documentation and I'm sure it will be useful for many other countries too. Thanks, Greg S * Message: 2 Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 08:29:39 -0400 From: Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [sugar] OLPC priorities for Sugar in the August release To: Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: OLPC Developer's List devel@lists.laptop.org, Sugar Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 * New Sugar UI? Should continue with some specific goals on how to roll out the new features so it won't be difficult for people. Wad brought up the issue that Peru has already started printing a manual based on the old UI. I've been talking with the Peru folks about this too. The percentage of the user manual that is dependent on the old UI is only in a very few places. If the new UI really simplifies sharing, activity management, and notifications, then I think they'd be more than willing to accept the change. I'll talk to them again when I see them next week. -walter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Acoustic Measure Problem
Hi Ben, I value your technical achievements and your contributions on the list so thanks for raising the topic! I believe Tomeu is a polyglot and he keeps track of user feedback in addition to being a great engineer. On the Acoustic Measure + Mesh problem, I may know who posted that and can send you his e-mail off list. You can also post to their wiki comments page and to the Peru list [EMAIL PROTECTED] No one has complained when I post there in pidgin Spanish, but I can find someone to translate if you prefer. In terms of connecting users and developers, I hope that will become a core competency of OLPC. I think its central to unlocking the potential of the open source community. If we get this right (many users co-developing many applications with many developers) OLPC will have an unrivalled development capacity. Until then we're up against the Mythical Man Month (MMM) and so are the users. I've worked on the XO user - engineering communication problem for 6 months but I don't know the complete answer yet. I'm open to your suggestions but there are already many places where people communicate. Too many for developers to watch them all (MMM again). E.g. there are two forums (en.forum.laptop.org and olpc news), OLPC Wiki, many e-mail lists, [EMAIL PROTECTED], user generated sites, etc. I think we get good feedback from English speakers on the wiki and e-mail lists. If you want more English feedback you can try starting a thread asking for input about your activity on the forum: http://en.forum.laptop.org/ The forum managers asked for more engagement from the development community in a recent Support Gang meeting. The main non-English input I have seen is coming in via user blogs. I have a list of them on my talk page: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User_talk:Gregorio Many non-English users are just starting to use computers. They don't yet post to e-mail lists or Wiki pages. Some will but it takes pushing and you need a site in their language. I doubt they will use Trac. For non-English contacts one solution is to find a lead bilingual technical contact who is close to the users. Help that person and you can develop a good source of feedback. Be careful what you wish for :-). Development wont be able to keep up with all the user input if we see a flood of feedback (Uruguay and Nepal are just getting underway). One solution is to assign a lead person from the list to spend a fraction of their time focused on each major site. Those people can build relationships and monitor user input then extract major themes for the devel list. Also, if a developer wants input on an activity or design they can ask the lead contact. I have relationships now with teachers in Peru and Uruguay if you have a question for them send it over. Waveplace in the Caribbean and Nepal are also easy to contact. Hopefully the communication systems will grow organically. We can help get it started and try to direct it so it doesn't overwhelm users or developers. The key is to offer value and support as the first step. Then ask questions later. The other main point is to get the users involved before you develop the software. If you have a great idea, just go for it. However, if you want input from users, its better to get buy in for your application in advance and build the user relationship up front. In any case, its real work to get meaningful user feedback and one to one interaction is still the best. Try working with this teacher in Peru to get a sense of what it will take. Let us know how it goes and let me know if I can help get you started. HTHs. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tomeu Vizoso Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 8:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Greg Smith (gregmsmi); devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: Acoustic Measure Problem On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is a much larger point here, though. I would love to get more (any!) feedback from teachers about my code, so I know what's important in the field. Until you mentioned this page, I had no idea that it existed. ~ I'm sure many other developers feel the same way. It seems that the teachers want to give us feedback too, but somehow, the loop is not closing. We need to connect this feedback loop. We need a way to get complaints back from the field into the hands of developers, like I've suggested in #6950. We've talked about translating Trac, but if Trac is too complicated, then perhaps we need to set up an RT list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Maybe also a simple webform at inconvenientes.laptop.org, for those with web access but no e-mail. Then we need to tell the teachers that these things exist, and make them understand that we really do want to hear about what they don't like. I want to hear complaints about my software, and then I want a way to open a dialogue with those who
RE: Acoustic Measure Problem
Hi Guys, Our e-mails crossed in the ether :-) If you get traction for this idea and the list is OK with it, I can ask some teachers if they will use it. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Benjamin M. Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 9:11 AM To: Tomeu Vizoso Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Greg Smith (gregmsmi); devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: Acoustic Measure Problem -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Tomeu Vizoso wrote: | On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz | [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | There is a much larger point here, though. I would love to get more | (any!) feedback from teachers about my code, so I know what's | important in the field. Until you mentioned this page, I had no idea that it existed. | ~ I'm sure many other developers feel the same way. It seems that | the teachers want to give us feedback too, but somehow, the loop is | not closing. | | We need to connect this feedback loop. We need a way to get | complaints back from the field into the hands of developers, like | I've suggested in #6950. We've talked about translating Trac, but | if Trac is too complicated, then perhaps we need to set up an RT list: | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Maybe also a simple webform at | inconvenientes.laptop.org, for those with web access but no e-mail. | Then we need to tell the teachers that these things exist, and make | them understand that we really do want to hear about what they don't like. | | I want to hear complaints about my software, and then I want a way | to open a dialogue with those who are having problems. This is the | first step toward improving open systems. | | I like your suggestions, two questions: | | - What would be done with the info submitted? It would be translated and given to the engineer responsible for that subsystem. | Could there be an | automatic process or someone would need to manually triage and send to | trac/mailing lists? There are many possibilities. I think my favorite, at the moment, is to create a simplified version of the trac webform, perhaps a complete parallel installation of Trac, at inconvenientes.laptop.org. Presumably we would make no registration required (or use the included OpenID once that's live). Therefore, users would be immediately be shown the problem submission web form. This form would contain fields for title, component, the problem text, and uploads, without confusing users with severities or owners. Submissions could also be made by e-mail. The process would then be the same as when someone submits an untriaged trac bug. The only difference is that the owner cannot expect the submitter to respond further on that bug, due to lack of internet connectivity and higher priorities than bug discussion. | - How we could get back to the submitter? If the submitter uses e-mail, Trac will CC them automatically. If the submitter uses the webform, they can be asked to bookmark that page, or subscribe to its RSS feed. Eventually, I would very much like to see direct support for non-realtime messaging in Sugar. Then [EMAIL PROTECTED] can be represented as a specific buddy in the mesh view, and people can send messages to it directly through the messaging interface, whatever form that may take. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIKEHsUJT6e6HFtqQRAmwsAJwPr/b6Z7qaLXGCvnEubfGKmJCMqACghqsM 3GfoNiJOIbuH2hTDnKHjtaU= =74qE -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Devel Digest, Vol 27, Issue 59
Hi Polychronis, Thanks for sharing the results. Did you use a wireless AP or active antenna? If you can include a few details on that it will help. Can you also include the XO build # and XS build and config if relevant? Would you say that this test passed? That is, can we recommend that schools use the chat activity with one chat session which all join? Lastly, can you tell us what kind of testing time and focus you will have in the near future? I believe there is a mesh test lab coming up at Nortel in Ottawa as well. Any feedback on test capacity and plans there is appreciated too. I ask because there is recent feedback on mesh issues from a teacher at Lambayeque, Peru http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Lambayeque#Inconvenientes and a teacher in Uruguay has asked about supported Mesh features too. The Lambayeque page says: they wish they knew in advance that Acoustic Measure Activity would not work with 6 groups of two students each. That's mostly an issue with activity design and our communication about what activities support but it does raise a good test case (6 groups of 2 sharing a single activity). I think both (Peru and Uruguay) teachers can help define meaningful mesh use cases which will be applicable in many schools. I want to set the right expectation on our capacity before I ask them to spend a lot of time working with us. I can start by telling them that chat as you describe above will work well, if you agree. Then we can follow up to gather more details on how they want to use the mesh. The good news is they are motivated to use the mesh which helps validate one design goal of the XO. Now we just need to understand how they want to use it :-) It looks like you are focused on finding the maximum scale of Xos which can be in a mesh. That's clearly important info too. I'm just checking if you have capacity to look at a few other test scenarios as well. Thanks, Greg S Message: 5 Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 03:29:51 -0400 From: Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 65-node simple mesh test (and counting... ;-) To: OLPC Development devel@lists.laptop.org, Sugar ml [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Dear devel, Here are the latest results from Cerebro's (http://cerebro.mit.edu) scaling properties. A 65-node testbed was used (703, Q2D14). The NetworkManager had to be disabled in order to stabilize the behavior of each XO's wireless interface. Unfortunately, the difficulty and time necessary to manage increasingly more nodes is linear (given that the NetoworkManager is disabled ;-), but increases steeply. ** Test plan: Cerebro was started on all 65 laptops almost at the same time. We attempted to emulate the 65 children turn on their laptops in class at the same time scenario. With Yani's help, it took about 5 seconds for both of us to press 'enter' on all laptops. Each XO would discover each other, exchange profile information and keep exchanging presence/discovery information. ** Measurements: Quantitative: According to the protocol, presence (mac address) arrives about other XOs first, then the profile for the newly arrived mac address is queried and finally the profile is cached. We assume that initially each XO has no cached information about other XOs. As a result, every XO will query everyone else. We measured the time it took for each XO to discover and exchange profile information with everyone else, bandwidth usage at all times (during profile exchange and after the network stabilized when all profiles were received everywhere) Qualitative: Collaboration was tested on all 65 nodes: one shared a chat session, everyone else joined. The chat session was based on Cerebro's collaboration model. ** Results: Discovery and profile information: The following graph shows arrival of profile information at each XO from other XOs a function of time. Each bar is a 3-second bucket representing the average number of profile arrivals during this 3-second period. The standard deviation is shown with the blue lines. http://wiki.laptop.org/images/a/af/65-arr-1.png The following graph is the cumulative distribution function. It shows that, on average, each XO has received about 95% of the profiles of the rest of the nodes within just 20 seconds. This performance boost is due to the fact that each XO queried for its profile, responds by broadcasting the profile, instead of unicasting it to the requester. As a result, the other nodes receive the profile too and the next node is queried, yielding a linear cost, instead of a quadratic one. http://wiki.laptop.org/images/7/72/65-cdf-1.png Bandwidth usage: The following wireshark snapshot shows bandwidth usage that peaks momentarily at about 60kbytes/sec. The snapshot is also in accordance with the first graph above, showing that after about 55 seconds the network stabilizes. After the network stabilizes,
RE: [sugar] 65-node simple mesh test (and counting... ;-)
Hi Morgan, Got it, thanks! Let me know if we have a chance to comment on the design of future tests to help align them with user requirements. I want to find a few basic cases which we can support now (e.g. 10 or less Xos is a good start) and help position the timing and details of use cases which we may support in the future. We can buy as much time as needed to rebuild this code if we set the right expectation. We just have to warn them before they start counting on things which don't work well yet. Any input on that is appreciated. FYI they put up a training on how to use the XO at: http://www.ceibalflorida.blogspot.com/ It includes two sections on mesh usage (Experiencias colaborativas) one of which has a list of activities. Let me know if you want a translation. In the mean time, they are going to have a development Jam in Uruguay next week http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ceibal_Jam I asked them to try out a few mesh tests if they have enough Xos. I'll let you know if they get any useful results. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Morgan Collett [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 11:01 AM To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Cc: OLPC Development; Sugar ml Subject: Re: [sugar] 65-node simple mesh test (and counting... ;-) Hi Greg A couple of points in clarification... On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Polychronis, Thanks for sharing the results. Did you use a wireless AP or active antenna? If you can include a few details on that it will help. Can you also include the XO build # and XS build and config if relevant? Cerebro isn't in the builds yet. It looks like the plan is to integrate Cerebro into a Telepathy connection manager, for link local connectivity. Would you say that this test passed? That is, can we recommend that schools use the chat activity with one chat session which all join? The Chat activity used currently with Cerebro isn't the regular Chat activity - it is one that has been customised to work with Cerebro outside of the existing Presence Service collaboration framework. I ask because there is recent feedback on mesh issues from a teacher at Lambayeque, Peru http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Lambayeque#Inconvenientes and a teacher in Uruguay has asked about supported Mesh features too. The Lambayeque page says: they wish they knew in advance that Acoustic Measure Activity would not work with 6 groups of two students each. That's mostly an issue with activity design and our communication about what activities support but it does raise a good test case (6 groups of 2 sharing a single activity). I think both (Peru and Uruguay) teachers can help define meaningful mesh use cases which will be applicable in many schools. I want to set the right expectation on our capacity before I ask them to spend a lot of time working with us. I can start by telling them that chat as you describe above will work well, if you agree. Then we can follow up to gather more details on how they want to use the mesh. Please don't tell them to use the existing Chat on the existing collaboration framework in that way - I think we can only handle less than 10 XOs on simple mesh (no jabber server) with some reasonable reliability. The good news is they are motivated to use the mesh which helps validate one design goal of the XO. Now we just need to understand how they want to use it :-) It looks like you are focused on finding the maximum scale of Xos which can be in a mesh. That's clearly important info too. I'm just checking if you have capacity to look at a few other test scenarios as well. Regards Morgan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Collaboration between schools
Hi John et al, One minor clarification. I think you mean L3 (IP) VPN (virtual private network) not VLAN (virtual LAN). Let me know if that is not right as you can send an IP packet from one VLAN to another but not from one VPN to another (except in special cases). BTW sounds like people have spent a lot of time at customers lately. If you have time a brief write up of what is important (or not) at each customer would be very helpful. e.g. Peru - Inter-school collaboration not important, managing school servers is a challenge (need GUI?), off the shelf HW is not good fo XS and need customer box, XO updates are a problem, what build of XO and XS they are on etc. You can post that to the wiki (e.g. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Uruguay and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peru) or just send it to the list and I'll copy it over. If you can also bring back a technical contact we can use that to come up with a list of questions which you can run by the customers. Then we can put customer names next to each item on the roadmap and in general verify the priorities of the roadmap with the customers. I don't mean to pile on the work. Just want to make sure we use your unique position of having direct contact with implementers to focus the development. Thanks, Greg S ** I learned more about the network built by the MED in Peru for their schools. Each school is in its own VLAN, and cannot route to the other schools, only to the Internet and to MED servers. They have good economic reasons for encouraging this, but it means that inter-school collaboration will have to happen through data pushed to an MED server (and won't be real-time activity collaboration). wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Mesh connectivity from regular WiFi gear (Martin Langhoff)
Hi All, FYI I don't know what is supposed to work but they have tested a bunch in Nepal. I believe that a DLINK DWL2100AP was the first choice in Nepal. Looks like they last tested Lantech WL54G BR with pretty good results. See: http://blog.olenepal.org/ latest post. You may want to check with Bryan, Sulochan or Dev Mohanty ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) for the final word. I added DLINK DWL2100AP to the wiki link below. Initially Bryan recommended a DLINK DWL2100AP to the people in Cambodia. I'm not sure what they ended up with but you can try pinging them too. Main contact there was: matt wolstencroft [EMAIL PROTECTED] I think the Cambodia discussion was logged under RT ticket: 8321 although I can't seem to access RT right now to confirm. There was discussion of openWRT firmware, lazyWDS and other gritty details on that thread with Michail Bletsas providing the input from OLPC. HTHs. Greg S Message: 6 Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:32:59 -0400 From: Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Mesh connectivity from regular WiFi gear To: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: server-devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Also, do we have wikipage of tested APs? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wireless_Access_Point_Compatibility This page just reports results for standard use, not in the context of a school-server scenario, which would merit additional testing. -walter ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [sugar] Clipboard Notification
Hi Marco, What if the activity hangs? I have seen that several times with Xaos fractal builder activity and possibly others. I remember one case in Nepal where it took 20 minutes to launch eToys. I think the UI suggestion is great and will help prevent kids from clicking on many activities while they wait for the first to launch. Just want to cover the case where the first one takes a very long time or doesn't launch at all. We need a way to abort (kill -9?) or go on with other work if the activity is not coming up. Thanks, Greg S -- Message: 2 Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:43:04 +0200 From: Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [sugar] Clipboard Notification To: Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: OLPC Development Devel@lists.laptop.org, Eben Eliason [EMAIL PROTECTED], Sugar List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 6:39 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 14 Apr 2008, at 15:04, Mikus Grinbergs wrote: Personal note: Been running the new look Sugar/Joyride for a while. [It does what you describe when an Activity is launched.] I've now trained myself to notice the pulsing icon in the top left hand corner -- but I think that is an easily-overlooked location (particularly since current notification icons have the same background color as the border in which they sit). I also find the new 'activity launch notification' less than satisfying. Launching an activity is a very distinct action taken by a user, and the current pulsing notification is not enough of an indication of the result. It's also odd if you do happen to have the frame open as you see 2 pulsing icons for the launching activity (one the notification and one in the actual frame). I'd like to suggest, again, that the activity launching metaphor be one where: 1) Kid clicks on activity icon to launch 2) Sugar immediately opens a fullscreen canvas with just the large pulsing icon (i.e a activity zoom view) 3) Canvas is occupied by the activity once it has loaded That's pretty much what Eben asked me to implement. I don't know if he just steals ideas from you or what! :) Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Activity Launch Notification
Hi Eben, Thanks for the comment and for covering all the bases. I'm not sure what zoom level means or what the frame will look like in this case. Regardless, if the kids can still launch other activities you may want to check this design to ensure it covers the basic challenge raised by Carol in the SouthBronx class. That is, does it prevent kids from clicking on lots of things because they run out of patience while waiting for the first to load then end up with too many activities running and the whole system slows to a crawl? My impression is that it will help a lot. Still, it does sound like a good candidate for a trial with a few real kids. If you can mock it up, maybe Carol can take it back to the class for a sanity check. Its certainly better than the blinking icon so even without a trial you should probably just do it. Seems like a sure win unless there is some other negative side effect (greater memory or disk usage, launch time much longer, harder to code new activities, other?). My 2 cents. Thanks for sharing the design idea on the list. BTW I am starting to ask users if they like the hot corners frame popup thingy. Let me know if you are open to feedback on that and if you have any alternative design proposals to share or specific questions you want answered. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Eben Eliason [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:35 AM To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Activity Launch Notification What if the activity hangs? I have seen that several times with Xaos fractal builder activity and possibly others. I remember one case in Nepal where it took 20 minutes to launch eToys. I think the UI suggestion is great and will help prevent kids from clicking on many activities while they wait for the first to launch. Just want to cover the case where the first one takes a very long time or doesn't launch at all. We need a way to abort (kill -9?) or go on with other work if the activity is not coming up. Well, there are two parts to this problem. First, this launching screen will take the place of the activity zoom level for the launching activity, before the activity window itself appears. The Frame will remain available, allowing the kids to switch away from the launch, in order to continue working in another activity, launch additional activities, or browse the other zoom levels. As such, they'll never be locked in. Second, there's the issue of force stopping activities. I brought this up as something I'd like to support a while back, but found that it is complicated by the manner in which activities are launched, since we don't necessarily know the process ID it's running under during launch (or something like that...Marco can clarify). In any case, if we can do it, we should, offering a Stop button in the palette for the launching activity. If we can't, it's still not a showstopper, since it's possible to switch away, and the launch will timeout eventually, preventing the pulsing icon from forever haunting the Frame. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Devel Digest, Vol 26, Issue 62
Hi Dafydd, Sameer, Mel et al, I put a link here http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Scenario_taxonomy#Infrastructure_constraints pointing to Mel's page at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Networking_scenarios The available networking hardware is one of several metrics which affect what activities and server software you can/should use. I suggest that we list all variables and how they interact on the taxonomy page and then move them or link to them in the deployment guide: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_Guide/Connectivity Thanks, Greg S -- Message: 4 Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:11:01 -0700 From: Sameer Verma [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: networking scenarios To: Dafydd Harries [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Dafydd Harries wrote: This is something which was not completely clear to me until I talked to Wad about it the other day, and I think other people might find it useful. It should probably go on the wiki (assuming it isn't already there somewhere). I'd like some feedback about where it belongs. The closest thing I've found is this page: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Scenario_taxonomy The wiki page you refer to was my attempt (at least the first cut) at getting some kind of a scenario taxonomy going. The idea was that if we could look at different combinations of grid availability and backhaul availability, we could look at the landscape of scenarios and solutions that may work for one or more scenarios. For example, a low powered (can run off a battery) server unit will work for all situations with unreliable or non-existent grid power, but for a school that has reliable power (say, Birmingham, AL), setting up a more powerful server would be possible. The same goes for backhaul. I didn't want to start with too fine grained a scale, so I didn't specify bandwidth, latency, etc. and leave the scales at a more qualitative low/medium/high level. Any errors are my own. There are four networking scenarios: - simple mesh - no access point - no school server - we are currently aiming to support up to 15 laptops in this case - simple WiFi - access points - which tend not to handle multicast very well (1Mbit/s peak) - no school server - this is what G1G1 laptops will tend to encounter - typically in the developed world - school mesh - no access point - school server with Jabber server - school WiFi - access points - school server with Jabber server - only one server at a time - this is what is deployed in Peru Assuming that a matrix such as the one at the bottom of the wiki page covers most of what we are looking for, each scenario would lead to a set of technologies (hardware, software, network) for that scenario. We briefly talked about this at the first phone conference for the server development. Our current priority in terms of collaboration is to improve supprt for the fourth case, as this is the situation most of our existing laptops are deployed in, and it's likely that upcoming deployments will be similar. Our secondary priority is improving support for the second case, as this is what will tend happen when laptops are taken home from school. Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ -- Message: 5 Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:20:36 -0700 From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: XENified images for XO To: Dennis Gilmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Dennis Gilmore wrote: On Thursday 10 April 2008, Marcus Leech wrote: Has anyone done any work on building XENified images for XO? I'm interested in this for building a large-scale virtualized XO environment for testing purposes. The other option is to run the XO image in HVM mode, but that limits which processors I can use to host such a thing. Cheers The work to do this is not trivial. however, im working on moving us to a Fedora-9 base. in doing so we should rebase the kernel. I understand dilinger has done alot of work to make sure we will be able to use 2.6.25 We should work with him to make sure that paravirt support in 2.6.25 is turned on. I'm the maintainer of the paravirt-ops Xen support, so tell me if anything needs doing to make this work. J -- Message: 6 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:56:10 +0200 From: Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Usability testing To: Patrick Dubroy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], devel@lists.laptop.org, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On
Re: Usability testing
Hi Tomeuz et al, I have done a few usability tests and they are a lot of work and not easy to turn in to code later. The main thing you can learn is if something makes no sense to the user. You can often discover that so usability test is best when you have a design and want a final sanity check on it. More valuable are user - development relationships to understand users work flow. A good way is what Bryan suggest: sit in class for a few weeks. Still we need feedback on lots of questions over a long period of time. For that we need a group of users who can give feedback quickly and regularly. Building that group is not going to be easy! We have to help people accomplish their daily activities to build trust and value. Then we have to learn from users and explain what questions development tries to answer (AKA ask them to help you with your daily activities :-). Its great that Walter and others have a lot of direct experience introducing the XO to new people. Until we hear more directly from the field they speak for the user. Beyond that we have a few data points: The report by Carol's daughter: (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User_talk:Gregorio#User_experience.2C_input.2C _ideas_and_blogs South Bronx Teacher Feedback link). One key idea there is that kids wont wait for an activity to load. The activity icon blinks but the kids didn't get that. Maybe an animated GIF or a mini-animation would help. Or maybe paint the activity window right away, then fill it in slowly. Downside of that is you are tied to activity even if it never loads. Two ideas but we need more user feedback that its important issue before I would suggest it's a development priority. After my last post on UI changes, I contacted a teacher in Peru. I asked how much time it takes to learn the cursor and mouse pad. I also asked if future changes there will frustrate teachers or require re-training. He said it only took two hours to learn the touch pad. In terms of future changes, he said it wont be frustrating or need retraining, assuming these changes will be innovative. See http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/peru/ April [OLPC-Peru] Experiencias personales con laptop XO. In short he agreed with Walter and Ben, not me from our last exchange :-) One more data point. Interestingly, the tensest, worrisome and emotional part of the training was learning how to take the computer apart! I sent a similar question to a teacher trainer in Uruguay linking to new sugar design ideas: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Activity_Management I asked if it will be hard for users to change to that. No answer yet. I'll let you know what I hear. These exchanges were useful but not quite the co-design level of interaction I'm hoping for. Maybe users will feel more empowered over time. I can try to get feedback on more questions. Starting with this one from Walter: And there are certain features where we are far from reaching consensus, most notably the behavior of the Frame appearance/disappearance. I would love to see a usability study of this feature within the context of the new design. What do you want to know about that? Does this feature solve a problem that users care about? Tell me what this feature is supposed to do for users and if you have an example of the new design (preferably interactive) and I'll ask about it. I press the X0 F3 key to task switch so I could ask how people move from one activity to another. A use case for switching activities would help. E.g we could ask: what do you do when you get an e-mail and want to paste some text from it in to write? Line up a list of questions or open issues and I'll work to get you feedback. A good question which is closely related to what a user wants to do is the first step. It took a dozen e-mails, two phone calls and several months before I understood what is hard about using public blogging tools. See the answer in first two sections at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Blogs_Knight_Challenge#Educational_blogger_pro ject That and a bug in the current browse activity which makes it impossible to post to Blogger.com from build 656 :-). (bug details to follow when I get it isolated from Firefox on Windows). Give me a few easy questions or open issues and I'll try to get you first hand answers. Thanks, Greg S *** Message: 6 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:56:10 +0200 From: Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Usability testing To: Patrick Dubroy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], devel@lists.laptop.org, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 2:37 AM, Patrick Dubroy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If there's one conclusion we can make here, it's that we could do a better job in coordinating our usability efforts. In the next few days, I'll try to set up a central place on the wiki that can use to do this. Anyone else who is interested in this can feel free to do so, of simply get
RE: [sugar] Mini-Conference Proposal: Toolbars Tabs
Hi All, I'm not opposed to changing the GUI at the OS level. I can think of a dozen suggestions starting with that annoying hot corners thing. I also love a whole bunch of the design elements. All I'm saying is that any change comes at a cost. A cost paid by the teachers, students and people who train more than the developers. The cost also increases with time. I want to make sure you take that in to consideration. I'm not talking about the time OLPC has spent training people. I'm talking about the time sys admins and technicians have spent training teachers in country. Dozens of people spent days doing teacher training in Uruguay and they said it took several days of training for the teachers to start feeling comfortable with the XO. I believe new teams of volunteers in Uruguay have recently been expanding the training. Nepal also started teacher training and they reported that it's a key variable to their success. I think I heard that Peru has started training a few hundred teachers too. I'm not sure about other deployments. If the teachers and trainers know what the changes are, they want them and are not concerned about having to re-learn or re-train, then its fine with me. My point is to keep the users in the loop. If you dictate changes without user input that doesn't foster collaboration and empowerment. Sounds like you have the users in the loop and you're covered. Great! You definitely did a lot of things right in the first pass. I'm sure you'll nail it again in the next revision. My only suggestion is that once you have a new design, you show it to some teachers and trainers before you lock it down. Even better give them a range of options and see which works best for them. There's a technical, economic, cultural, urban - rural, north - south divide that we have to span here. That comes to the fore in the GUI more than anywhere else (except maybe available actvities). Let's not lose our chance to make the design process a two way collaboration which bridges that divide. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Walter Bender Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 10:07 AM To: Tomeu Vizoso; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; devel@lists.laptop.org; Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Subject: Re: [sugar] Mini-Conference Proposal: Toolbars Tabs Let me ad that these changes are motivated from feedback in the field. What we are trying to change are precisely the things that people are finding confusing or difficult. Let me further add that very little teacher training has in fact taken place. What we have instead concentrated on is working with teachers on how to best leverage to tool to enhance learning inside and outside of the classroom. The very features of the new interface are designed to facilitate more collaboration, which is *the* distinguishing feature of Sugar. -walter On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 3:45 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Perhaps, in the intervening decade, first-world computer users haveconvinced themselves that they cannot adapt, but they are wrong. Humansare very adaptable. A teacher who has learned one version of Sugar willnot have to spend more than a few days or hours with the new versionbefore understanding it. I'm sure they can adapt, but they need to be motivated to do so. What could happen if we don't make sure these changes are well-received? I think that's Gregorio's message. Tomeu ___ 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: Becoming involved in XO software development?
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. 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
Wireless Congestion Management Option
Hi All, FYI, I came across this proposed protocol enhancement for wireless mesh network which may interest you: http://netsrv.csc.ncsu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Main/DiffQ Looks like its really designed for a mesh of Access points instead of clients and focused on TCP at L4. Also, may not currently work with XO wireless chip and drivers. Still, may merit more research if it helps resolve open dense mesh issues. I think there is a pending XO deployment in South Carolina so maybe you can hook the NCSU people in to help with that as a test bed... Pretty cutting edge stuff, like everything on this list ;-) Thanks, Greg S ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Monday's Testing
Hi Wad, et al, I think some use cases and requirements definition would be helpful here. I don't think the field understands clearly what Mesh and collaboration support and that can lead to misalignment of design and usage. Here is an example of possible use case definition, hopefully relevant variables for SW design: 1 - School has server and Active Antenna (AA) (1,2, or 3) (example? maybe Uruguay) 2 - School has wireless AP and server (Nepal) 3 - School has wireless AP and no server (Cambodia) 4 - School has no wireless AP or server (aka no internet ala some schools in Peru) 5 - School has n (50, 100, 150, 200) Xos on simultaneously 6 - XO closest to AP or AA providing intermediate hop to internet for Xos (1, 2, 3 max? hops away) 7 - n (50, 100, 150) Xos in class and m laptops providing intermediate hops to internet (I can also see a whole bunch of tree cases and combinations of roots and branches getting to the internet). Looking at the collaboration layer (may need Mesh, ad hoc and eJabber versions, may also need AP, AA and no net versions, not sure) 8 - n (1,2,3 max?) classes of students of m each (up to 50?) using XO simultaneously. Classes are x feet apart and Xos 2 feet apart within a class (does physical granularity matter at this level?). No need to Mesh (L2) or collaborate (L5?) between classes. (different subnets?) 9 - One class in the school yard with kids running around and two others in class. Means XOs turned on and off and moving closer and farther away rapidly (my twins out ran me at 3 years old I hope 50 x 3rd graders can't out run the dynamic mesh :-) 10 - Two students sharing a book or activity with each other *25 (max?) for all pairs of students in class. 11 - Teacher sharing an activity with all 50 students *n classes within a school (1,2,3,4, n) (also list activities if relevant - e.g. web browsing vs. others?) 12 - Two students watching a video (don't know if its supported, but find high BW and low BW examples) *25 for class 13 - Teacher sharing video with all students (same note as above) 14 - 1/2 class sharing high BW, half sharing low BW activities 15 - Students form groups of 3 - 5 who all share (low and high BW) activities *n groups per class. Groups forming and dividing rapidly at start then settling down. 16 - Everyone turns on XO at the same time *n (50, 100, 150 etc). Class starts with 2 - 3 Xos firing up every minute for 10 minutes. Another class in range has all 50 Xos on already. Etc. I hope I didn't munge my mesh and collaboration layers too much. My point is that at the end of this testing you need to have some clear, user understandable supported setups. Nail one or two, bound them well, and say they are supported. Also, define what supported means. For example: A - Works with same speed as XO solo or works %x slower B - Access internet takes up to 50 seconds for first packet out and latency of .1 second after that per XO hop away from AP C- Mouse move on one XO has y latency to appear on second XO and y + z latency to appear on n (1) Xos. Etc. Nail a few supported uses and we can drive everyone to start with those. Even better, give general guidelines and list unsupported uses. That's a quick brainstorm on my part but I haven't actually used XO to collaborate. Ask the schools and educators how they use it or want to use it. It takes a long time to develop a meaningful dialog but find some representative users who get back to you quickly for starters. If all of these use cases are supported, that's great as long as they all work. You should still say what is supported at the user level as people will have other ideas that we never even thought of... Way too much work to do before Monday but think of one or two cases you know work after this testing. Then ask educators if they fit. Then we tell all customers to start with that! HTHs. Thanks, Greg S *** Wad - Some people will say that reactive protocols are bursty and route acquisition time is long. I don't disagree. But I believe we have room for improvement without any radical (and costly) change. The key is to adapt. We are very focused now on dense clouds (for good reasons), but our parameters are sub-optimal for this scenario. In a dense scenario, we should: 1 - Eliminate probe responses 2 - Increase contention window 3 - Increase route expiration time 4 - Increase multicast transmission rate My suggestion for the Cambrige testbed is: 1 - Validade probe response driver patch submitted by Marvell and implement it 2 - Increase contention window from 7,31 ro 31, 1023 3 - Increase route expiration time from 10 to 20 seconds 4 - Increase mcast rate from 2 to 11 Mbps. All of the above are trade offs and should be considered in dense mesh scenarios only. Based on what I see in my own testbed, they will reduce the duration of bursts and also make you more resilient to them. *** It is safe to change these values on the fly. Marvell was discussing doing it
RE:Subject: OLPC security project
He Jeremy, Here's one for you (school server security audit): http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/1506 A nessus scan seems like a good start but you may know better tools. I'm a volunteer so any suggestions from developers working on deployments would take higher priority. Thanks, Greg S -- Message: 5 Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:27:07 -0400 From: Jeremy Flores [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: OLPC security project To: devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi all, Does anyone know of any security-related projects that need to be worked on for OLPC? I am taking a computer and network security class, and I was thinking that Bitfrost would be an interesting topic for a final project we have. I poked around the wiki, but I couldn't find a security todo list. Thanks! Jeremy Flores [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[olpc-help] Update on XOs in Uruguay
Hi All, I had a call in February with Pablo a lead on the XO deployment in Uruguay. Here are some impressions and lessons learned from their experience. The main point is that the kids like to blog! We really need to hear from them too! They need some help making blogging easier. See below for ways to help make that happen. The XO roll out started in May in Villa Cardal with 150 children. Phase 2 is underway now. Targets for deployment are 150K XOs in 2008 and 300K in the field by the end of 2009. It went better than expected for the first 150 children and 6 teachers. Children used the XO much more when the teacher was motivated. Classes with younger children used it less than older children. Teachers had the choice about when they wanted to use the laptop. The only directives were: - The teacher chooses the moment the laptops are used. However, they are encouraged to use them. - The laptops are used as a tool. They don't substitute books and notepads, and the curriculum doesn't change. From the start, the teachers requested training on the XO. They expect to be trained on any new educational tools. The initial training is especially important to get off to a good start. They found it important to include the XO and its training in the normal structure of the educational system. There are a lot of traditions on how to do things, role of teacher, supervisor etc. and those need to be respected in order to avoid conflicts. The training is done by the IT department and teachers with specialization in ICTs for education. The emphasis is on how to teach with the XO, not the technical aspects of how the XO works. The teachers don't want to be technicians and are not comfortable with technology. That said, they have to be comfortable using the tool (XO). The best way to train in technology is to start with small groups. After that they created working teams to visit school during class time. The training workshops were repeated several times for each teacher. After a few training sessions, the teachers felt comfortable with the XO and didn't need further technical support. Teaming an educator and a technician was a great way get started. However, its a difficult model to scale. The target is one technician for each 1,000 children. That's a rough guess so we need to follow up to see how well that works. There is a vision of school based portals and regional and national sites for collaboration. Its not final where they will be hosted but some may be cached or served from the school while others are served centrally. They also have issues with managing teacher accounts and needing too many passwords. The portal design work is ongoing. There was a lot of interest in blogging but so far all Villa Cardal blog messages were given to a single technician who then posted them. See the Villa Cardal blogs at: http://www.blogger.com/profile/06134894806578234196 The kids want to keep on blogging! However UI issues are a barrier. Pablo and I wrote up an overview of the challenge and a set of requirements to address them at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Requiremientos_Para_XO Please comment and add to it as needed. They want help from the community to build new software to address these needs. I want to create a core team of supporters for this deployment. Whatever we learn here can be reused in other deployments. If you want to help, send me an e-mail or sign up at: http://groups.google.com/group/uruguay-XO-coordination We need developers, project managers, artists, UI designers, Spanish speakers and anyone else interested in helping out. If we can be responsive to this first request we can develop a close relationship and learn about how to make the XO a success around the world! Once we solve the blogging problem there are plenty of other challenges we can uncover and address as a team. Other technical and infrastructure comments: - School server is the gateway for all internet traffic for security (firewall/NAT and filtering). The filtering is done by Dansguardian. - There is no web caching done on the school server right now. - Each school in the project must have internet access. Most schools have 1 Mb/s. Cardal has 2 Mb/s. BW is set depending on size of the school. So far, no problems reported with internet access or bandwidth. That said, not all children can be connected at the same time. That problem was solved by teachers coordinating so that classes take turns using the WAN. - The mesh was not worked well but it is getting better with each build. They just started to use some mesh capabilities but in general it has not been a critical need and they don't currently use activities that require a mesh. - They have updated the laptops a few times using the automatic update. The updating system is not so easy... They're still working on it. Now, some updates are automatic, others not. - There has been a lot of demand to support Flash. Here are some other links on the XO
Re: Mini-Conference Proposal: olpcfs
Hi Martin, Scott et al, I gave the draft a quick read and it looks like a great design, especially if its doable with minimum development time. However, changing the File System, especially at the inode level can have many unforeseen implications. I suggest building a test plan in advance and doing a thorough design review at functional level and code level before committing any changes. It would also help to have a more abstract definition of goals. How does this help users, administrators or systems integrators? I think the main goals are: 1 - Allow people to manipulate files at the CLI using the file name visible in the Journal. E.g. see a file in the journal and then run cp, ls, grep, etc. on it at the prompt. 2 - Allow activities and Sugar in general to directly access files with the journal/human readable name. That is, open the activity first then open the file using the name without going back to open it directly from the journal. 3 - Speed up access and open time for files from Sugar GUI (including activities) That's my guess let me know if its close. If #1 is a goal, my first question is if all Linux commands will work with the new FS as is with no modification. We definitely do not have capacity to re-code all linux commands! Based on goals above a couple of use cases will help evaluate if the design is on target. E.g. User wants to see all the files they have created since date xx/yy. Can they run ls -al on the appropriate directory (e.g. home directory) and see file names and dates in human readable form? User wants to copy files to a USB drive. Can they run cp file.name [mount point]/file.name ? Activity developer wants their activity to open and save files using file names. Do they need to include additional code to do that? How hard is that and will it slow down the addition of new activities? Will all existing activities run as is with no modification (AKA backward compatible)? In short, build a definition of who needs this change and why. BTW I think that Squid hashes file names and indexes them on disk in a way that hides the file name. Its designed to improve performance on searching, track additional file info, and reduce file access time. AFAIK they never implemented a way to access the files directly outside the Squid application but seems like a related challenge. HTHs. An abstract user/administrator level explanation of the goals will help more people comment on the efficacy of the solution. Thanks, Greg S -- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:31:58 -0400 From: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Mini-Conference Proposal: olpcfs To: C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: OLPC Developer's List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 12:53 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: More information: (draft) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpcfs The thinking behind this is *excellent*. If we make a couple of minor tweaks and we take that as the description of the goals, then we can implement that, and a ton more in a couple of days by using real files in the filesystem, a single file containing the fancy metadata, and committing things into GIT. Which gets us to the place where we want to be, with 100th the engineering effort. The API gets simplified to: - a convention of the fact that for each document you are given a directory - which will get shown as a single item in the UI, a la OSX with .app bundles - in that directory, an optional metadata.yaml (or .xml or whatever) holds additional metadata. - the application can make a save snapshot call to trigger a commit (mapped to the save document) but this is optional because... - when the app exits with a 0 the files get committed - when the app exits 0 the files get committed in a specially tagged commit that indicates abnormal termination - so the journal may later offer to attempt to open that set of files - we can use a readonly FUSE view of the repo or just plain git from journal to retrieve old version -- but any file retrieved to work on gets extracted to the real FS That's the pragmatic pseudo-API. Some technical notes... - by virtue of always working with a real FS, we can direct app developers to use mmap and similar advanced tricks to work efficiently on data. Supporting mmap is hell if we do our own FUSE implementation, and we _need_ performance tricks like mmap. - by virtue of using a normal FS, it works with tar, zip, rsync,etc. Every OS that has extended the POSIX basics has had to come up with its own archiver implementation to handle the extensions (hi Darwin!) - the work of the School server with backups is _trivial_ ;-) -- git push - it is trivial to implement a sliding window to forget old commits as the disk gets full, and a longer sliding window on the XS - we can tweak our git configuration to
Re: [Server-devel] Drupal on OLPC? (Martin Langhoff)
Hi Martin et al, Thanks for the comments and direction. I'm still working on options for the Uruguay requirement (BTW now rewritten, verified with tech lead in Montevideo and posted in wiki at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Requiremientos_Para_XO). We want any new work to be available in all deployments. Unless the XS base install works for teachers and students out of the box, we need to go where the most development support is available. Looks like you suggest current Moodle and MediaWiki plus possible added code (may be outside XS scope, e.g. client side or system level) unless we get great traction with Drupal team. If we get that traction how we do we make the solution broadly available? If we focus on Moodle and Media Wiki do we work directly with those projects or look for some maintainer/lead developer support from OLPC? On the drupal front, perhaps we can have a model where XS code can be added like activities are added to XO. E.g. core activities plus downloadable additions via well defined install. The great thing about this project is that we get direct user feedback from a real XO deployment! So Uruguayan technicians, teachers and students are part of the design from the start. For now, we will try all options until we find a viable design and developers interested in pursuing it. Any additional input on where to focus efforts re: developer recruitment and target software is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Greg S I do think Moodle i very strong in all course or student-group content and activity mgmt, and getting better all the time. It's patchy in the general content for everyone, where MediaWiki shines, and we will also have MW there to host partial Wikipedia content. There has to be a strong case for a 3rd system that overlaps so much with those 2 -- each additional system is a significant burden, as we will have to customise it quite a bit. Having said that, I _like_ Drupal, and it can be used usefully, but we are entering diminishing returns region (from a core OLPC team POV), so if the Drupal community can help get this in shape, that would be great. IOWs it won't be a priority for me. cheers, m ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: OLPC Usability Testing Class Project (Frederick Grose)
Hi Frederik, I'm trying to find the right interface to gather input directly from teachers and encourage an exchange on requirements definition between real XO users and developers. I wrote up a brief explanation and test subject on your wiki page. Let me know if you have any questions and if you think its something your students can help with. BTW I'm just a volunteer and not officially affiliated with OLPC or doing this for my employer. Thanks, Greg S -- Message: 2 Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:24:12 -0400 From: Frederick Grose [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: OLPC Usability Testing Class Project To: devel@lists.laptop.org, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 This note is a request for the broader community to consider potential topic areas that might be prime for some usability testing. (Here is a quick review of usability testing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing.) Professor Keith Karn in the Information Technology Department, http://it.rit.edu/it/, of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY will have 4-5 graduate students (from his class of 20) propose, and over the next 10 weeks, execute a usability testing consultation around the XO or OLPC project. The class met for the first time on Wednesday 12 March 2008, and will meet, as a whole, every Wednesday 6-9:50 pm EDT through 21 May 2008. This OLPC project team will be asked to review the wiki.laptop.org and then contact me as client representative. Because of the academic schedule, we need to review and select a testing topic area in the next 7 days and have a final testing plan prepared by 26 March 2008. What usability issue is currently most timely and significant to the project? Since OLPC is developing a new information and communication technologies platform, there are many possibilities for significant target users, subsystems, components, and activities. Please think about the project design needs, possibilities, and constraints, and suggest topics or issues here or to our wiki page, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rochester%2C_NY#Project_ideas. We have a few G1G1 XOs in Rochester that we should be able to use for live testing with local children. Larger scale tests could be performed with emulated XOs or hosted Sugar in the RIT Usability Laboratories. The class will be expected to go through the human subject reviews as required. Because so many cultural variables may be important modifiers of understanding user interactions with the OLPC project, perhaps there may be some more basic or common psycho-physical aspects of usability we could address that would be timely and significant for the project. Or, we might be able to recruit user participants from one of the recently settled immigrant communities in the Rochester area to delve into the internationalization and cultural domains. Some reviewers of OLPC have been critical of the shortage of reported usability testing results, so far, however, if we appreciate the pace and resourcing of the development, perhaps this is a chance to address any gaps or curiosities that you may have. We would welcome your thoughts (particularly on usability issues in the near term). Thanks to everyone for all their efforts! -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20080313/7e00a4cd/at tachment-0001.htm -- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: drupal on OLPC?
Hi Ben, Your timing is excellent! The kids in Uruguay have started blogging a lot with the XO. Posting Adivinanzas (riddles) seem like a popular item. See: http://www.blogger.com/profile/06134894806578234196 Now they are asking for more sophisticated content management and we have already flagged Drupal as a tool that may fit the bill. I wrote a brief requirements definition of what they want, now posted here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Learning_activities/Journalism We need another round of discussion with the teachers to nail down their requirements but all signs point towards Drupal so far... Do you know what it would take to translate the full Drupal UI to Spanish? I replied here to bring any interested people with us, but you can reply on the server list only and I'll pick it up there. Thanks, Greg S -- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:47:06 +0100 From: bert boerland [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: drupal on OLPC? To: devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Dear All, As a member of the Drupal community, I would like to see the Open Source CMS Drupal ship on the OLPC. Drupal is a state of the art Content Managment System / Framework with lots of modules and hence potential implementations. Drupal can be a wiki, a blog, a news aggregator, a youtube clone, a flickr etc... Having Drupa ship on every OLPC would be great for the young users; they can easy write and share information. I can make some noise in the Drupal community to let some of the members help making this happen. But what would it take fom a technical and procedural side to make this happen? Some work on Drupal on OLPC has already been done, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Drupal http://www.olpcnews.com/software/third_party/olpc_open_source_with_drupa l.html http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/2008/feb/28/building-open-source-app lications-olpc-drupal http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-olpc Would you please help me point to the right direction to make this happen? TIA -- groets, bert boerland -- my rants on my weblog -- http://boerland.com/ -- Message: 3 Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:04:09 -0400 From: Benjamin M. Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: drupal on OLPC? To: bert boerland [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 21:47 +0100, bert boerland wrote: Dear All, As a member of the Drupal community, I would like to see the Open Source CMS Drupal ship on the OLPC. The OLPC XO is virtually the worst possible server platform. It is highly mobile, has little memory or disk space, usually runs on battery, and aggressively turns off its CPU when not in use. It's also unlikely to have internet connectivity at any given time, and its network connection is purely wireless (and constantly changing). Think of it like running Drupal on your cell phone, or Nokia n810. Drupal would potentially be very useful on the School Server, which is a much more appropriate platform. The current prototypes of the school server are configured to run Moodle. You will have to make a case that Drupal is a sensible counterpart to Moodle, can be integrated with it, or should replace it. Regardless, the place to make that case is [EMAIL PROTECTED] --Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Printing et al.
Hi All, All good suggestions on options for printing, or not. I tend to think schools will want to print. However, what I think is not as important as what real XO deployments think. We need to ask a real school using the XO. If its Birmingham then we need to ask them if they need printing, how important is it to them, what printers they have, do they have a school server, do they have print services now etc. Then we should ask some more schools. What's worked for you in the past or what works in Birmingham, AL may not work in Uruguay or Haiti or Nepal. Options I have heard so far include: - No printer, just use the XO and a web page - Printer drivers installed on the XO - Print from an XO server - Sneaker net with USB drives School systems may have more ideas. Maybe print over the network to a central location and snail mail the hard copy back. That's not very economical but my point is we should let the users come up with some suggestions. Maybe the right answer is a $100 printer per teacher (OPPT? :-) ... I'll try to ask some of the Uruguay deployment people with whom I've exchanged occasional e-mails. I'm not sure how we gather more XO school system input, but it definitely seems warranted for this challenge. Thanks, Greg S Which teachers or schools have been asking for printing support? If we can add some documentation on that to the Wiki it will help a lot. for some schools (like Birmingham, Alabama) they won't ask for printing support becous ethey won't imagine a computer system being setup that doesn't include it. It makes sense that schools would want printing and CUPS is a robust tool in my experience. CUPS may be robust, but it may al ba sledgehammer being used to swat a fly (see my other e-mail on the subject for more of my thoughts on the matter) Real world user cases will help determine how much effort is needed on the configuration/moderation fronts. They can also help validate if copying files to a USB drive is a viable alternative. it would be better to force kids to use the journal and drag documents to the server (or to the printer) and have them copied to the server and then use something on the server to print the document than it would be to force sneakernet to be used for printing David Lang My guess is schools want a printer if they can afford one. Let us know what feedback shows it's a priority for existing XO deployments and let's find out what printers they have and how they want to use them. *** Message: 2 Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 23:34:16 -0800 (PST) From: Ed Montgomery [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Printing et al. To: devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Having been a computer teacher for several years, I set up a network printer for those teachers who requested it, (but it was a CONSTANT hassle, from paper jam problems, to misconfiguration, toner cartridges, etc. I got around the problem by handing off the problems to windows techs, which left me to the paradise of just running a linux lab ;-)). In the meantime, I went paperless...:-) My students were required to place all of their work on websites/web pages. Then it was always available, never lost, shown to other students, parents, teachers, etc. at any time! ;-) (And optionally, could be placed on the worldwide web, as opposed to just a school network/server, if one really wanted to 'display' work, etc.) ;-) A much better solution, I found. :-) Heartily recommended, as opposed to the archaic method of printing out reams of paper, multiplied by millions of students/teachers/parents, at considerable cost to the environment, etc. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Printing et al.
Hi Jim, Great use case! It raises questions about how to use the laptop to educate but its has the undeniable authenticity of a real teacher with a real problem to solve! FYI there was a cross post from Benjamin Schwartz on the sugar e-mail list about ways to extend Sugar for taking and submitting tests. That may not promote constructionism but we could check if an automated testing system is viable and useful. E.g. is the laptop available enough and is that a priority for this teacher/school? Can we get a copy of a test and some info on the curriculum? Perhaps we can start a dialog on ways to improve students interest and success with a programmable (or extensible, configurable, malleable) activity that teaches by building. We could also include an automated testing/grading interface so the kids ace this test every time! I don't think we should tell the teacher they don't need what they say they need. Let's give them what they asked for and then engage a broader design dialog if they have time for it. The basic request sounds solvable with the right configuration. Is the printer on the network? Can we get the model name and see if CUPS has a driver for it? What application do they want to print from and can it generate .ps (if not what format)? Can they just e-mail (or NFS mount, HTTP post, rcp or whatever) the file to the desktop and print from there? Is UBS card (sneakernet) an option? Lastly, is the teacher up to doing it this way (we can translate if needed)? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Enabling_CUPS Once the printer is installed you're close but lpr -P fooprinter foodoc.ps will need a path to the file and they may not be comfortable with the prompt. Pardon my ignorance but how hard is it to create a mini-activity in the Sugar GUI that allows you to run a shell script? May need the ability to enter a file name or other arguments. Even better would be to drag and drop a file from the Journal on the print activity and away it goes. That's my 2 cents on design but let's hear from the teacher. Sorry for the long post and all the open questions but I think we can make a teacher in Peru happy if we listen and respond to their request. Can Jim or someone else help follow up on open questions (I speak Spanish so I can get in the loop if needed)? Let me know if this is not the right list for this kind of discussion. I don't want to bog down e-mail if there is a better place to refine the user aspects of this request. Thanks, Greg S -Original Message- From: Jim Gettys [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 1:41 PM To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi) Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: Printing et al. Sample 1: OLPC Trial School in Arahuay, Peru: Needs printing: but not for the kids (too expensive) for any routine printing. The teachers need to be able to use an XO for preparing tests and handouts for the kids, as conventional computers are not available in sufficient quantities (there is 1 conventional desktop system at the entire school). Note that on the scale of schools in the developing world, this one is still relatively well off. - Jim ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Printing and the XO
Hi Peter, Which teachers or schools have been asking for printing support? If we can add some documentation on that to the Wiki it will help a lot. It makes sense that schools would want printing and CUPS is a robust tool in my experience. Real world user cases will help determine how much effort is needed on the configuration/moderation fronts. They can also help validate if copying files to a USB drive is a viable alternative. My guess is schools want a printer if they can afford one. Let us know what feedback shows it's a priority for existing XO deployments and let's find out what printers they have and how they want to use them. Thanks, Greg Smith *** I started a page in the wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Enabling_CUPS Walter On Jan 3, 2008 12:49 AM, Bernardo Innocenti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Krenesky wrote: While not a primary concern of the project, printing is something that teachers are asking for. [...] Is this nice documentation already in the wiki? If not, please be bold and create a new page! -- \___/ |___| Bernardo Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \___\ One Laptop Per Child - http://www.laptop.org/ ___ 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
