[IAEP] Fwd: Sugar Digest 2009-11-02

2009-11-03 Thread Walter Bender
I must not be getting enough sleep. I forgot to CC iaep and dev.

-walter

-- Forwarded message --
From: Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com
Date: Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:53 PM
Subject: Sugar Digest 2009-11-02
To: community-n...@lists.sugarlabs.org


=== Sugar Digest ===

1. Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner are back in the news. Their new
book, ''SuperFreakonomics'' is getting panned by the critics—the
''Boston Globe'' referred to it as ''Sloppynomics'' (See
[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11/01/the_freakonomics_duo_tackles_climate_changeand_discovers_the_limits_of_cleverness).
I haven't read it yet, so I won't pass judgment. However, I found the
first book in the series, ''Freakonmics'', provocative but misguided.
The chapter on nature vs. nurture was especially misleading. In it,
the authors compared the academic performance—as measured by
standardized tests—of children adopted into families with children
born into the same families. Nature prevailed over nurture. Alas,
there are any number of flaws and holes in their data analysis, but
what was most damning was a throw-away comment at the end of the
chapter: in life after school, there was no difference in performance
between the two subject pools. So all they really demonstrated is that
there is no correlation between standardized test scores and life
skills. Given the penchant that we have for valuing that which we can
measure instead of measuring that which we value, this would have been
a provocative result, but not one picked up on by Levitt and Drucker.

What brought this to mind was that on the opposite page from the book
review was  an article advocating for the use of standardized test
data (See 
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11/01/a_way_to_improve_schools_one_instructor_at_a_time)
to measure the difference a teacher makes. Numerous studies use a
statistical analysis of standardized test results to measure the
'value added' that each teacher contributes each year. I am not
opposed to trying to measure both student and teacher performance. If
nothing else, it provides a forum for reflection, an important part of
the learning process.

The ''Globe'' reports that the Obama administration is considering
using value-added studies as a component of metric for evaluating
teachers and ting teacher pay to what is happening in each classroom
as a central part of school reform. Developing, rewarding, and
retaining effective teachers is a great goal. Let's just take care to
measure the whole child and the whole teacher when we presume to
measure effectiveness.

2. We had a Sugar Labs oversight board meeting last Friday in which we
reached consensus on a more formal set of rules regarding quorum and
voting by the board: we require a minimum quorum of four members
present in order to initiate a vote and a majority of all members
(four) for a passing vote. We will accept votes by email. We also
established a mechanism for oversight-board members and community
members to raise discussion topics. Community members should email any
SLOBs member with a topic suggestion before the start of a board
meeting. The meeting chair will triage discussion-topic requests. To
increase the likelihood that your discussion topic rises to the top
of the queue, please include:

# a link to existing discussion thread(s) on public mailing list;
# a ''brief'' summary of each option or alternative being proposed; and
# a rationale for why this issue needs to escalate to the oversight board.

The meeting log and minutes are available in the wiki (See
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Meeting_Log-2009-10-30
and  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2009-10-30).
The next meeting is scheduled for Friday, 6 November 2009 at 15:00 UTC
(10:00 EST).

=== In the community ===

3. Christoph Derndorfer will be speaking about Sugar and OLPC at the
26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) in Berlin on 27–20 December
(See http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/wiki/index.php/Welcome). He
would like to organize a meetup of European Sugar Labs / OLPC
contributors and people who might be interested in working with us in
the future.

4. We will be holding a Sugar Camp beginning next weekend in Bolzano
at the TIS innovation center. We hope to make a lot of progress on
0.88 as well as build upon our various ties to the GNOME community,
which also meeting in Bolzano.

=== Tech Talk ===

5. Thanks to the efforts of Josh Williams, Aleksey Lim, and David
Farning, the new http://activities.sugarlabs.org site went on-line
over the weekend. The new look is clean and also in compliance with
Mozilla copy

=== Sugar Labs ===

6. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on
the IAEP mailing list (Please see
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2009-October-24-30-som.jpg).

-walter

--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org

Re: [IAEP] SLs Chile and GNOME Chile

2009-11-03 Thread Werner Westermann
Thanks David, the technical background is not our best side, but we need to
get in track.  If you know ideas around Gnome and Sugar development it would
be great to know.  Regards,

werner

2009/11/3 David Van Assche dvanass...@gmail.com

 Hi Werner,
   I don't know if you know this, but both Sugar an Gnome share
 identical code for collaboration and communication in the form of
 Telepathy dbus api (http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/) The only
 difference is that at the time their presence service was not so
 advanced, so Sugar has its own. Telepathy has since really mattured
 though, and mission control 5, that includes an advanced presence
 service that hopeffuly some folks are porting to latest sugar,,

 David Van Assche

 On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Werner Westermann werne...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Hello Tomeu, regards from Santiago, Chile.
 
  GNOME community, as far as I know, it had a lot of ups and down in their
  effort to build collaborative work.  I really don't know if there's some
  counterpart to talk to.  This is no sin for any free-software community,
 but
  it gets hard to coordinate any kind of cooperation.  Where do you see
 that
  there's potential around Chile?  Are yo talking to chileans involved with
  GNOME?
 
  I must say that stimulating GNOMErs to work around Sugar could be a good
  idea, but I feel that should come from GNOME's vision and scope.  Two
  chileans are in GNOME's board (Germán Poo http://www.calcifer.org/ and
  Fernando San Martín http://blogs.gnome.org/fsmw/), and maybe they could
  help.  Is there any work going around SL and GNOME today?
 
  Best wishes,
 
  werner
 
 
  2009/11/2 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org
 
  Hi,
 
  have you considered reaching GNOME Chile for cooperation? Sugar's code
  is more than 90% from GNOME and the two upstreams regularly cooperate.
 
  There's lots of potential for resource pooling in the technical level,
  and also in the advocacy for free software in education.
 
  Regards,
 
  Tomeu
 
  --
  «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
  What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
  Farning
  ___
  IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
  IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
 
 
  ___
  IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
  IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
 



 --

 Mike Ditka  - If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have
 given us arms. -
 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mike_ditka.html

___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [IAEP] Fwd: Sugar Digest 2009-11-02

2009-11-03 Thread Walter Bender
I think there are more recommended activities than fit at any one
time. They are chosen randomly from the list. As to how the list is
compiled, I do not know, but I believe that Etoys is already a
recommended activity. I'll double-check.

-walter

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Rita Freudenberg r...@squeakland.org wrote:
 Walter Bender wrote:

 5. Thanks to the efforts of Josh Williams, Aleksey Lim, and David
 Farning, the new http://activities.sugarlabs.org site went on-line
 over the weekend. The new look is clean and also in compliance with
 Mozilla copy




 I would like to know how the activities on the starting page are chosen.
 What does it require from an activity to be recommended?
 My question is not just out of curiosity, I would like to see Etoys there.
 So I would like to know if we could do anything to be considered a
 recommended activity?

 Thanks,
 Rita



 --

 Rita Freudenberg
 Squeakland Foundation
 http://www.squeakland.org





-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep


Re: [IAEP] SLs Chile and GNOME Chile

2009-11-03 Thread Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero
I know that gnome-es is very active and at least one fellow Colombian
developer with experience on gnome,  we can begin to work with them at
sugar-desarrollo.


Rafael Ortiz



On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Werner Westermann werne...@gmail.com wrote:
 Thanks David, the technical background is not our best side, but we need to
 get in track.  If you know ideas around Gnome and Sugar development it would
 be great to know.  Regards,

 werner

 2009/11/3 David Van Assche dvanass...@gmail.com

 Hi Werner,
   I don't know if you know this, but both Sugar an Gnome share
 identical code for collaboration and communication in the form of
 Telepathy dbus api (http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/) The only
 difference is that at the time their presence service was not so
 advanced, so Sugar has its own. Telepathy has since really mattured
 though, and mission control 5, that includes an advanced presence
 service that hopeffuly some folks are porting to latest sugar,,

 David Van Assche

 On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Werner Westermann werne...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Hello Tomeu, regards from Santiago, Chile.
 
  GNOME community, as far as I know, it had a lot of ups and down in their
  effort to build collaborative work.  I really don't know if there's some
  counterpart to talk to.  This is no sin for any free-software community,
  but
  it gets hard to coordinate any kind of cooperation.  Where do you see
  that
  there's potential around Chile?  Are yo talking to chileans involved
  with
  GNOME?
 
  I must say that stimulating GNOMErs to work around Sugar could be a good
  idea, but I feel that should come from GNOME's vision and scope.  Two
  chileans are in GNOME's board (Germán Poo http://www.calcifer.org/ and
  Fernando San Martín http://blogs.gnome.org/fsmw/), and maybe they could
  help.  Is there any work going around SL and GNOME today?
 
  Best wishes,
 
  werner
 
 
  2009/11/2 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org
 
  Hi,
 
  have you considered reaching GNOME Chile for cooperation? Sugar's code
  is more than 90% from GNOME and the two upstreams regularly cooperate.
 
  There's lots of potential for resource pooling in the technical level,
  and also in the advocacy for free software in education.
 
  Regards,
 
  Tomeu
 
  --
  «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
  What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
  Farning
  ___
  IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
  IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
 
 
  ___
  IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
  IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
 



 --

 Mike Ditka  - If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have
 given us arms. -
 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mike_ditka.html


 ___
 IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep


Re: [IAEP] [Bookreader] Text to Speech readers for XO

2009-11-03 Thread Sayamindu Dasgupta
The Internet Archive has started to distribute books as DAISY
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAISY_Digital_Talking_Book), something
we should definitely take a look at. We might also consider leveraging
the GNOME accessibility framework to provide book-reading features for
Epubs and PDFs in Read - it may be tricky, but the end results would
be worth it.
Thanks,
Sayamindu


On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 5:34 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote:
 Bumping up this recent thread on the bookreader list about text-to-speech.
 Mike and Gregor, in case you haven't seen what's currently possible:

 I believe James S's Read Etexts uses speech-dispatcher to read selected
 text. Aleksey and others may have done further work with espeak...  I've
 included some old threads from the Sugar list this past spring below.

 SJ


 On Thu, Oct 29, Mike McCabe mcc...@archive.org wrote:

 I also think this is a great idea.  I've worked with several
 text-to-speech readers recently, as part of my effort to make the
 Internet Archive books available to print disabled people.

 They're very useful, and I think that this mode of reading could be of
 use to a very broad range of users.  I suspect we'll see more of it soon.

 I'm also curious to hear about specific experiences with
 linux-compatible free TTS, as we may be producing audio books with this
 to work with the new Library of Congress audio players.

 Best regards -
 Mike




 == [1] old note from James Simmons ==
 ( in repsponse to this speech-synthesis summer of code proposal:
 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/speech-synthesis )

 Chirag,

 Since you have been working with Aleksey Lim you probably know about
 text to speech with highlighting in Read Etexts.  I wrote the original
 TTS code that used speech-dispatcher with some assistance from Hemant
 Goyal and the folks on the speech-dispatcher project.  Aleksey
 refactored my code so it could work with either speech-dispatcher or his
 own gstreamer espeak plugin.  Not only does his plugin need no
 configuration to work, it also does a LOT better in producing timely
 callbacks as it reads each word.

 As you point out in your proposal, highlighting the word as it is spoken
 is a big part of the benefit of what you're proposing.  If all you
 wanted to do was capture some highlighted text in the clipboard and have
 it spoken in a voice you can configure in a control panel, that would be
 easy, even trivial.  It's the highlighting that's difficult.  When I
 added speech to Read Etexts I deliberately tried for the simplest
 approach that would get the job done.  It reads only the current page.
 It always starts either at the first word on the page, or if speech has
 been paused, it resumes with the last word spoken.  You can't choose the
 word to start on.  The Activity itself receives the callbacks as each
 word is spoken and takes care of doing the highlight and scrolling the
 textarea so the highlighted word stays on the screen.

 If I had to write a facility that did what Read Etexts does outside of
 the Activity I wouldn't know how to do it.  It seems to me that
 highlighting is best done by the Activity itself.  I can't deny that it
 would be useful to have all this work done as you have described without
 the Activity knowing anything about it, but it doesn't seem feasible.
 You'd have to have something that could work with gtk textareas, the
 evince component Read uses, Abiword, and everything else that came along.

 Another thing you'd have to deal with is PDFs composed of scanned in
 book pages.  There are a lot of these around (the Internet Archive is
 full of them) and somehow the kid trying to select words on a scanned in
 page would have to be clued in that these words are not selectable.

 I suppose you could make an Activity that grabbed whatever text was in
 the clipboard, displayed it in a textarea, and highlighted the words in
 that textarea as it spoke them.  I'm pretty sure that wasn't what you
 had in mind.

 Splitting sentences into separate words will be a challenge.  I just use
 spaces as delimiters and filter out characters like asterisks, vertical
 bars, etc.  That works OK for English but not for other languages.  If I
 wanted Read Etexts to do highlighting on the Bhagavad-Gita in the original
 Sanskrit it wouldn't work.  Even in English I get tripped up by double
 hyphens (--).  It would be nice if Gutenberg etexts put spaces around double
 hyphens but they don't.

 It looks like you've picked a challenging project, and I would love to be
 proven wrong about everything I've mentioned here.  Good luck with this,

 James Simmons


 == 2: SynPhony and reading assistance ==

 On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche c...@msbit.com
 wrote:

 I'd like to call your attention again to SynPhony.  We are close to a base
 release (probably this week) of a 44,000 word English word database that has
 a very rich array of information helpful to the teaching of English,
 especially reading.  A 10,000 word 

Re: [IAEP] What do I want Big Time To Be?

2009-11-03 Thread Sebastian Dziallas
Caryl Bigenho wrote:
 Hi All,

Hi,

I've put some comments inline...

 When I asked if SoaS was ready for Big Time, Martin replied, What do
 you mean? I'd recommend it but I don't know enough about what you want.

 So here is what I mean and want...

 I would like to be able to go into a room (or exhbit hall) filled with
 overworked, underpaid educators and while showing them Sugar on the XO,
 tell them they can run some of the same (and some even better)
 Activities on the equipment they already have at their schools... and
 that they can do it for free (free is good).

Running Sugar on a Stick on the XO with the *latest* Sugar version from 
the NAND is something that's on the list for the Blueberry launch.

Martin Dengler has been doing a great job at getting this realized!

 I would like them to get really excited about being able to get
 something for their students that is not only sound educationally, but
 that they can afford because the download is free. Their only cost is
 their chosen storage media.

 I would like to be able to show them how it works on a MacBook (my
 machine) and on a PC (if someone would just tell me how to get one for
 very little $$$). I would like it to be stable software that runs on
 their choice of Live CD or USB stick.

The point about Macs in general is that it's hard to say what's going to 
work and what isn't. At least insofar as most of the Linux distribution 
haven't focused on it. Which is why I wouldn't guarantee that everything 
works. This is also a distribution question, since it's the underlying 
distribution that needs to provide the support.

Anyway, without knowing what is causing issues, what hardware is used, 
and so on, it's a bit hard to say what's wrong (there are just so many 
different models out there!). Providing hardware information works for 
example pretty well following there instructions:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Hardware

On the stability: Development snapshots intended for testing won't 
necessarily be stable, as a matter of fact. Final releases should be, 
and that's what we're working on. Really.

 I would like to be able to give them links for downloading it and for
 getting other Activities. I would like to be able to give them links for
 very easy to follow instructions for downloading and using the software.
 And, I would like to be able to give them links to a place they can get
 help if they get stuck.

activities.sugarlabs.org and answers.launchpad.net/soas should do the trick.

 I know some of these things exist already but, unless I have missed
 something, most of them don't. My next presentation to educators will be
 at the CUELA/LAUSD Tech Fair on November 14.

It all depends on what you're looking at. Strawberry is now several 
months old. It works and is rather stable. But it doesn't contain all 
the features that are going to be in the next version, obviously.

Until Blueberry is out, there are the snapshots, but those might not be 
entirely working. So again, Blueberry is what will introduce a lot of 
this officially.

 How much of this is real already? How much is in the dim and distant
 future? Send links!

 Caryl =

--Sebastian
___
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Re: [IAEP] Fwd: Sugar Digest 2009-11-02

2009-11-03 Thread Sameer Verma
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:28 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote:
 I think there are more recommended activities than fit at any one
 time. They are chosen randomly from the list. As to how the list is
 compiled, I do not know, but I believe that Etoys is already a
 recommended activity. I'll double-check.

 Currently there is not a formal recommended policy.  Basically,
 whenever I see a cool new activity I add it to the recommend list and
 remove an activity that has been around for awhile.  I think Aleksey
 does the same.

 If anyone would like to create and maintain more formal recommended
 list it is very easy to create an activities.sl.o editor's account for
 them.

 david


I had written about this a long time ago. My approach was to rank
activities based on a list of attributes (weighted scoring). The
activities with the highest attributes would be the ones installed.
The same approach could be used for Recommended activities. The
thread is at 
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2008-September/000707.html
. The GoogleDocs spreadsheet is at
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p_Xhb6KcXLyEViA50CnCaDghl=en

Sameer

 -walter

 On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Rita Freudenberg r...@squeakland.org 
 wrote:
 Walter Bender wrote:

 5. Thanks to the efforts of Josh Williams, Aleksey Lim, and David
 Farning, the new http://activities.sugarlabs.org site went on-line
 over the weekend. The new look is clean and also in compliance with
 Mozilla copy




 I would like to know how the activities on the starting page are chosen.
 What does it require from an activity to be recommended?
 My question is not just out of curiosity, I would like to see Etoys there.
 So I would like to know if we could do anything to be considered a
 recommended activity?

 Thanks,
 Rita



 --

 Rita Freudenberg
 Squeakland Foundation
 http://www.squeakland.org





 --
 Walter Bender
 Sugar Labs
 http://www.sugarlabs.org
 ___
 IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

 ___
 IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep


Re: [IAEP] Fwd: Sugar Digest 2009-11-02

2009-11-03 Thread David Farning
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:28 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 I think there are more recommended activities than fit at any one
 time. They are chosen randomly from the list. As to how the list is
 compiled, I do not know, but I believe that Etoys is already a
 recommended activity. I'll double-check.

 Currently there is not a formal recommended policy.  Basically,
 whenever I see a cool new activity I add it to the recommend list and
 remove an activity that has been around for awhile.  I think Aleksey
 does the same.

 If anyone would like to create and maintain more formal recommended
 list it is very easy to create an activities.sl.o editor's account for
 them.

 david


 I had written about this a long time ago. My approach was to rank
 activities based on a list of attributes (weighted scoring). The
 activities with the highest attributes would be the ones installed.
 The same approach could be used for Recommended activities. The
 thread is at 
 http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2008-September/000707.html
 . The GoogleDocs spreadsheet is at
 http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p_Xhb6KcXLyEViA50CnCaDghl=en

If you are interested, the job of recommend list[1] maintainer is
open.  ASLO is getting 100,000 visits a month, doubling every three
months, so the effect of your work would be rather widespread.

david

1. http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/recommended

 Sameer

 -walter

 On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Rita Freudenberg r...@squeakland.org 
 wrote:
 Walter Bender wrote:

 5. Thanks to the efforts of Josh Williams, Aleksey Lim, and David
 Farning, the new http://activities.sugarlabs.org site went on-line
 over the weekend. The new look is clean and also in compliance with
 Mozilla copy




 I would like to know how the activities on the starting page are chosen.
 What does it require from an activity to be recommended?
 My question is not just out of curiosity, I would like to see Etoys there.
 So I would like to know if we could do anything to be considered a
 recommended activity?

 Thanks,
 Rita



 --

 Rita Freudenberg
 Squeakland Foundation
 http://www.squeakland.org





 --
 Walter Bender
 Sugar Labs
 http://www.sugarlabs.org
 ___
 IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

 ___
 IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep


___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
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[IAEP] stat collecto activity

2009-11-03 Thread David Van Assche
The new google wave stuff made me think of a maybe interesting
activity that would be very easy to write but might be useful for
teachers to gain feedback from their students, while treating them
more as peers in the constructionist philosophy. The idea is, to have
a a multiple choice like activity that would ask students about their
experience of lessons.

For example, lets say they have been learning algebra, the teacer
could get them to launch an activity that asks questions like with
multiple answers like:
The most difficult part to learn was a) blah, b) bleh,  c) bluh, The
most fun part was a)) glah b) gleh c) gluh

What do u think would something like that be useful? The problem I see
is that the teacher would actuallly have o create the questions and
answers, so it might seem like too redundant. I guess the best way
would be for the teacher to get the students to create these quizzes
(for lack of a better word) would be very simple to create such an
activity. Would there be ebnough demand and usage of such ab activity?

regards,
David Van Assche
___
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IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [IAEP] Fwd: Sugar Digest 2009-11-02

2009-11-03 Thread David Farning
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:28 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote:
 I think there are more recommended activities than fit at any one
 time. They are chosen randomly from the list. As to how the list is
 compiled, I do not know, but I believe that Etoys is already a
 recommended activity. I'll double-check.

Currently there is not a formal recommended policy.  Basically,
whenever I see a cool new activity I add it to the recommend list and
remove an activity that has been around for awhile.  I think Aleksey
does the same.

If anyone would like to create and maintain more formal recommended
list it is very easy to create an activities.sl.o editor's account for
them.

david

 -walter

 On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Rita Freudenberg r...@squeakland.org wrote:
 Walter Bender wrote:

 5. Thanks to the efforts of Josh Williams, Aleksey Lim, and David
 Farning, the new http://activities.sugarlabs.org site went on-line
 over the weekend. The new look is clean and also in compliance with
 Mozilla copy




 I would like to know how the activities on the starting page are chosen.
 What does it require from an activity to be recommended?
 My question is not just out of curiosity, I would like to see Etoys there.
 So I would like to know if we could do anything to be considered a
 recommended activity?

 Thanks,
 Rita



 --

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 http://www.squeakland.org





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[IAEP] Infrastructure Status Report

2009-11-03 Thread David Farning
While SoaS and Trademarks have gotten most of the attention lately,
other parts of Sugar Labs are growing and moving forward.   A lot is
happening on the infrastructure side of the project.  Some of it
behind the scenes and some of it more public.

--Capacity growth--
The biggest challenge faced by the team is handling capacity growth.

-Machines-
The first and most visible need is additional servers. Initially we
outsourced several of our services.  While cost effective, that policy
created problems because each place we outsourced to had different
support policies and system requirements.

Now we are going through a consolidating phase.  It is much easier to
maintain a consistent infrastructure.  Several of our services now
need to be clustered across groups of co-located machines for load
balancing and increasing reliability.

We are also seeing growth rate which are doubling every quarter for
Activities.sl.o.

-Administrators-
The second and less visible need is for administrators to help keep
the systems alive.  Sorry Bernie, we are going to have to pull you
(kicking and screaming) from sysadmin to Infrastructure team leader.
We are going to need to work on training and identify others so that
they can take authority and responsibility of parts of the
infrastructure.

--Specific Tasks--
There are a number of specific tasks in progress which need help.

-Launch Pad-
Luke is working on migrating pieces of the Infrastructure to Launch
Pad.  There are a number of Pros and Cons to this.

The big win will be using the LB bug tracker.  Upstream trac (our
current bug tracker) development has stalled make it very difficult to
maintain dev.sl.o.  Other improvements will be LP answers and LP
blueprints.  The user facing portion of LP is very good.

Overall the LP team has been very good to work with. But I still have
a number of reservations that I hope Luke and the LP team can take
care of:
1.  Integration with the rest of Sugar Labs services.  Specificly
git.sl.org and translate.sl.org.
2.  Ability not to get lost in Ubuntu.  There are several place where
it is very easy to unwittingly exit the Sugar project and end up
wandering around Ubuntu.
3.  Ability to get easily get back to the rest of the *sl.org

I encourage others to get involved in this project to insure that:
1. It is the right thing to do.
2. Work with the Sugar and LP communities to insure that this process
is beneficial to both parties.
3. Work with the Sugar user and developer communities to insure that
the migration goes smoothly.

-Activities.sl.org-
I am working on separating activities.sl.o from the rest of the Sugar
Labs services.

 There are several reasons for separating out a.sl.o:
1.  It will be easier to grant admin authority to a.sl.o with granting
admin authority to all of the SL infrastructure.
2.  A.sl.o is a resource hog.  By splitting it out, we can think about
scaling a.sl.o without worrying about how it will affect the rest of
the infrastructure.
3.  Security. The separation with provide a fence between a.sl.o and
the rest of the infrastructure.  If one part is compromised it will
not affect the other parts.

If any one want to help out,  there are several interesting tasks...
1. Setting up a fresh instance of a.sl.o.
2. Load balancing and HA for the php front end.
3. Load balancing and HA for the my SQL database.

-Beamrider-
Bernie is in the process of splitting up the services on sunjammer
between two machines, it and Beamrider.  This is primarily lead by the
needs to:
1.  Scale sunjammer.  In addition to SL stuff, Sunjammer is also
hosting services for local labs and OLE.
2.  Increase security and reliability.  Sunjammer will remain the
'developer' machine, hosting developer accounts and testing/devel
services, while beamrider will host higher priorith services.

-Machines and Rack space-
Finally, we need to start thinking about future machine and rack space
needs.  Of particular concern is finding a hosting provider that is
willing and able to our growing number of machines in a single
facility.

david
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Re: [IAEP] 'apt-get install sugar-platform' available for Ubuntu9.10.

2009-11-03 Thread David Farning
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 01:02, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote:
 After a couple of weeks of reading tutorials, help from Aleksey, and
 some Ubuntu developers there are Sugar packages available for Ubuntu
 9.10.

 Just gave them a try and worked great, congrats all! Which are the next steps?

Cool

The next steps are a proper bug tracker and start patching.  It has
been a little frustrating because all of the bugs on this thread have
been part of the lower packages.  As part of my learning I have been
starting with the easiest packages first, the activities.  From there
I hope to move to the more complicated core sugar packages and finally
start on xulrunner an csound.

The basic strategy is to move towards Debian's upstream packages.  The
goal is to allow Ubuntu and Debian to share patches and feedback
without step on each others toes with regard to packaging methods.
Debian has added several interesting features to automate the
packaging process.  But, these features make it harder for new
packagers to get started.

 Btw, why did we needed to build our own xulrunner?

The xpcom provided by the Ubuntu xulrunner does not seem to work correctly.

david

 Regards,

 Tomeu

 For now, these packages are available on the Ubuntu-Sugarteam PPA
 (personal package archive) at
 https://launchpad.net/~sugarteam/+archive/0.86 .

 To use these packages, just add
 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugarteam/0.86/ubuntu karmic main' to the
 end of /etc/apt/sources.list

 Ubuntu-Sugarteam

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 ubuntu-sugart...@lists.ubuntu.com
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 What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
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Re: [IAEP] Stat collection

2009-11-03 Thread ALEXANDER JONES (RIT Student)
Please check out http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Teacher%27s_Tools
it's a project that i've been working on and have posted several emails to 
several mailing lists about. It is extremely similar and i have gotten positive 
feedback from a few people about its usability. feel free to comment on it 
yourself if you're interested






The new google wave stuff made me think of a maybe interesting
activity that would be very easy to write but might be useful for
teachers to gain feedback from their students, while treating them
more as peers in the constructionist philosophy. The idea is, to have
a a multiple choice like activity that would ask students about their
experience of lessons.

For example, lets say they have been learning algebra, the teacer
could get them to launch an activity that asks questions like with
multiple answers like:
The most difficult part to learn was a) blah, b) bleh,  c) bluh, The
most fun part was a)) glah b) gleh c) gluh

What do u think would something like that be useful? The problem I see
is that the teacher would actuallly have o create the questions and
answers, so it might seem like too redundant. I guess the best way
would be for the teacher to get the students to create these quizzes
(for lack of a better word) would be very simple to create such an
activity. Would there be ebnough demand and usage of such ab activity?

regards,
David Van Assche
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Re: [IAEP] Stat collection

2009-11-03 Thread David Van Assche
Yes it is quite similar indeed, but I think it'd better be served with
python and telepathy as an activity from within  sugar, rather thn a
dlasbb /web app.I guess its mostly a personal thing, but I have an
exteme dislike of Flash based apps... In LTSP labs, for exmple, unless
u are running firefox+flash as local apps, fkash has a tendency to
bring the network to its knees. I havent considered how/why do use
d-tubes yet, but I'm sure there is a goiod way to use them. Karma
might be another way to do this, as long as it wouldn't require flash
(an unesccasary demand) Anyway, might be wiirth integrating int
another quiz app I did, pyqclic as it already has the necessary
underlying frameqork. I's bw happy to work with you on this
however if u are keen to port your prototype to python and use
telepathy bindings for collaboration. I guess need to figure out how
ti best use collbab here, but what comes to mind is, passing the app
around the class and having every student write a question for the
quiz, then have the teacher review, and export the finished product as
an XML document which would then be capable of running in Moodle,
inside Sugar itself, or even a web app.

btw, just read a little deeper and realise your end result would be
python too, a good choice... so what's holding u back from doing it
irght now? I also see that your aim is really a general multiple
choice quiz for whatever subject, while what I was getting at was more
of collecting statistical data on particular lessons. Even so, the
same framework could be used for both approaches. Anyway, pyqclic is
extremely similar except visual in that the teacher uploads an image
points and clicks on the image and then fills in the label. The
student then uses the tester to fill in the labels. I think we could
use a similar apprioach and even add it as another module, so the
teacher can choose which kind of quiz they'd like (visual, multiple
choice suubject based, or statistical, whatever else we've missed,
perhaps essay based quiz or something) Anyway, the real challenge is
how to use collab with this properly. I've gotten stuck on that oart
in pyqcclic for a whilke now... as my initial idea was to pass the app
from collaborating student to student letting each fill in a label. An
approach I can think of and like is this could be mixed with the
multiple choice, so that its a bit more random, yet still subject
based, so as to cover more ground with the abilitity to export the
whole quiz as an XML doc and import into Moodle or something else
and perhaps have the statistical gathering as a totally seperate
module what do u think?


kind Regard,
David Van Assche

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 5:57 AM, ALEXANDER JONES (RIT Student)
acj3...@rit.edu wrote:
 Please check out http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Teacher%27s_Tools
 it's a project that i've been working on and have posted several emails to
 several mailing lists about. It is extremely similar and i have gotten
 positive feedback from a few people about its usability. feel free to
 comment on it yourself if you're interested






 The new google wave stuff made me think of a maybe interesting
 activity that would be very easy to write but might be useful for
 teachers to gain feedback from their students, while treating them
 more as peers in the constructionist philosophy. The idea is, to have
 a a multiple choice like activity that would ask students about their
 experience of lessons.

 For example, lets say they have been learning algebra, the teacer
 could get them to launch an activity that asks questions like with
 multiple answers like:
 The most difficult part to learn was a) blah, b) bleh,  c) bluh, The
 most fun part was a)) glah b) gleh c) gluh

 What do u think would something like that be useful? The problem I see
 is that the teacher would actuallly have o create the questions and
 answers, so it might seem like too redundant. I guess the best way
 would be for the teacher to get the students to create these quizzes
 (for lack of a better word) would be very simple to create such an
 activity. Would there be ebnough demand and usage of such ab activity?

 regards,
 David Van Assche
 ___
 IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

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