Re: [IAEP] SoaS Breakthrough!
2012/1/13 Iain Brown Douglas i...@browndouglas.plus.com: On Wed, 2012-01-11 at 03:21 +0100, Rubén Rodríguez wrote: The method I think would be a breakthrough for a school is to use a thin client environment. One server is enough to run a typical school, you only need to manage one standard GNU/Linux computer, the clients need no software or configuration, and they can keep whatever they already have in their hard drives untouched and usable. Also all the students data are in an easy to backup spot, installing an activity in the server makes it available for everyone instantly, and you can also combine it with class management software like iTALC. This sounds useful. (For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client ) So, if an enthusiastic volunteer had demonstrated Sugar on a Stick to a school's IT person who has no previous sugar or linux experience - what would need to be on their learning curve, to set up such a system? Probably rewardingly tricky. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Getting learning content to learners - some questions
I was wondering how open educational resources (OER) find their way into the minds of learners. I have some capacity to be able to help, but I would like to learn more. As background, I've recently begun contracting full time to the Open Knowledge Foundation[0]. One of the projects that the organisation runs is Open Text Book[1]. The project is mostly dormant. I would like to awaken it. However, there are many ebook repositories in existence. I would like advice on the best way to help. Some questions: - Do educators use digital content from non-traditional sources? - What is missing for learners and teachers? - Are things easy enough for people creating learning material to get it into the hands of others? Thanks all Tim McNamara Professional \\ paperlessprojects.com Personal \\ @timClicks http://twitter.com/timClicks | timmcnamara.co.nz [0] http://okfn.org [1] http://www.opentextbook.org/repository/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [FM Discuss] Fwd: Sugar Lab
This is excellent work. Well done. Tim McNamara | @timClicks http://twitter.com/timClicks | timmcnamara.co.nz On 13 May 2011 04:56, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Noy Shoung says he has about a hundred Cambodians ready and willing to work on localization and translation projects, for which he will be Administrator/Project Manager/Training Manager/whatever. I am blogging a bit more information, which will appear shortly on Planet Sugar. More news to follow. -- Forwarded message -- From: Noy Shoung noysho...@gmail.com Date: Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:35 Subject: Sugar Lab To: ខ្មែរជុំឡា khmerjoomla.org khmerjoo...@googlegroups.com, khme...@googlegroups.com, khmerfoss khmerf...@googlegroups.com Cc: Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com Dear all members and colleagues I am very proud of Edward Cherlin, who is always trying to help education tools for children around the world for example OLPC, Sugar Localization project FLOSS Manuals Textbook replacing etc Please help to make it happen by contributing your time here http://translate.flossmanuals.net http://translate.sugarlabs.org/km/ http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks If you need any help please contact me directly or contact Edward in this cc copy email Your value time and input, hard work will credit forever, Best regards Noy -- Noy Shoung POOR CAN HELP, BUT LAZY CAN'T HELP Phnom Penh, Cambodia skype: noyshoung mobile +855-1771- email noysho...@gmail.com GOD WILL HELP YOU IF YOU HELP YOURSELF -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ Discuss mailing list disc...@lists.flossmanuals.net http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Pootle video tutorials?
Are video tutorials of using Pootle available? Failing that, where do people think the best guides are? I would like to be able to have an en_NZ translation completed. It seems like a small thing, but it's best for New Zealand children if we use our spelling rather than en_US. However I find the interface fairly confusing and am slightly worried I am breaking things. -- Tim McNamara @timClicks http://timmcnamara.co.nz http://people.sugarlabs.org/~tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Youtube Downloads on XO??? How to???
On 28 December 2010 20:11, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi All, I am working with a project that wants to download Kahn Academy's math lessons ( http://www.khanacademy.org/ ) and use them offline on the XO-1. Hi Caryl, As discussed before, distributing YouTube videos is illegal because it breaches YouTube's terms. However, the videos are actually released under the CC-BY-NC license from the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/). This means that you're free to use those videos, just not the ones from YouTube itself. They're slightly harder to search for, but the formats will play on the XO just fine. Select .ogv files. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Dumb Questions... Input Wanted... Please Discuss!
On 28 October 2010 09:04, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi All... Here are some dumb questions for you. In a couple of weeks I will be doing a 2-hr hands-on workshop (at the CUELA Tech Fair) about OLPC, Sugar, and open source software teachers may want to try with their classes using the computers they already have at their schools. I would like to give them a CD or DVD with the files they would need to make their own USB sticks. I will also be showing them the online sites for Etoys and Scratch. I was thinking of including at least one version of SoaS, a copy of Virtual Box for Mac users, Live usb creator for SoaS (with text files telling how to use them), and Etoys-to-go. [...] I don't think these are dumb questions at all. I think the technical side can be dealt with by others. One thing that's missing is reading material for people to take away. There may not be enough time for this conference, but I think we could use booki.cc Lulu.com to produce some quality material from our wiki. I wonder whether IAEP participants can work together to migrate content from the wiki for such a project. Some topic areas could include: - integrating Sugar into the classroom - integrating Sugar into a standardised testing environment - where to get help as a teacher (e.g. how to sign up to IAEP!) - where to get content (Wikieducator, other open access content resources, etc) - encouraging discovery Just an idea, Tim @timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] stepping down as maintainer
On 24 October 2010 17:42, David Farning dfarn...@ubuntu.com wrote: Sugar Labs lost its lead developer. [...] At the risk of angering pretty much everybody Sugar Labs has three fundamental problems. Sugar Labs is optimistic to the point of untruthfulness. Sugar Labs is lead by veto rather than vision. There is a lack of accountability to stakeholders. David, Thank you for your bravery and frankness with which you have raised these concerns. My main desire from these discussion is that contributors will feel like they are contributing to a project with momentum by the end of them. I would like to address your three points. However, I would also like to add some more context to the discussion as I see it: Sugar faces several up-coming technical challenges that will test the resolve of Sugar Labs. - a move to a touch-based interface - change in hardware infrastructure for the XOs (e.g. ARM processors) - Move to GNOME 3.0 - Move to Python 2.7 eventually to 3.x From the pedagogical side, I'm sure that an increased emphasis on standardised testing (at least in the developed world) means that there will be an increased expectation for standardised teaching tools. *Issue 1*: over-promising This is a tricky problem. Sugar is enticing. I think that we will not be able to contain people's enthusiasm, nor do I think that Sugar Labs should stop aspiring to provide the world's best educational platform. Instead, we should focus on improving the technology. *Issue 2*: veto We have a small cadre of experienced and highly able contributors. *Issue 3*: lack of accountability to stakeholders I don't agree that Sugar Labs is unresponsive. Nor do I agree that a change in the leadership structure will be beneficial. WB has provided excellent service to the team. We have engaged with OLPC, Fedora and provide support several deployments. For a volunteer driven organisation, it's highly responsive. Here are some of my reflections over the last few days: The list of challenges does look overwhelming. There is probably a lack of developer capacity in our community to deal with them. At least, I'm fairly intimidated. Sugar is a very large project, with hundreds of interdependent parts. However, we should remember that each of these challenges is surmountable. They will also present developers with the possibility to innovate and interesting solutions. It would be good to quantify the risks that the project faces. Are the list of challenges I've written up valid things to worry about? I think Sugar Labs could create an informal mentor system to enable more contributions from current 'lurkers'. This proposal is I think the development teams needs to draw on IAEP others for support. I think that once everyone feels like that a degree of momentum has been reached, the community will grow and our educators will be able to go back to just educating. Sugar Labs does lots of its own infrastructure. Is that the best use of contributors' time? (Why don't we use Canonical's Launchpad?) Regards, Tim McNamara @timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs UN Online Volunteering: Potential source of translators others?
Sugar Labs appears to be eligible to part of the United Nations Online Volunteering[1]. There is a pool of about 200,000 registered volunteers, I'm not sure how many are software developers - most projects are vanity website development. Sugar would be an interesting This may be a good way to tap into a wide pool of volunteers, especially from outside of USA/Europe, but would incur an administration penalty. Perhaps a discussion to be had at SLOBs level, would there be support for Sugar Labs to look into joining? Organizations provide volunteer opportunities in the form of discrete project briefs. I think this would be best suited to translation tasks, with an brief per Activity. Regards, Tim. [1] http://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/org/resources/organization_criteria.html ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Ask! Please! (Re: how to ask a question)
On 9 October 2010 11:33, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Quoting Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com: I have a partial draft of a textbook on the subject at http://www.booki.cc/discovering-discovery/ It encourages XO owners to explore on their own and find out what questions they have before we give them answers. I like the idea. It encourages users to jump in and take risks, experiment, not worry if they have incomplete understanding. Me too, and have added some feedback to NZ educators on why open source can aid education in ways that closed source can't[1]. From [1]: Here is one way that I can think that that open source benefits learners, based only on my own experience however. What I've witnessed from many computer uses is a sense of frustration and helplessness when something doesn't work as they think it should. People who buy software are trained to wait for automatic updates, or worse they are forced onto purchasing the next version. Processes inside organisations say, If you're having problems, call the helpdesk.* The feedback loop might be an automated report that is generated and sent to an anonymous server. I would like to think that open source software would enable a sense of critical analysis, exploration and problem solving. For me, when I have a problem with a piece of software that I use, I tend to go through a process of reflection: Is this issue something other people might be having? Can I reproduce the problem? Why is the system built like this, there must be a reason? It must be useful for something. Is the hassle of the computer problem larger than the hassle of my time to send feedback? How can I word a report to developers that explains what's going wrong? In short, I have the impression that users of paid software feel like they don't have the skills to contribute. They don't see themselves as a participant in a computer system. By computer system, I mean a system that includes software, hardware and the user to generate some useful output. Open source software has helped me by creating a sense of empowerment and discovery. I use the software that I want to run. When there's a problem, my involvement forms part of the solution. [1] http://groups.google.com/group/mle-reference-group/browse_thread/thread/3caf7421439020d6 (scroll to bottom) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Suggestions Needed!
On 9 October 2010 12:14, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Folks... I'm working on the abstract for my proposed presentation at CUE 2011 in Palm Springs in March. The filing deadline is Monday, but I was hoping to put it in tomorrow morning since we will be traveling Sunday. They asked for an outline of the presentation in the abstract, that is why it is in that form. I want to focus mainly on Sugar and SoaS for this talk but still put in stuff about OLPC and volunteering. My main suggestion would be to change the focus from free educational software, e.g. no cost, to the benefits of the Sugar Learning Platform and the other packages you're highlighting as quality educational tools in and of themselves. I don't know if this makes sense, but I feel that promoting free software as no cost cheapens it to a degree. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] OLPC receives USD5.6m from Marvell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11475335 Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] How can we consistantly evalutate CRT monitor quality?
On 4 October 2010 06:39, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Is there a way to have different people repeatably agree on how good a CRT monitor is? Is there a quantitive measure that is reasonably easy to use? A test image that can somehow get repeatable results by different people? Some things that are quantifiable that may help the project: - Number of seconds until warm up. - Screen resolution. - Date of manufacture. - Does it have its packaging? - Are its cables intact? - Are the connection points (e.g. ends of cables) intact? - Is there ghosting? - What does it weigh? I can't think of an easy way to measure lumens and contrast, however. I can't help thinking that any metric would depend on the perception of the observer, lighting conditions in the room, etc. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sur] [Olpc-uruguay] Sugar Labs Oversight Board?
On 25 September 2010 02:22, Pablo Flores pflor...@gmail.com wrote: My support to Rosamel too! The translation is not a minor issue and it would be good to challenge ourselves to find solutions so we can integrate in discussions people that speak different languages. Isn't there some kind of add-on for mailman for making automatic translations? También mi apoto a Rosamel ! El tema de las traducciones no es algo menor, y estaría bueno que nos desafiáramos a nosotros mismos a buscar soluciones que permitan integrar en las discusiones a gente que habla en distintos idiomas. No hay algún tipo de add-on para mailman que haga traducciones automáticas? Saludos, Pablo Flores Esperanto? ;) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Etoys, is it difficult or easy?
The analogy doesn't quite fit, as it's possible to do complex things in all of those tools and it's easy to do simple things in EToys. Each Activity can be used in this learning model, e.g. training wheels to motorbike. Tim On 25 September 2010 05:48, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote: And Scratch? ... don't remember where I read it, but it sounded logical to me. Use progressively difficult tools for progressively difficult tasks. To confirm this statement, I add the phrase: Visible learning, invisible technology. Children would first learn TurtleArt. When they outgrow it switch to Scratch. When all its possibilities are exhausted, continue with eToys. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Text to Speech in other Activities (was Re: FW: [Olpc-uruguay] MiguelEstudia (Version 1))
On 17 September 2010 02:19, James Simmons nices...@gmail.com wrote: Tim, Do I have documentation? Surely your jest! http://en.flossmanuals.net/ActivitiesGuideSugar/TextToSpeech This is a chapter of Make Your Own Sugar Activities!, a FLOSS Manual I wrote (with much help from the folks on the Sugar-Devel mailing list). There's a Spanish version in progress, and we hope to have printed versions available from Lulu in time for Christmas. James, Thanks for this! I was sure that I had read through the guide all the way through. This book is an amazing resource. Thank you. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SoaS] [MARKETING] Get Sugar landing page
On 16 September 2010 09:00, Tabitha Roder tabi...@tabitha.net.nz wrote: If we support VIrtualBox we should probably also support VMWare, Hyper-V, KVM and Xen. Who's going to do all that testing when we have barely the resources to do a single image. Peter I am a teacher of sorts and have been into loads of education institutes from pre school through to tertiary. Apple is everywhere so we have to solve this problem. Apple designs vertically integrated systems. If schools teachers decide to adopt this philosophy, they take the risk that they can't use external stuff. I don't know if Sugar Labs have the capacity to remedy this. I think that Sugar Labs should focus on making quality software, and push responsibility for adoption downstream to distributions and companies/orgs that want to promote Sugar's adoption. I'm sorry for my lack of sympathy, but I don't see Sugar running natively on a Mac platform as a priority for Sugar Labs. It's a priority, but we have many priorities and few resources. I use Virtualbox and have a geek master to turn to for help when I need it. I have not heard of those other virtual machine things and all the teachers I know that have tried a virtual machine have done so with Virtualbox or something called bootcamp (which might not even be a virtual machine, who knows?) You're right there, Boot Camp[1] is not virtualisation. It is more like an installer to make things easier for people to install a second operating system. It assists people with repartitioning their hard drives and so forth. I think that Boot Camp is a good route to investigate if someone has the energy. Perhaps some intrepid Mac users could adapt current tutorials[3] for Sugar. Tim [1] http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BootCamp [2] http://www.helium.com/items/421906-how-to-install-linux-on-an-intel-mac-with-boot-camp [note: marketing list removed from discussion] ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Text to Speech in other Activities (was Re: FW: [Olpc-uruguay] MiguelEstudia (Version 1))
[adding Sugar devel] On 16 September 2010 07:14, James Simmons nices...@gmail.com wrote: Caryl, I haven't tried this out yet but I think it's a great idea. Text to speech is underutilized in Activities, in my opinion. It isn't that difficult to add TTS to an Activity, and every kid I've ever shown my XO to has been delighted to hear it speak! James Simmons Hi James, I agree - we always have Speak open at demos. Do you have any documentation on how to get the speech engine running in other activities? I wasn't quite sure how to access (engine) Alice when I spent a few hours a few months ago looking into a language flash cards[1] Tim [1] Such as http://remembersaurus.com/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Suggested change to Arithmetic blurb on http://activities.sugarlabs.org
From http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4204, we currently have: Arithmetic is a game that tries to show all the participants the same questions at the same time, gives an ongoing scoreboard of how many questions each participant has answered correctly, and measures the amount of time it takes everyone to answer each question. It also lets the group choose which of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division their game should use, and how hard the questions should be. I feel we should replace that text with: Arithmetic is an activity that allows learners to compete in maths challenges. Learners choose their a difficulty level and whether to do addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. Challenges work by Arithmetic providing questions to every learner sharing the activity. Responses to those questions are checked and timed. The results are presented on a scoreboard. I thought it was more appropriate to send this message to this mailing list, rather than the developer list, because it's centred around the language, not the technology. Do let me know if there's a better location for these suggestions. If there is support, I will create a ticket in the bug tracker. Regards, Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs potentially a trade mark infringer
Compare Breakout[1] with Break Out[2] I haven't checked the USPTO's database, but I'm fairly certain that Atari would have registered it. Tim [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game) [2] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4235 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] Sugar Labs 2010 Goals Review
On 15 July 2010 07:04, C. Scott Ananian csc...@cscott.net wrote: Are developers using Sugar as their day-to-day development environment yet? Certainly not me... I'm not even sure it will ever happen. Even [...] However, I've seen many teachers using Sugar. Not just Browse. They also use Write and Record. [...] Given a choice, many teachers started using Gnome. Some of them messed up their systems, just like children. So consider this a mild suggestion that the dogfooding goal has some way yet to go. Major developers can't use Sugar for day-to-day work, and even teachers who try this have difficulty. Since Gnome is (in your admission) not a good alternative either, it seems like there's something left to be done here, if only for the teachers' use case. (Perhaps the task is just to refine the Gnome image distributed with Sugar to be more appropriate for naive users.) I think it's highly inappropriate to say that eating your own dogfood means that software developers, or even teachers, should use Sugar. Sugar is an environment that is used by teachers to create learning environments for children. Therefore, it's impossible that we as adults will ever be able to do experience the software as it was intended. We shouldn't set ourselves impossible goals. Sugar is not a general computing environment. Sugar is for learners. It's a highly structured place where details like filesystems even files themselves are hidden. Software devs care about files. Teachers care about applications that are for school administration. Software developers go to extensive lengths to customise their development environment. People are highly specific about what maximises their own productivity. Looking at Bernie's original list, it seems that Sugar Labs has done exceptionally well with its available resources. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] FW: Feedback request for my Python tutorial
On 9 July 2010 19:52, Kevin Kirton kpkir...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for that Caryl. I'm using Gmail and it seems I have to click Reply to all instead of Reply, which I keep forgetting. But even now, the IAEP address only comes up as CC. Hmmm Kevin - I'm not an administrator of IAEP, but that's often a setting that is intentionally set. Mailman is putting the sender's email address as the from address, and has not set a reply-to address. While it can cause fustration, it makes messages to the mailing list deliberate. This can lead to fewer throw away posts. BR Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Feedback request for my Python tutorial
On 8 July 2010 06:19, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Dinko, A quick note on my way out the door. Since you are writing the tutorial in the first person singular (rather than first person plural editorial we, you probably will want to have it be the computer (or Python) talking. So in the first paragraph of the Intro, you might want to give the speaker a name and start something like this: Hello there, and welcome to tutorial name. I'm Pippy Man (or what ever you pick for a name) and I will be your guide to this adventure in programming. I speak Python so we will need an interpreter for you to be able to give me commands (tell me what to do). [snip] An interpreter is a special computer program that changes your commands from Python to a language I can understand so that I can do what you tell me to do. And, by the way, I always do exactly what you tell me to do... which may not always be what you thought you told me to do. Programming is full of lots of surprises! Now, before we continue, please tell me your name etc Consistency with Speak would be for the bot to speak out the XO's name. Mine says, Hello Olly, type something. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Tonight's Question: Read vs Read ETexts?
On 25 June 2010 14:39, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Saturday I need to show someone via Skype how to use the XO as a book reader. So far no luck with it. I have tried both the Read Activity and the Read E Texts Activity and can't seem to get either to work well. Are there any really good instructions anywhere for these? I have been telling folks everywhere how the XO makes a great book reader, but haven't tried it in ages! Am I lying to them? Here are some pointers that may assist: - With Read, open downloaded documents from the Journal, not directly from the Activity itself. [1] - ebook formats can be tricky - some ebook formats are designed to be read by a particular type of device. XOs are highly unlikely to high up on the supported device list. - From memory, those Activities (possibly just Read E Texts) are derived from FBReader[1]. FBReader can open many several formats, but only a few are supported fully.[2] This means that it will display text, but that display may not be pretty. Also, does No luck with it mean that nothing opens at all, or does it mean that files open but they are poorly rendered? If things are opening but they look ugly, it's probably a software issue. If things are not opening at all, you are probably trying to open ebooks in a way Sugar doesn't understand. Best of luck! Tim [1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Read#How_to_use [2] http://www.fbreader.org/ [3] http://www.fbreader.org/docs/formats.php Sometimes it depends on the type of ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] OLPC rules out Windows for XO-3
On 4 June 2010 09:07, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Tim, As soon as I heard that OLPC was moving to ARM, I winced slightly. This is going to make life much more difficult, because of our longstanding Linux, Python and recent GNOME heritage. What is Sugar Labs' role with the XO-3+? I don't understand -- the XO-3 (and XO-1.5) will run Linux, Python and Sugar, as described in Ed's e-mail at the start of this thread. What has become much more difficult? Opps. I was fairly certain that it was a real pain to have an ARM computer run Linux[1]. I guess life is slightly different when you can talk to a manufacturer and avoid Windows CE altogether. Also, given that Android doesn't use many GNU libraries in userland, e.g. gcc, I didn't really consider it to be Linux. Therefore, as far as the Sugar stack went, I didn't realise that Android's API would be as flexible to support GTK+ libraries. Thanks for the corrections! Tim. [1] http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/05/21/2335257/Installing-Linux-On-ARM-Based-Netbooks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Books and educational achievement
On 26 May 2010 09:26, Chris Leonard cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.com wrote: This study seems to make a powerful argument in favor of ramping up the quantity of e-book content on school servers. Books in the home as important as parents’ education level http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/templates/details.aspx?articleid=5450zoneid=8 cjl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep Does IAEP have an effort to create repositories of text books? If so, is it tied together with http://www.opentextbook.org/? Tim McNamara http://people.sugarlabs.org/~tim/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] OLPC Oceana: New Solomon Islands Study Puts Hard Evidence of OLPC's Positive Impact
The original of this report is in OLPC Oceania's web storage: http://box.net/keydox -Tim. On 21 April 2010 03:58, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://olpcoceania.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-solomons-study-puts-hard-evidence.html http://www.solomonstarnews.com/news/national/4831-one-child-laptop-project-makes-positive-impact-on-children this follows the NSF study of Birmingham: http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116638 Sean ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs Accepted as GSoC 2010 Organisation
Chris - You must have known something! Sugar Labs is part of the fold. [1] Thanks all for helping me along. Now the real fun starts :) Tim @timClicks [1] http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2010 On 13 March 2010 12:11, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Tim, Sugar Labs application for Google Summer of Code 2010 has been accepted. Wow, that was quick. Many congrats and thanks! I'm not sure exactly on the politics of the situation, but my personal feeling is that we should be quite encouraging of supporting OLPC projects. That sounds great; I'd be happy to chat more about this. - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org One Laptop Per Child ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praises OLPC in South America
On 18 March 2010 08:45, Yama Ploskonka yamap...@gmail.com wrote: Panama? No mention of Haiti itself, alas. Politicians are only as good as their advisers. This is a really positive development, even if some facts are missed. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs GSoC 2010 Flyer - please review
Hi all, If you have 30 seconds free, please review http://issuu.com/timclicks/docs/sugarlabs_gsoc_2010. I've gone for simplicity over . My main consideration was tying together growth children's learning. I think you'll smile when you see the result. If people are relatively happy with it, we can start forwarding it around. I've used a web-based solution to avoid clogging up people's inboxes. If you would like the PDF or raw SVG, do let me know. Tim @timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs GSoC 2010 Application In
Hi all, Sugar Labs application for Google Summer of Code 2010 has been accepted. Over the course of the weekend, I'll be sending out email flyers for you to send to potential students. I'm not sure exactly on the politics of the situation, but my personal feeling is that we should be quite encouraging of supporting OLPC projects. Two requests: 1. Self-nominate yourself as a potential mentor. This involves a few hours a week could reap huge benefits for the project. 2. Please promote http://idea.sugarlabs.org/ . This means encouraging students to submit ideas then visiting back a few times over the course of the next few weeks. Please feel to contact me off the list at paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz if you have any questions. Very best regards, Tim McNamara @timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Systems] wiki design
On 11 March 2010 16:58, Chris Leonard cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 9:55 PM, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.orgwrote: We have a lot of choice of different styles: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/ http://people.sugarlabs.org/ http://download.sugarlabs.org/ http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ http://activities.sugarlabs.org/ http://www.sugarlabs.org/ http://git.sugarlabs.org/ http://planet.sugarlabs.org/ http://translate.sugarlabs.org/ http://buildbot.sugarlabs.org/ http://lists.sugarlabs.org/ (missing the linkbar) http://api.sugarlabs.org/ (missing the linkbar) (forgot anything?) http://idea.sugarlabs.org is also active. Tim. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Copy writing assistance request
Hello everyone - Sorry for cross posting. Tomeu I thought this opportunity may be of interest to individuals on this list. Looking forward to hearing from you. -- Forwarded message -- From: Tim McNamara paperl...@timmcnamara.co.nz Date: 10 March 2010 10:07 Subject: Copy writing assistance request To: Sugar Labs Marketing market...@lists.sugarlabs.org Hi all, Is anyone willing and able to spend a while over the next 2-3 days on some small projects? 1. Help tidy up the of the Sugar Labs GSoC sectionhttp://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code of the wiki? 2. Help create copy for an A4 PDF to prospective students mentors. Looking to generate a viral email campaign. Thoughts assistance always welcome, Tim McNamara @timClicks Sugar Labs GSoc 2010 Coordinator ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS rlt8102e problems
On 1 March 2010 12:11, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote: Hi All, I've been trying to run SoaS on both my Windows XP and Vista netbooks and ran into the problem of not being able get a wifi access. So I went through these exercise: 1) downloaded the linux driver support for the chipset 2) untar the file in my SoaS root directory 3) but on the step where I had to run make.. no dice. I am a newbie Linux user. I'm using the blueberry version of SoaS. Is there supposed to be a developer version that I have to be using instead which has make and C compiler installed? Please advice thank you! Please don't send me into the wiki labyrinth. Thanks, Cherry Cherry, I'm not a Fedora user, but this should lead you on the right way. Try going into terminal then typing *yum groupinstall Development Tools*. The quotes are important. Once you've done that, try these commands. Omit square brackets. cd /path/to/extracted/tar/file [go to right place] ./configure [tell compiler about your system] make [generate instructions for compiler] sudu su [change to root user] make install [compile software] exit [return to normal user] -Tim. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS rlt8102e problems
On 1 March 2010 13:00, Cherry Withers cwith...@ekindling.org wrote: Hi Tim, Thanks. But I can't do yum because it relies on a network connection which I don't have in the first place. At least that's how I thought it works. Yes, that's correct. Your best bet is to find an ethernet cable plug it into the router. A slightly more tedious route is to download the specific .rpm files, but I don't know where to look for those, unfortunately. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [DESIGN] Fwd: SIGDOC'10 - Call For Papers
On 12 February 2010 23:25, Tomeu Vizoso to...@tomeuvizoso.net wrote: Would someone be interested to present something about Sugar here? Regards, Tomeu Looking at some of the subject areas, the papers committee are likely to look very favourably on a paper from Sugar Labs. Areas include: Design of communications: participatory, user-centered and organic design, Cultural and Social issues in Digital Age , Design of Communication for Learning. Tim ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Why #sugar should be logged - a plug for transparency and ease of use.
2010/1/13 Jeff Elkner j...@elkner.net It would like to make most of these conversations available to the rest of the community, but I don't have the time to log and publish them myself. +1 for a log bot Is there a good reason why we don't auto log the channel? jeff elkner ___ 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] [SoaS] Please help suggest illustrated eBooks for Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry launch
Max Moritz is in the public domain. It would be a wonderful addition to the collection, if possible. Does anyone know whether it is available? 2009/11/26 Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry will be launched at the Netbook World Summit in Paris on December 8th and Walter will open the summit with the keynote presentation! Sebastian and other members of the SoaS team are working hard on finalizing the master this weekend. In this holiday season with $250 Kindles and $299 Nooks and $$$ eBooks, we want to talk about Sugar's great eBook tools as well as open access eBooks - that eBooks shouldn't be only pricey DRM'd downloads for pricey gadgets. To do this, we want to populate Blueberry's Journal with a small number of eBooks. Small, so the Journal is not overstuffed; eBooks there will help new Sugar users to understand the Journal. We do feel though that it is important that of the handful of eBooks, not all should be in English. We won't have room for every language (that needs to wait for a later version of Sugar or SoaS which could have filter logic by language). But an eBook in half a dozen languages, with instructions for parents and teachers where to find others, will effectively demonstrate Sugar's potential as an eBook reader solution. Books written in the native language will be preferable to translations of books originally written in English - we'd like to show that Sugar content can be localized and not merely translated. Please suggest eBooks! ideally, an illustrated eBook in EPUB format (although we may be able to convert from other formats by hand since there will only be a few). Send links! If it's possible before Sunday, it would be fabulous if we could include an eBook created by children in the classroom! Even a collection of scans could be fairly easily bound into an eBook file. Thanks for your help! Sean Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator ___ SoaS mailing list s...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] A Couple of Comments/Questions
2009/11/18 Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de On 18.11.2009, at 07:38, Tim McNamara wrote: I'm a FLOSS manuals contributor. If someone with the know-how adds it to the wiki, I'll port it to the FLOSS Manuals site :) @timClicks Can't do. FLOSS Manuals inexplicably uses GPL for everything, which is more restrictive than Creative Commons. - Bert - Restrictive or more free, depending on one's perspective. Viral vs non-viral licencing seems to be quite philosophical and usually quite destructively debated. I note the objection however. Therefore, if anyone is happy releasing their content under the GPL, by all means email it to me. I'll submit it to FLOSS manuals for worldwide publication. @timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] scratch gone missing
2009/11/19 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org Btw, if anyone would like to work on improving the Scratch experience for Sugar users (including making its installation easier) I will be happy to provide pointers, help and contact the Scratch maintainers and other people who want to see this happen. I have heard that Scratch is quite used by Sugar users, and I'm surprised at the little work that has gone into making their experience better. 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 Tomeu - Would this mean diff/patching Squeak? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Further sources of public domain books for children
Here is a quick list of epub libraries targeted at children / youth. http://www.snee.com/epubkidsbooks/ http://www.feedbooks.com/type/Young%20Readers/books/top @timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] A Couple of Comments/Questions
2009/11/18 Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com Hi All, Just reading through all your interesting posts from the past couple of days. I have a couple of ideas to share... Re: From Walter... 5. The Spanish-language version of Sdenka Z. Salas Pilco's guide to using Sugar in the classroom is available on the wiki (Please see [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:La_Laptop_XO_en_el_Aula.pdf])http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:La_Laptop_XO_en_el_Aula.pdf%5D) . This is a wonderful resource. Is it available for localizing into other languages? Are there any special permissions we would need to get? From Sean... At launch time we can have a wiki page explaining how to find and load an eBook. Could we also add it to the Help Activity included with Sugar and the online FLOSS Manual? I'm a FLOSS manuals contributor. If someone with the know-how adds it to the wiki, I'll port it to the FLOSS Manuals site :) @timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS meetings?
2009/10/19 Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com I would like to get together with others at some prearranged time to work on collaboration in SoaS. I have some ideas about lesson plans that need to be tried out, and I need to see whether it will be possible to arrange demos for others. If this interests you, we can get together on IRC or on the Chat within SoaS. Because of timezone issues (I'm UTC+13), I'll almost certainly be unable to attend. However, one of the schools I've visited is indeed looking for guidance on how to introduce Sugar into the classroom. E.g., the dicussion has moved from whether the product is capable or reliable, to how to we include this into a learning pathway for our kids (11-12 year olds). I've also scheduled a meeting with another small school of 5-9year olds. It would be great to say there's an international push to guide Sugar into a teaching environment. My impression is that detailed lesson plans per se arn't required. What seems to be required is slightly more structure than starting up and being confronted with the home view. It's a little intimidating to adults, because the favourites circle is completely new to them and nothing looks like an obvious place to click first. Edward, if this comes to anything - please share any findings :) timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] sugar live cd for windows
2009/10/17 Kevin Cole dc.l...@gmail.com On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 13:59, Manusheel Gupta m...@laptop.org wrote: Dear all, Wish to ask you for pointers to improve the performance of SocialCalc activity while running it on Sugar Live CD for Windows. SocialCalc works very well on the native installation of Sugar. Please suggest. Hi, I just wanted to clarify a possible source of confusion in your choice of wording. A Live CD doesn't run on anything, generally speaking. It implies a CD which you boot the entire operating system from. To the best of my knowledge there are no Live Windows Sugar CD's. This perception that the SoaS or a LiveCD runs on or for Windows is not an isolated case: https://answers.launchpad.net/soas/+question/85331 timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Talk at New Zealand PyCon : Support Appreciated
Hi all, I've been asked by the organisers of the Kiwi PyCon 2009http://nz.pycon.org to give a 45m interactive presentation. There will be about 150 expert python programmers interested people there, including Weta Digitalhttp://www.wetafx.co.nz(have you head of those movies, the Lord of the Rings, King Kong District 9?). At this stage, I'll probably have about 6 XOs there - but can take up to a dozen. I would like your thoughts on what kind of messages, if any, that you would be interested in sending through to the New Zealand python community. There are a number of academic (tertiary level) staff, but there wont be much representation from the education sector. Cheers, timClicks http://timmcnamara.co.nz/ http://twitter.com/timClicks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
