Re: cpia driver for microscope: any success?
On Tuesday 19 Apr 2011 12:03:38 am Cherry Withers wrote: I had much success with the Veho 004, but at now $99 a piece I can't afford to buy more of them for my trip to the Philippines this June. This is actually good because it serves as a warning sign of going off-track ;-). Lasting learning outcomes come out of using locally available materials for experiments - like fashioning a magnifier by filling a discarded tungsten lamp with clear water or making one out of clean sheet of plastic etc. How about taking a couple of lenses or jeweller's eyepieces and then using digicam or cameraphone (with macro feature)? The combo is harder to get working but such hard fun should be part of learning. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Enhancing Sugar to support multiple users
On Tuesday 07 Sep 2010 5:03:00 am Hal Murray wrote: I think there are two approaches. One is for /home to live on the file server and XOs to access their files via NFS. There may be interesting alternatives to NFS, but I'm not familiar with any of them. The other is to have a working copy of files on the local machine and manually slosh files back and forth, probably using a program to automate things. There is a third option, widely used in smartphones - removable flash memory like USB/SD/MicroSD cards. If /home or its subdir is mapped to a removable volume, then personal data can be made portable. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [support-gang] touchpad woes: quick fix?
On Saturday, May 15, 2010 07:07:39 am Becky Young wrote: Has anyone tried using a document camera to display the XO screen on a big screen? Teachers have started using them at my school although there is only one to share among 10+ teachers. You could remove the top seal of a used light bulb, use a pen/pencil to gently break the inner glass tube that holds the tungsten filament. This will give you a thin glass container. Now pour clear (distilled) water into it and use it as a magnifying lens to project the screen onto a wall. You may have to turn the brightness of the display all the way up and darken the room. Whether it works for you or not, it will be great fun to recycle throw away stuff into useful gadgets ;-). Atleast I did, growing up a kid in a village in India. HTH .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: To Gnome or not to Gnome
On Tuesday 23 March 2010 08:44:06 pm Bernie Innocenti wrote: test -f $HOMEDIR/.dontrestore || tar xjvf /var/lib/home-save.tbz -C $HOMEDIR ./ Users tend to fill up their home very quickly and we don't have 400-500MB of free space for an extra copy. The backup would only contain *factory settings* to recover from configuration 'experiments' by kids. That should be manageable. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: To Gnome or not to Gnome
On Tuesday 23 March 2010 07:28:05 pm Bernie Innocenti wrote: All we need is a fast way to recover from disasters. A panic button which would reset all settings. It could be implemented in olpc-configure with 3 lines of code. In the absence of a recovery option, technicians resort to flashing laptops that have been tampered with beyond some point. One simple way would to be save home directory into /var/lib/home-save.tgz on issue and then restore it while booting: test -f $HOMEDIR/.dontrestore || tar xjvf /var/lib/home-save.tbz -C $HOMEDIR ./ To restore, remove $HOMEDIR/.dontrestore and reboot. This is not a robust solution but it should take care of most 'experiments' by kids ;-). HTH .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] Need in Haiti: inexpensive portable projectors for OLPC/XO classrooms
On Wednesday 03 February 2010 11:58:27 pm Adam Holt wrote: Aside from this wonderful home-made prototype, that unfortunately overheats, what's achievable? http://blog.laptop.org/2008/11/16/hardware-hacking-first-pass-at-an-xo-proj ector/ Have you considered LED monitors? Monitors (= 23) are quite affordable these days and good enough for a class of about 25-30 students. For large gatherings (30+), you could spread multiple monitors around the room. The monitors can be used with a long VGA cable and no separate projection screen is needed. They are cheaper, better (picture quality), need less power and their brighter displays means the room need not be darkened. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] User workflow sharing Journal Entries over USB sticks
On Thursday 12 November 2009 08:36:58 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote: IMHO separating the meta-data from the file itself is a good idea. Having one database at the root of the stick is just too fragile. Better store meta data next to the file in question, like myimage.jpg and myimage.journalentry? Keeping meta-data in the same directory (folder) is the way to go. Of course, the meta-data has to be a hidden file. FWIW, www.freedesktop.org contains a bunch of standards (really conventions) for handling meta-data. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Request for help - can variable values be passed to an Activity ?
On Wednesday 02 Sep 2009 7:27:15 pm Mikus Grinbergs wrote: I tried that. [Note that the syntax of /etc/environment is key=value (and is not interpreted), whereas in the other places in /etc it is a normal bash command that gets sourced.] But even in /etc/environment, the variable did not get passed where I wanted. Perhaps the activity was started before the variable was added to /etc/environment? .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Request for help - can variable values be passed to an Activity ?
On Wednesday 02 Sep 2009 4:33:47 pm Mikus Grinbergs wrote: I've modified some system files in /etc to define some global environmental variables ( export WHAT=foo ). .. Please - is there a way to ensure that that a particular global variable __does__ get passed to an Activity ? Which /etc/ file did you modify? System wide variables go into /etc/environment HTH .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
On Saturday 16 May 2009 10:48:18 pm Mitch Bradley wrote: The reason why people haven't seen a public discussion about the F11/Gnome thing is because the decision was made internally within OLPC (the hardware organization - not Sugar Labs). OLPC has to ship something on the hardware that we deliver to our volume customers. By far our largest volume comes from the large scale deployments in some South American countries, so those customers influence us far more than anybody else, and especially more than the diffuse community Thanks for the clarification. The choice for pre-load for S-A market makes good sense. I suppose once we get enough machines out and the form factor spreads to more countries, more options will emerge. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.
On Saturday 16 May 2009 01:47:49 am Chris Ball wrote: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. (This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.) I would like to put in a word for KDE desktop given our long term mission, focus on kids' education, and need for small form-factor machines. My intention is not to trigger a Gnome-vs-KDE war. I help many remote rural schools in my locality work with computers and my choice of KDE was purely pragmatic. E.g. - KDE has a much wider target than Gnome including an interest group for K-12 education (see edu.kde.org). Why not work together? - KDE is highly customizable by users (no programming required). It is easy for teachers to use a restrictive profiles (themes) for young children and liberal profiles for elder children. - Sugar can be run as a container Plasmoid (see http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Vocabulary). There is no need to switch desktop sessions. Zooming and resolution independence are two bonuses. - Qt (basic toolkit for KDE) is multiplatform and is available even on mobile form factors. It already comes with support for SVG, OpenGL, multilingual support that can help keep suites like Sugar small and clean. - KDE needs lesser RAM leaving more room for apps. All our systems run on 1.6GHz/256MB RAM. Low base RAM becomes important for swapless systems. If the decision has already been locked down, please ignore this mail. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Hints for ext3 filesystems on flash...
On Friday 10 April 2009 8:25:23 pm Martin Langhoff wrote: While I am not expecting the SD card to deal with a heavy write workload (the recommended strategy is to use an external disk for /var/lib and /library ), I am still keen on avoiding early SD card death... What about journal updates? Are you using an external journal and turning off access timestamp updates? Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Devel Digest, Vol 38, Issue 1
On Thursday 02 Apr 2009 8:21:27 pm Mitch Bradley wrote: I guess the main disconnect is that, for the FOSS community, the point of view is more important than the product. The commercial world is just the opposite. This is too broad a statement and rather unfair to those who have worked hard to get many products to integrate smoothly into Linux. Greg Kroah-Hartman is on record offering free driver development (even for hardware requiring NDA): http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2007/1/30/49154 So the issue is not one of cost, knowledge, skill or NDA but the fear of intellectual property theft. The downside to closed driver development is the increased cost of testing and integration with specific kernels. Of course, public developers will be reluctant to debug or trace kernels using closed source drivers so the entire cost burden will fall on the vendor. FOSS community uses products too :-). Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
On Saturday 31 Jan 2009 11:24:55 am Mikus Grinbergs wrote: But I have *not* been able to assign a static ip address when a real network was involved - Network Manager intervenes and destroys whatever setup I've configured. Network Manager does not handle interfaces which have an entry in /etc/network/interfaces. Just stick a auto iface entry in there if you wish to handle it directly through ifconfig commands. e.g. -- auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 192.168.1.11 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1 FYI .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [RELEASE] Etoys 4.0
On Wednesday 17 Dec 2008 4:58:26 am Bert Freudenberg wrote: this is the first release of Etoys 4.0. The major version jump signifies the end of our two-year relicensing effort. Wonderful! and thanks to all who made it possible. Is a corresponding Squeakland release in the offing? Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: keyboard
On Monday 10 Nov 2008 10:15:16 pm Tony Anderson wrote: I have my XO set up to switch between us and np keyboard layouts. What I need is a way in Python to find out which of these layouts is currently selected. Try get_keyboard_mapping(). Clients get a MappingNotify event when the keyboard layout is changed in the X server. HTH .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] 9.1 Proposal: Printing support
On Tuesday 21 Oct 2008 7:03:23 pm Yama Ploskonka wrote: When I am asked about whether the XO handles printing, I present that the fact it does not is a feature, not a bug. +1. CUPS is designed for office LANs. Trying to put it on XO intended for educating children in remote areas is an overkill. After all, digital cameras and smart phones don't come with cups and many people (even in cities seem) to get by fine). Let us not forget that printers are a power hog and the power required to drive printers is better spent in operating XOs. Yes, there will be deployments that will have access to power, printers, ink supplies and large reams of paper. But those places are also likely to have access to admins who should be able to install and setup LAN printing. FWIW .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OFW vs. proprietary BIOS
On Saturday 30 Aug 2008 5:37:07 am Mitch Bradley wrote: A lot of the OFW functionality is targeted toward the task of managing a large collection of possibly-plug-in I/O devices, then booting a general purpose OS. Like Squeak for example :-). Honestly, I think Squeak makes a very good shell for OFW. Primitive calls or device drivers can be easily integrated via plugins/FFI. While the same can be done even with asm/gcc, I would expect overall dev and testing time to be much smaller with Squeak. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: #7744 NORM Future : Rotated morph loses rotation on save
On Friday 01 Aug 2008 8:22:01 pm Zarro Boogs per Child wrote: I'm not sure this is a bug and not a feature ... It's easy enough to rotate a morph when brought into another project? Rotation center is saved in the file but not the rotation value itself. So how would the code loading the morph know how much to rotate? If a morph is embedded in another morph, the submorph's rotation does get restored when the owner morph is loaded from file. I realize why this happens but the result is not consistent. This raises a deeper question. Are rotation and scaling an inherent, persistent property of the morph (like color or extent) or a transient property (like its origin or owner). If the latter, then why should a flex wrapper persist after the rotation/scaling is ended? We could use a single rubberband handle to rotate/scale and cache (heading,scale,graphic) in an extension. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository
On Saturday 28 Jun 2008 8:05:41 am Alan Kay wrote: The sources and changes files (the changes are the incremental history to the sources) don't have to be external to the image, but they have been made so since Smalltalk started to be implemented on computers that had fallen back to the bad old idea of operating systems and file systems. This is easy to find out about in a variety of ways. But there is something further to ponder about this method from the 70s. And that is the idea that as scaling advances under Moore's Law, it will be less and less a good idea to rebuild from scratch (and more and more difficult). Well, there will always be people who will seek to build (or trace the path of evolution) from scratch, if only to study how the whole thing evolved. Others may want to study a suspended image to see what is in it and how it managed to get into such a state. Some people just choose to become archaeologists, paleontologists and even pathologists. For those who have been working with live images for decades, this direction of learning may not be of interest, but it would help if they can point out the way and let others make their own journey. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: P.S. Re: [IAEP] etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository
On Saturday 28 Jun 2008 4:51:47 pm Alan Kay wrote: It was realized that most computing of the 50s and 60s was rather like ... state in which they will become part of the ecology. I propose that this overview be included as part of Squeak. Squeak is very different from conventional programming toolkits. A good overview like this would help set the right perspective at the beginning and eliminate many misunderstandings down the road. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository
On Wednesday 25 Jun 2008 12:08:44 am Albert Cahalan wrote: *All the source code* for *every* piece of byte code in the image is available, and not only that, we even *ship* it No. This is not true. You ship a binary blob. That doesn't count, even if so-called source code is viewable from within the blob. Albert, You are confusing binary as in secret encoding with binary as in encoding based on freely available specifications. A UTF-8 encoded file containing Mandarin or Hindi text would be unreadable on an ASCII text editor, but that doesn't make it a closed binary blob. A video file encoded using a secret patented codec would constitute a closed binary blob in the first sense since it cannot be decoded with publicly available readers nor can one be written without overriding someone's legal rights. Squeak image is not a blob in the first sense. One can write a program to decode any image file and recover any data stored in it. The problem with the blob is not that it is closed, but it is monolithic and limited in capacity. The limit is not that restrictive for personal computing purposes, but it will hurt when one has to deal with audio/video clips, 3-D simulations or large databases. There is no checksum to verify integrity. Objects are stored higgedly piggedly making even partial recovery difficult. However, these are programming limits, not that of policy. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How USB's are enumerated on the XO
On Tuesday 24 Jun 2008 5:18:52 pm shivaprasad javali wrote: The USB device that I am connecting is not a storage drive. so there is no way I can copy a file containing a unique UUID on the device. I just need one unique parameter for the device when it is connected to the system. Have you tried using /sys/bus/usb/devices/../dev? This gives the major/minor number of the attached device. The major number will be that of the usb driver, but the minor number will be unique. HTH, Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository
On Saturday 21 Jun 2008 4:11:52 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote: Anyway, the Debian ftpmasters did not even object to that, but they were concerned about how to be sure what changed from one image to the next. Squeak comes with all the necessary tools built into it, but this does not work well with their established work flow. Is there a tool in Squeak that would give the diff between two images? Atleast a replay tool that tracks all state changes and applies them to one image to generate another? AFAIK, Squeak only tracks changes to methods and not all state changes. I crashed an image while trying to change the parent of a class. Luckily, I had a snapshot on disk and reapplied the changeset. But the snapshot had lingering instances of a class which the changeset tried to re-parent and the image crashed again :-(. The doIts I did to clean up the instances were not in the changeset. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XO communications interface naming
On Wednesday 04 Jun 2008 1:21:34 am Mikus Grinbergs wrote: I don't have wireless - am using an USB-ethernet adapter instead. Network adapters are given logical device names using udev rules. See for rules matching net SUBSYSTEM in /etc/udev/rules.d (usually *persistent-net-generator.rules). On first boot, the generator creates a rule file (*persistent-net.rules) for all persistent detected devices. Subsequently, any hot plugged network device gets assigned the next available sequence number. Does your adapter have a fixed entry in this file? If not, you can add it manually. The list of active network devices is in /proc/net/dev and under /sys/class/net. HTH, Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: View Source question
On Monday 19 May 2008 8:59:01 am Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: If we are trying use the OLPC XO as the trojan horse of disseminating a better idea of computer including operating system, it is unfortunate that we needed to use Linux. It is the most practical system to use in the short term, but basically we are using it because it is the de-facto standard... The documented history is that XO was started because the margins in educational computers were so thin that no commercial company wanted to be part of it. It was upto a bunch of organizations to pool together their resources to put together the hardware, software and the rest. I don't recollect reading about any effort to pick a standard - de facto or otherwise. Any other interpretation is revisionist history. If there is another OS that is smaller, faster, cheaper, better (i.e.serves kids better) then we could switch to it in a flash :-). (And people are rather thinking it better because it is not Windows. Strange. Without real education content, neither is good enough.) +1 for bringing in the issue of content. Creating content that is culturally and personally meaningful to children across the world is a huge challenge. The need for it to be viewable and adaptable needs to be seen in the context of encouraging a child to exercise free will during the learning process. Reducing it to a Linux vs. Windows or Squeak vs. Python debate dilutes the mission and distracts us from the larger goal. We must be open to use empirical research to find out what kind of 'source' will best meet the needs of a child. This is not always the source code which produced an artifact. For instance, Xara LX has a button which gradually decomposes a vector graphic into its wireframe: http://downloads.xara.com/products/xtreme/movies/intro2.avi (towards the end) This reveals more to a child about how complex objects are built out of simple components than the precise sequence of SVG instructions or the sequence of source code which produced Xara LX itself. So, what do field experiments with kids reveal about View Source? Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XP on OLPC - a contrarian view
On Monday 19 May 2008 12:16:40 am Albert Cahalan wrote: From what I can tell, constructionism (c13m) is a buzzword that vaguely refers to an age-old teaching practice: learning by doing. The idea appears to be extremely old, though not the norm. Ditching the buzzword would be appreciated; it only serves to obfuscate. Albert, You are partly right and partly wrong. C13m is indeed an old concept but it does not refer to physical construction. Construction refers to how people construct knowledge in their mind. Recall that any physical construction follows mental construction. Ideas and concepts are churned in the milky ocean of our mind until the nectar emerges and then the physical construction follows (cf. mantha in Sanskrit means to churn, manthanein in Greek means to think from where we get our word mathematics). The physical construction, though secondary, helps to stimulate and reinforce further learning. While the idea has been around for centuries[1], I believe it was Dr. Maria Montessori's work in early 1900s that alerted us to the applicability of such approaches to young children. Seymour Papert, in Mindstorms, spends lot of ink in explaining how body syntonic (turtles) or cultural syntonic (yatching, navigation) approaches to learning help build a better understanding of angles than lines on paper. Learning is no more in the turtle than music in a piano but a robotic turtle helped children in building upon their intuitive math better than marks on paper. Today, math and science teaching in schools, globally, is based on ink marks on paper rather than direct observation or simulation. Even where direct observation is used, there is potential for the teacher to dominate knowledge construction in the child. There just aren't enough good teachers for all our children. A personal computer could help us tackle such problems. A computer is not a subsitute for a good teacher but could help a good teacher reach out to a larger number of children, than is possible today. Please don't let an *ism distract you from understanding the ideas behind it and participate in constructive ;-) criticism. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurma Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] [support-gang] Microsoft
On Friday 16 May 2008 6:31:51 am Jim Gettys wrote: Ah, Windows needs more than 1GB to be useful; so to run Windows you need to pay extra for a SD card big enough to hold it. Mmm Windows doesn't need to do anything useful. It just needs to rake in $3. Once sold, you are free to load software that will do something useful. Tongue firmly in cheek, Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] Sugar on the EEE PC
On Saturday 10 May 2008 5:07:22 am Jim Gettys wrote: 1:1 is really *very* important, for many reasons, not the least of which is the following: If a teacher cannot *rely* on a child having access to a computer for teaching their class and/or homework, you are, in essence, asking them to greatly *increase* their work-load, Isn't this all-or-nothing stance an extreme viewpoint? There are issues in the current teaching practices and many teachers do acknowledge their limitations. So why not use laptops (shared) to tackle some of these issues? It may not be perfect solution but solving some is better than solving none. For instance, Stellarium can be used affordably by teachers around the world. I know of teachers who use Stellarium to teach children about celestial bodies. They find the digital medium much easier than blackboard or models. The kids then use their notes to explore night sky on their own (no worries about running out of battery :-)). Children fascinated by night sky start taking a deeper interest in schooling. Ever wondered why a circle is marked as 360 degrees and not 100? BTW, I was just exploring the occultation of Mars by Moon with my daughter a while back. The real sky got obscured by clouds :-(. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Sugar on the EEE PC
On Saturday 10 May 2008 4:40:30 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote: The Windows-based EEE PC is going to be cheaper than the Linux-based in Australia: http://apcmag.com/windowsbased_eeepc_cheaper_than_linux_one.htm I'd say this shows how scared M$ is ... I am not sure. They are two different configurations XP+12GB vs. Linux+20GB. I suspect that existing PC channels are not geared to sell laptops below USD300. They must be trying out price discrimination variations (or the old bait-n-switch tactic :-)) to boost up their entry level prices. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] Sugar on the EEE PC
On Thursday 08 May 2008 1:50:59 pm Albert Cahalan wrote: From time to time, you get computer day. It could be a few times a year or once a week. Most likely this is decided by the teacher, who must then try to reserve the computers for the desired day. At the beginning of class, somebody delivers the equipment to the classroom. How is this different from other shared resources like globes, encyclopedias, microscopes, projectors etc.? IMHO, the real issue is not that computers are shared but most teachers have not integrated computing media fully into their teaching methods. Even if you were to provide an computer exclusively to each child, they are unlikely to be in use all day long. Programmers in IT companies may spend their whole day before a computer, but children do have a life beyond the keyboard :-). In general, nobody gets much time with the computers. It certainly isn't yours; you can't keep any personal data on it. You're lucky when the computer you get handed has not been vandalized by a previous user Looks like times have changed. These days, serious schools use multi-user systems like Linux to prevent vandalism and let children carry their personal data on a flash memory chip. With software like Squeak, one can carry years worth of school projects on a single chip. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] Sugar on the EEE PC
On Friday 09 May 2008 9:33:26 pm Eben Eliason wrote: Even if you were to provide an computer exclusively to each child, they are unlikely to be in use all day long. Programmers in IT companies may spend their whole day before a computer, but children do have a life beyond the keyboard :-). You bring up two points both of which, I feel, support the goals of OLPC and Sugar. First, child ownership ensures that the kids get to take the laptops /home/ with them. Access to computing should not be confused with ownership of laptops. Ask anyone who used a laptop for more than a few hours away from a power socket :-). For many kids, home is a single room affair. They spend most of their waking hours in the outdoors. I live in a very big house where the sky is the roof, joked a kid. Ownership per se means nothing to them. What they need is access to a learning environment. Often, a village school is the only place where they can learn. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xETrXmnRDco for a reality check. Education can happen even on entry level laptops in such schools. The higher cost could be offset by sharing one laptop between two kids (OLP2C!). Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How do I resart XWindows when running emulation under QEMU
On Thursday 17 Apr 2008 6:43:16 am Steve Lewis wrote: title says is all Crtl-Alt has a special meaning in an emulator and Crtl-Alt-Backspace does not work in either windows or linux. On linux it does some very funky things to the host XWindows See section Restart Sugar in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Emulating_the_XO/Help_and_tips Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: UI usability for 4 year old (was Re: Call for Papers/Talks/Ideas!)
On Tuesday 25 Mar 2008 10:35:25 pm John R.Hogerhuis wrote: In any case, kids have a way of figuring out a way out of problems that adults would perplex an adult. Ever seen a kid succumb to analysis-paralysis ? In your place, I would just give her more time to find her own way out on how to control a computer to get things done. I understand what you're saying, but if it's a developmental issue then what you would expect (and what is happening) is that it is just outside her grasp and she gets frustrated. Then she puts the laptop away (which is within her control). It's not an issue of me letting her find her own way. We don't interfere unless she asks, and then just to read the screen to her or explain to her where to find things. Please read more time as more development time. As she grows up and develops finer control, she is sure to figure out a way. Till then, she can learn by watching others use a computer (google:mirror-neurons). My daughter, at four years, rarely used a computer and preferred to snuggle on my lap while I worked on my notebook PC. But when walked into a Mac store (at six years), she amazed me and others in the store by using a Mac, for the first time, to sketch Taj Mahal. I have also seen school kids pick up computing skills by watching their classmates. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: UI usability for 4 year old (was Re: Call for Papers/Talks/Ideas!)
On Monday 24 Mar 2008 9:50:49 am John R.Hogerhuis wrote: Based on my daughter, she does use two hands to paint. The problem is the need to constantly hold down the button (drag) while painting. With a mouse this is natural for her, but with the trackpad she has difficulty. Maybe the issue is bumping the hand, or coming close to bumping into the hand holding the button? John, This is par for the course for 4-year olds. They spend a lot of time exploring space through whole body movement and fine finger control will take time to develop. A mouse involves whole arm movement while trackpad needs fine finger controls. Trackpad is easier for the 6+ year olds. In any case, kids have a way of figuring out a way out of problems that adults would perplex an adult. Ever seen a kid succumb to analysis-paralysis :-)? In your place, I would just give her more time to find her own way out on how to control a computer to get things done. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: UI usability for 4 year old (was Re: Call for Papers/Talks/Ideas!)
On Sunday 23 March 2008 3:59:31 am John R.Hogerhuis wrote: .. (actually it's not all that pleasant for me either given the button placement below the trackpad). Something modal or pressure based would be better. If a key on the keyboard held down were the up/down button that would be resolution of the dexterity issue. Though, some thought would need to be given to make this discoverable. It is tough for young children to use trackpad like a mouse - with a single hand. Using it bi-manually with two index fingers is not only easier but also prepares them for typing on the keyboard later. The child can use one index finger (say right) on the trackpad and the other index finger (say left) to click buttons. Older children can use index fingers for the trackpad and thumbs for the buttons. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Switching between Arabic and French
On Tuesday 18 March 2008 7:44:00 am Walter Bender wrote: While the laptop can readily switch between up to four keyboard mappings at a time, the physical keyboard is probably only capable of supporting two sets of glyphs. We've opted to date to put Latin and one other set per keyboard. Any other ideas more than welcome. Soft keyboards are a better option for multilingual text. Kids seem to prefer controlling shapes on the screen using the pointer (mouse). Having to switch attention between screen and keyboard can be quite distracting. A low-effort soft keyboard could store pictures corresponding to each language layout and cycle thru them using the lang key (somewhat like using ALT+TAB to cycle thru desktop windows on PCs). Have the kid either press a key or click on a softkey using the pointer to dismiss the picture. After some time, kids will be able to memorize the layout and won't need the picture prompt. Just an idea, Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Updates from Nepal's Pilot Schools
On Sunday 09 March 2008 2:16:02 pm Bryan Berry wrote: Sulochan Acharya and I are keeping journals of Nepal's pilot schools on the wiki and the OLE Nepal blog. http://blog.olenepal.org/ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bashuki_Journal You report that We will install power inverters in the school to maintain power during power outages. We will keep the inverters in the same location as the School Server. In such remote rural areas, voltage and frequency fluctations are high. This is why tungsten light bulbs are used instead of FLs or CFLs). Inverters fail to charge batteries fully under such extreme variations and cannot sustain power for long during an outage. Are you sure, your supply lines can take on inverters? If the schools are not too far from a town, you may want to use a pair of battery banks and run a DC bus through the classrooms. Let one bank power the classroom while the second one is sent to nearby town for recharging. Whoever brings in meals or supplies to the school can help in transporting it. There are many more options for recharging batteries in towns than in a remote school. FWIW, Subbu___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
