Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Martin Dengler]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 02:09:16AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Martin Dengler 
> wrote:
> > Definitely, a good feature to have.  I was just talking about what
> > existed right now in SoaS (which is: no working updater, AFAIK).

The patch I just sent should now enable a "working" updater.  Where
"working" means "doing what it used to do [which is look at the OLPC
wiki for new versions]".

> I recently got help opening a bug ticket account, I'll try my hand at
> that thanks for your patient assistance

Thanks for your patience, too.

> Sean

Martin



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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Sean DALY]

I recently got help opening a bug ticket account, I'll try my hand at
that thanks for your patient assistance
Sean

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 01:53:06AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
>> Intuitively, I would expect ASLO to be polled by Sugar
>> machines... in clicking, I expect the machine to figure out all by
>> itself what it needs to be up to date...
>
> Definitely, a good feature to have.  I was just talking about what
> existed right now in SoaS (which is: no working updater, AFAIK).
>
>> I guess the best way out of
>> that is to ask OLPC to title that page "Search for OLPC updates"?
>
> One could always change it and see if it got changed back :)
>
>> >>  I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
>> >> key from within Sugar :-)
>> >
>> > How can this be made easier for newcomers to learn?
>>
>> Re USB: a brief little popup saying "Your USB key is visible in the
>> Journal" would be helpful I think.
>
> That sounds like a nice feature to me.  In an ideal world you would
> have time to file a bug report, and in a slightly-less-ideal world I'd
> have time to do it for you instead of pointing this out :).
>
>> Sean
>
> Martin
>
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Re: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[Edward Cherlin]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi Again,
>
> I'd like to comment on two of Kathy's comments.
>
> "4. Ensure, as a teacher, you have a printing and paper budget."

Nonsense. Completely backward.

> * Don't lay this in the laps of the teachers.  They have far to much to do
> as it is.

The idea is for the state to save money, in part by forcing local
schools and teachers to bear the burden. In fact, computers are
cheaper than printed books, and should as a matter of course be
provided to students as part of this plan.

See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Creating_textbooks for my version of
a Free Digital Textbooks plan, with CC or GPL licensing. I am
constructing a political plan to go with it, which I hope to be able
to announce soon, once I have some politicians and stakeholders on
board. If you know of anybody who would like to see XOs in all
California K-6 classes, send them my way.

> * Every child should have access to a computer al la the OLPC model (that is
> seldom really followed) and printers they can use at school for things from
> the textbook that need to be on paper.

+1

> *Teachers should not be asked to do more than they already have to do.  They
> should be provided with teacher workrooms at least, with up-to-date, working
> equipment at their disposal for duplication of special materials such as lab
> sheets for experiments. Ideally, every teacher would be supplied with their
> own equipment so they could do this in their own classroom (that they don't
> have to share with several other teachers as "traveling teachers" at crowded
> schools often do).

Teachers _must_ have classroom computers in any one-to-one computing program.

> "5. As with everything, never assume funding. Make it work on a
> shoestring budget. Be creative."
>
> *Teachers have been being creative for years.  There is a limit to how much
> that shoestring can be stretched.

This is where the political program is necessary.

> *It is time we concentrate on supporting the teachers and treating them like
> the dedicated, highly trained professionals we want them to be, and most
> are. Only then will be find the "best and brightest" scrambling to get into
> schools of education rather than doing, as so many do, teaching until
> something "better" comes along.
>
> Sorry!  It is the old retired educator talking again!
>
> Caryl
>
> P.S. For some reason the formatting on this message is acting crazy. That's
> Hotmail for you.
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-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Martin Dengler]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 01:53:06AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
> Intuitively, I would expect ASLO to be polled by Sugar
> machines... in clicking, I expect the machine to figure out all by
> itself what it needs to be up to date...

Definitely, a good feature to have.  I was just talking about what
existed right now in SoaS (which is: no working updater, AFAIK).

> I guess the best way out of
> that is to ask OLPC to title that page "Search for OLPC updates"?

One could always change it and see if it got changed back :)

> >>  I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
> >> key from within Sugar :-)
> >
> > How can this be made easier for newcomers to learn?
>
> Re USB: a brief little popup saying "Your USB key is visible in the
> Journal" would be helpful I think.

That sounds like a nice feature to me.  In an ideal world you would
have time to file a bug report, and in a slightly-less-ideal world I'd
have time to do it for you instead of pointing this out :).

> Sean

Martin


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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Sean DALY]

many thanks Martin for finding that thread for me, I have so much
going on I'm having trouble remembering keywords to look things up

Actually what faked me out was the fine print about XO software
update: it won't update to the latest Activity version on ASLO, just
the latest OLPC supported Activity version. Which is of course
perfectly logical now that I think about it, but as Activity versions
are coming fast & furious, I had lost confidence in the "Your software
is up-to-date" message... since I knew more recent versions were
available. Intuitively, I would expect ASLO to be polled by Sugar
machines... in clicking, I expect the machine to figure out all by
itself what it needs to be up to date... I guess the best way out of
that is to ask OLPC to title that page "Search for OLPC updates"?

Re USB: a brief little popup saying "Your USB key is visible in the
Journal" would be helpful I think.

Sean


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:22 AM, Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:58:39AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
>> Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
>> I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
>> it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
>> alertly figure it out.
>
> This is the email thread you may have been thinking of, with a "couple
> of phrases" suggested:
> http://n2.nabble.com/-Marketing--adding-or-updating-an-Activity:-two-typical-teacher-scenarios,-let%27s-%09lower-barrier-to-installation-td2981491.html
> (ugh, that's a horrible link).
>
>> After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the
>> Control Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of
>> does, but also doesn't.
>
> It does (check for activity updates that OLPC supports) on OLPC
> builds.  The Software Update extension in the Control Panel doesn't
> exist (well, it's broken and hidden) on SoaS.  So it either works as
> designed, or isn't present.
>
>>  I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
>> key from within Sugar :-)
>
> How can this be made easier for newcomers to learn?
>
>> Sean
>
> Martin
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[David Farning]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Sean DALY wrote:
> umm... I'm trying to understand how that assists in keeping Activities
> up-to-date... what plays the role of the FF browser, phoning in for
> version availability?

As far as FF goes, the FF updater ping the addons.mozilla.org
periodically with a list of installed addons and version numbers.  AMO
responds with a list of updateable addons.

The sugar updater would need to be extended to handle this additional
level of polling to activities.sugarlabs.org.

david

> thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:04 AM, David Farning wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Sean DALY wrote:
>>> Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
>>> I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
>>> it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
>>> alertly figure it out.
>>>
>>> After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
>>> Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
>>> also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
>>> side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
>>> course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.
>>
>> Aslo is set up to handle automatic activity updates using the same
>> mechanism firefox uses to check for addon update.
>>
>> david
>>
>>> I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
>>> my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
>>> USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
>>> stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
>>> a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
>>> running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
>>> key from within Sugar :-)
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
>>> Simmons wrote:
 Sean DALY wrote:
>
> GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
> elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
> credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
> been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
> very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
> will work in those Activities too.
>

 OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
 either.
>
> I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;
>

 I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
 that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the 
 Browse
 start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.

 I like the term "Featured Activity" better than "We Recommend" too.  "We
 Recommend" implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
 have, which limits what you can put in there.  "Featured Activity" implies
 nothing more than "We think this is cool and worth a look."  For instance, 
 I
 would not hesitate to put "Story Builder" or "GCompris 3D Maze" as a
 Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either 
 of
 them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you 
 wouldn't
 have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
 month we don't.
>
> We need a short intro explaining
> the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
> had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
> besides me had volunteered to look at that

 I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
 to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
 something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.

 James Simmons



>>> ___
>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Sean DALY]

umm... I'm trying to understand how that assists in keeping Activities
up-to-date... what plays the role of the FF browser, phoning in for
version availability?

thanks

Sean


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:04 AM, David Farning wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Sean DALY wrote:
>> Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
>> I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
>> it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
>> alertly figure it out.
>>
>> After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
>> Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
>> also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
>> side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
>> course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.
>
> Aslo is set up to handle automatic activity updates using the same
> mechanism firefox uses to check for addon update.
>
> david
>
>> I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
>> my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
>> USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
>> stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
>> a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
>> running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
>> key from within Sugar :-)
>>
>> Sean
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
>> Simmons wrote:
>>> Sean DALY wrote:

 GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
 elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
 credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
 been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
 very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
 will work in those Activities too.

>>>
>>> OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
>>> either.

 I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;

>>>
>>> I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
>>> that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the Browse
>>> start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.
>>>
>>> I like the term "Featured Activity" better than "We Recommend" too.  "We
>>> Recommend" implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
>>> have, which limits what you can put in there.  "Featured Activity" implies
>>> nothing more than "We think this is cool and worth a look."  For instance, I
>>> would not hesitate to put "Story Builder" or "GCompris 3D Maze" as a
>>> Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either of
>>> them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
>>>  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you wouldn't
>>> have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
>>> month we don't.

 We need a short intro explaining
 the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
 had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
 besides me had volunteered to look at that
>>>
>>> I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
>>> to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
>>> something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.
>>>
>>> James Simmons
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> ___
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>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Martin Dengler]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:58:39AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
> Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
> I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
> it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
> alertly figure it out.

This is the email thread you may have been thinking of, with a "couple
of phrases" suggested:
http://n2.nabble.com/-Marketing--adding-or-updating-an-Activity:-two-typical-teacher-scenarios,-let%27s-%09lower-barrier-to-installation-td2981491.html
(ugh, that's a horrible link).

> After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the
> Control Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of
> does, but also doesn't.

It does (check for activity updates that OLPC supports) on OLPC
builds.  The Software Update extension in the Control Panel doesn't
exist (well, it's broken and hidden) on SoaS.  So it either works as
designed, or isn't present.

>  I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
> key from within Sugar :-)

How can this be made easier for newcomers to learn?

> Sean

Martin


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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[David Farning]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Sean DALY wrote:
> Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
> I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
> it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
> alertly figure it out.
>
> After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
> Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
> also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
> side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
> course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.

Aslo is set up to handle automatic activity updates using the same
mechanism firefox uses to check for addon update.

david

> I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
> my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
> USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
> stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
> a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
> running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
> key from within Sugar :-)
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
> Simmons wrote:
>> Sean DALY wrote:
>>>
>>> GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
>>> elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
>>> credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
>>> been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
>>> very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
>>> will work in those Activities too.
>>>
>>
>> OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
>> either.
>>>
>>> I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;
>>>
>>
>> I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
>> that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the Browse
>> start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.
>>
>> I like the term "Featured Activity" better than "We Recommend" too.  "We
>> Recommend" implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
>> have, which limits what you can put in there.  "Featured Activity" implies
>> nothing more than "We think this is cool and worth a look."  For instance, I
>> would not hesitate to put "Story Builder" or "GCompris 3D Maze" as a
>> Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either of
>> them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
>>  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you wouldn't
>> have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
>> month we don't.
>>>
>>> We need a short intro explaining
>>> the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
>>> had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
>>> besides me had volunteered to look at that
>>
>> I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
>> to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
>> something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.
>>
>> James Simmons
>>
>>
>>
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>
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Re: [IAEP] Please help us choose a Sugar on a Stick boot animation sequence by tomorrow

[Martin Dengler]

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 07:07:17PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
> Ring of Dots
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#XO_Sugar_Boot_With_Overlap

+1


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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Sean DALY]

Yes, that's the procedure when running Sugar and using Browse... which
I wasn't doing. A couple of phrases removing the mystery will help us;
it's a lowering-the-barriers issue... we can't assume everyone will
alertly figure it out.

After all, common sense tells you that Software Update in the Control
Panel should check for Activity updates, which it sort of does, but
also doesn't. I understand that that infrastructure is on the OLPC
side, but a friendly checkbox for activities.sugarlabs.org (with of
course the server-side magic necessary) would help a lot.

I have stringent wireless security at home and it's a pain to connect
my XOs wirelessly, so I usually temporarily run a cable to an Ethernet
USB adapter (the green Zoltan thing I got from XOexplosion). But I got
stuck with ASLO by downloading the xo packages on another computer, to
a USB stick; with no idea how to bring them into an XO or a netbook
running SoaS. I only recently figured out how to browse files on a USB
key from within Sugar :-)

Sean


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM, James
Simmons wrote:
> Sean DALY wrote:
>>
>> GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
>> elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
>> credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
>> been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
>> very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
>> will work in those Activities too.
>>
>
> OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else had
> either.
>>
>> I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;
>>
>
> I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm thinking
> that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link on the Browse
> start page and the featured items ought to be things he doesn't have yet.
>
> I like the term "Featured Activity" better than "We Recommend" too.  "We
> Recommend" implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust we
> have, which limits what you can put in there.  "Featured Activity" implies
> nothing more than "We think this is cool and worth a look."  For instance, I
> would not hesitate to put "Story Builder" or "GCompris 3D Maze" as a
> Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I recommend either of
> them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item every month or so.
>  That would make this site a bit more interesting to visit, and you wouldn't
> have people wondering why last month we recommended Read Etexts but this
> month we don't.
>>
>> We need a short intro explaining
>> the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
>> had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
>> besides me had volunteered to look at that
>
> I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets added
> to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways to install
> something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.
>
> James Simmons
>
>
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[James Simmons]

Sean DALY wrote:
> GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
> elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
> credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
> been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
> very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
> will work in those Activities too.
>   
OK with me.  I hadn't heard of it before OLPC, so I assumed nobody else 
had either.
> I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent;
>   
I never suggested that they be *absent*, just not featured.  I'm 
thinking that a new Sugar user finds his way to ASLO by clicking a link 
on the Browse start page and the featured items ought to be things he 
doesn't have yet.

I like the term "Featured Activity" better than "We Recommend" too.  "We 
Recommend" implies that the Activity is among the best and most robust 
we have, which limits what you can put in there.  "Featured Activity" 
implies nothing more than "We think this is cool and worth a look."  For 
instance, I would not hesitate to put "Story Builder" or "GCompris 3D 
Maze" as a Featured Activity, but would have a harder time saying I 
recommend either of them.  Plus you could change what is a Featured Item 
every month or so.  That would make this site a bit more interesting to 
visit, and you wouldn't have people wondering why last month we 
recommended Read Etexts but this month we don't.
> We need a short intro explaining
> the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
> had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
> besides me had volunteered to look at that
I just hit the Download button from within Browse.  The Activity gets 
added to my Journal and is ready for use.  I know there are other ways 
to install something, but downloading to the Journal works just fine for me.

James Simmons


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Re: [IAEP] linuxtag 2009

[Max Spevack]

On Tue, 9 Jun 2009, David Farning wrote:

> True to the type of response I have grown the expect (and greatly 
> appreaciate), Max basically said the more the merrier at FudCon.
>
> Lets see what sort of good things we can make happen.
>
> I'll let Max explain what he has to offer:)

Thanks, David.

Here's what I wrote to David privately:

===

The short answer is "bring your people, and make use of our hackfest and 
BarCamp infrastructure.  Our house is your house."

FUDCon is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  On Friday and Saturday, you 
need a LinuxTag ticket to get into FUDCon.  I should have enough 
e-tickets to cover 15 people for 2 days (30 etickets).

Have folks sign up here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_attendees

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDConBerlin2009#BarCamp_and_Hackfests

I probably don't have enough etickets to get people into LinuxTag on 
Wednesday and Thursday as well, which aren't official FUDCon days 
anyway.

So in short, I can provide:
 * Etickets on Fri and Sat for 15 people (85% sure of this)
 * FUDCon infrstructure of participation (100% sure)
 * Opportunity to interact with various Fedora folks (100% sure)

===

How's this all sound?

--Max

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[IAEP] OLPC Volunteer Infrastructure Group Meeting: [Today]

[Stefan Unterhauser]

The Volunteer Infrastructure Group (/gang) Meeting is today (June 9th)
at 4pm (EST)

The Volunteer Infrastructure Group is a team of Volunteer Sysadmins
who help maintain services and systems around OLPC and the
OLPC/SugarLabs community.  The weekly VIG meeting is an excellent
chance to get involved, or to be aware of upcoming projects.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC:Volunteer_Infrastructure_Group
http://vig.laptop.org/
http://meeting.laptop.org/olpc-admin/
http://idea.laptop.org/ideatorrent/ideatorrent/vig/
http://embed.mibbit.com/?server=irc.oftc.net&channel=%23olpc-admin&settings=12a698505c860f99a6ad1051c57975f9&noServerTab=false&noServerNotices=true&noServerMotd=true&nick=Guest

Agenda:
* meeting: new face for olpc-admin
* idea: new favicon and promote picture
* vig and wiki (testwiki): migration plan
* rt: migration plan
* maps: there new datas on deployments
* bigsister: new VM on w91


 Meeting Details:
 Date:   June 9th, 2009
 Time:   16:00 EST
 Location: irc.oftc.net  #olpc-admin
 or click on ->
http://embed.mibbit.com/?server=irc.oftc.net&channel=%23olpc-admin&settings=12a698505c860f99a6ad1051c57975f9&noServerTab=false&noServerNotices=true&noServerMotd=true&nick=Guest


 ciao
 dogi
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Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[sandra . thaxter]

Hi Carol,
    this is very interesting and I believe in the broad spectrum it is a great turn of events. Maybe it will be possible for the US to get out from under the State of Texas acting as the primary arbiter of textbook content.
   I agree that it is good news for XO technology, pedagogical approach and open content movement.  I use the digital distribution of information as one of the compelling advantages of the XO and mesh and explain that there is a lot of information that can be provided without a persistent internet connection. I think it is a winning issue for the millions of isolated rural schools.    Sandra Thaxtersan...@thaxter.net1-617-320-1098Jun 9, 2009 05:06:39 PM, carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Caryl Bigenho  wrote:

Hi...

Adam Holt alerted me to Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to go digital with textbooks statewide in California high schools, starting with math and science this year.  Here is my retired teacher's view of the situation...



(See: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/12455/)

The Good:

Textbooks can be up to date and, hopefully, will be.
Sets the stage for more competition in text books and being able to buy or download for free different chapters or lessons from different places.  I'm thinking like iTunes. Before you had to buy the album, now you can just buy the song you want.  Overall maybe the cost hasn't gone down but what I pay to get what I want has gone down quite a bit.  I think levels the playing field some for organizations and individuals who want to put out truely free learning objects.






The Bad

Gov. Schwarzenegger suggests teachers can "print out pages for students who do not have computers."  Who pays?  Probably the teachers!  This really shows no commitment to supplying the schools with computers
Perhaps an opportunity for Sugar on a Stick and School Key (my old name for a more standard Linux desktop version for older students) and donated computers.Integrating with Moodle and Google Gears means the learning content they need that week can be automatically downloaded to the stick and then students could access it on very low end hardware, with or without internet. Without a solution like this I can see huge disparies between kids who have computers and fast internet connections and those without.  Even printing costs aside, one kid is using video, interactive models, and adaptive quizes from home, and another is getting printouts to put in his backpack?






The Ugly

Textbook publishing is a big, competitive business.  Lots of profits are to be made in publishing textbooks.  What incentive will there be to publish free online books? You can bet they will not be free for long.
Oh yeah, its going to be interestingI've heard some pretty interesting stories about how text book purchasing decisions are madeI wonder if the whole process will get a bit more sunshine on it.Thanks Caryl ,  this is certainly huge news for us.





Hum...
Maybe we do need Jerry Brown to run for governor.  He had a huge commitment to educational technology when he was in office.

Any comments?

Caryl___IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.orghttp://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep-- Caroline MeeksSolution Grovecarol...@solutiongrove.com617-500-3488 - Office505-213-3268 - Fax

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[IAEP] Fwd: Announcing Fedora 11

[bernie]

We can start tracking the stable Fedora repositories in SoaS-2 and
*maybe* create a SoaS-3 image tracking rawhide.

A personal note: this Fedora release really shines.  If you had
tested and discarded a previous Fedora release due to stability
or usability glitches, I recommend you try again.

I even ran out of complaints against my #1 enemy Yum, which has
finally got usable, stable and FAST.  Others might complain for
the lack of mp3 and other patent encumbered codecs in the
default installation, but this is a deliberate choice and those
who live in the free world (or just don't care) can quickly
install them from rpmfusion.


 Original Message 
Subject: Announcing Fedora 11
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 10:16:34 -0400
From: "Paul W. Frields" 
To: fedora-announce-list 
Reply-To: fedora-l...@redhat.com

Ladies and gentlemen of the Royal Explorers Club! Your attention
please. It falls to me to be the host of our proceedings to-day, as we
celebrate a great achievement in the annals of this hallowed
organization -- the discovery of what is truly a magnificent specimen
among all FOSSdom. When Dr. Brattlesworth and I began this safari more
than six months ago, we knew full well the many snares, toils, and
dangers that awaited us along the hundreds of miles of tracking our
quarry across the plains. But we also maintained a steadfast belief
that by living with the land, and becoming part of the larger
ecosystem where this incredible animal takes refuge, we could record
for posterity the way of life of that marvelous creature -- the
Leonidas!

What's that? Oh, yes, dear me, the slides. I know you didn't come all
this way to hear my prattle, so let's say we, ah, get right down to
brass tacks as it were! Ho-ho! Yes, here we can see an exquisite scene
of the beast at repose, secure in his den, thanks to the mandatory
access control enhancements, which the astute among you will know
better as "SELinux", to his virtualization systems. Upon closer
inspection of his habitat we reveal further improvements to his
virtualization lair, including the merging of KVM and QEMU, stronger
VNC authentication for guests and a much enhanced
virt-manager. Finally, we were able to determine, as you'll see in
this slide, that our crafty king of beasts has secured his lair using
the protection of integrated fingerprint authentication and DNSSEC.

Next slide please, Dr. Brattlesworth -- Here, we find the quadruped
leaping to action in a flash with its 20-second startup -- and do
observe the animal's graceful form, achieved through kernel mode
setting and Plymouth. We discovered, upon further examination, that
the Leonidas maintains his sleek figure through the help of his new
Presto feature, which allows him to keep his bandwidth trim while
digesting updates that keep him healthy and content. By this point,
Dr. Brattlesworth was positively ecstatic about our discovery, and I
had to calm the poor chap down with some of the local fire-water. That
was a rum morning, wasn't it, my dear fellow? Ha ha!

Oh, balderdash, where was I? Ah yes, next slide. Here we see a diagram
of the cranial capacity of the average member of his species, compared
with that of our subject the Leonidas. Through a form of advanced
evolution to which Dr. Brattlesworth and I refer as "Free and Open
Source Software Development Methods," he has developed the
sophisticated abilities to comprehend code using GCC 4.4, Python 2.6
and NetBeans 6.5, and to patrol a much larger area of space quickly,
using his support for the Ext4 file system

Ah, my favorite slide is next! Here we see the Leonidas at the end of
a day as the full moon rises above the plain, safe and sound with his
new more understandable and flexible volume control. Oh-ho! Perhaps
those among you not asleep in your easy chairs by the fire, or
otherwise engaged in deep conversation, sparked no doubt by our
fascinating presentation, saw my little play at sonic humour. *ahem*
Yes, well.

So now that you have seen the results of our intrepid safari into the
land inhabited by the Leonidas -- truly a worthy quarry, and a wonder
for us to behold, which we are proud to share with you, our
colleagues, as always. I hope that you, like I -- and I trust my dear
fellow adventurer Dr. Brattlesworth -- are already eager to return to
the veldt and witness the next stage of growth of this superlative
creature. Do enjoy your handouts, which are all provided on this
marvelous new invention called the 'live compact-disc,' and which you
may feel absolutely confident in passing on to your many associates
and other curious passers-by.

Let us adjourn now to the smoking room for our brandy and cigars!

* * *

Get your copy of Fedora 11 today: http://get.fedoraproject.org/

For complete details of all the new features:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f11/index.html

* * *

If you need assistance with installing Fedora, please check out our
Installation Guide at http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f11/

Join t

[IAEP] [Invitation] Sugar Labs Marketing Mee ting @ Tue Jun 9 5pm – 6pm (i...@lists. sugarlabs.org)

[Sean Daly]

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
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DTSTART:20090609T15Z
DTEND:20090609T16Z
DTSTAMP:20090609T093559Z
ORGANIZER;CN=Sean Daly:mailto:sd...@sugarlabs.org
UID:qcb7aq0c3g3pcjt92hjflao...@google.com
ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=
 TRUE;cn=market...@lists.sugarlabs.org;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:market...@lists
 .sugarlabs.org
ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=
 TRUE;CN=Sebastian Dziallas;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:s...@fedoraproject.org
ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=
 TRUE;CN=iaep;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org
ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=
 TRUE;CN=Sugar Devel;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED;RSVP=TRUE
 ;CN=Sean Daly;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:sd...@sugarlabs.org
CLASS:PRIVATE
CREATED:20090609T092307Z
DESCRIPTION:Proposed agenda:\n\n* SoaS release name for LinuxTag and next f
 all release and after\n* Gould/Gardner press release\n* Nexcopy partnership
  in time for LinuxTag\n* Booth swag orders\n* PDF brochure and Try Sugar fl
 yer\n* boot animation debrief\n* other topics?\n\nNote: if this usual slot 
 doesn't work for everyone\, we can possibly do a 2nd meeting later today\, 
 we certainly have more than enough to fill the hour!\n\nWorldclock: http://
 www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html\nIRC Help: http://wiki.sugarl
 abs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Contacts#IRC.2C_Internet_Relay_Chat\n\nView your even
 t at http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=VIEW&eid=cWNiN2FxMGMzZzNwY
 2p0OTJoamZsYW85bWMgaWFlcEBsaXN0cy5zdWdhcmxhYnMub3Jn&tok=MTkjc2RhbHlAc3VnYXJ
 sYWJzLm9yZzM2ODgzOTI4MzE4YjhjOTI1ZWM5MmYwYTM4NzRhM2U3MmVjMTEzZDQ&ctz=Europe
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LAST-MODIFIED:20090609T093557Z
LOCATION:IRC: irc.freenode.net (channel: #sugar-meeting)
SEQUENCE:0
STATUS:CONFIRMED
SUMMARY:Sugar Labs Marketing Meeting
TRANSP:OPAQUE
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR


invite.ics
Description: application/ics
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Re: [IAEP] Texas Tech University work with XO/Sugar

[Sean DALY]

Wow I can't wait to see that (can't on this machine)

I'm interested in transcoding this to Ogg Theora, do you think we
could ask him for a higher-quality source version I could transcode?

is it CC, could we put it up on the Dailymotion site?

Texas is Dell Foundation country. Hmmm...

Sean


On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 9:52 PM, John Tierney wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Just wanted to pass along this email and video to everyone to show
>
> others like ourselves our hard at work trying to highlight and increase
>
> the effectiveness of Sugar and the XO.
>
>
>
> Video is about 35min in length-well done and inspires like minded work
>
> to be done.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> John Tierney
>
>
>
>>Subject: TTU's work with XO
>>Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 10:47:08 -0400
>>From: tcsa...@purdue.edu
>>To: rich.r...@ttu.edu; jtis4...@hotmail.com
>
>>Dear John,
>
>
>
>>I’ve mentioned to you that Rich Rice at Texas Tech University has been
>> using XO laptops for outreach >with k-12 students, and recently, he and his
>> graduate students completed a project with the Science >Spectrum in Lubbock,
>> TX.  Science Spectrum is the local science museum.  As you can see from the
>> >following movie, they developed some innovative activities and documented
>> their work with children who >stopped by the Science Spectrum.  They’ve had
>> quite a bit of success using the drawing and >chat .software, among others.
>
>
>
> http://media.English.TTU.edu/faculty/rice/5365/iplay.wmv
>
>
>
>>Rich is also a member of the Computers and Writing community and is
>> interested in exploring other >ways that C&W can do outreach with k-12
>> schools using the XO and the Sugar platform.  I’ve copied him >on this
>> message, so we can continue to talk about options for immediate and
>> long-term projects like >working with the National Writing Project.
>
>
>
>>Tammy
>
>
>
> --
>>Tammy S. Conard-Salvo
>>Associate Director, Writing Lab
>>Purdue University
>
>
>
> ___
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[David Farning]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 3:08 PM, James Simmons wrote:
> Aleksey,
>
> I see the need to avoid changing upstream code.

Please ping me if you need help pushing something like this upstream.
Mozilla is _very_ aware of the importance of good marketing.

david

  Maybe we could get 90% of
> the benefit by just having some text under the "sugarlabs Activities" logo
> saying "Over 140 Activities available!"  Just enough to indicate there *is*
> a lot available and encourage visitors to search.
>
> I played with a few Activities over my lunch break.  I should have some
> recommendations by next week.
>
> James Simmons
>
> Aleksey Lim wrote:
>
> the problem is - we depend on upstream AMO code, so patching ASLO code a lot
> will mean problems while merging new AMO commits (we can suggest our changes
> directly to AMO but thats another story).
>
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Sean DALY]

Looking better all the time.

For the moment, the site suffers from being ghettoized from the rest
of the Sugar Labs site; you can get in, but you can't get out -
there's no Sugar Labs navigation. Direct links coming in mean the rest
of the site is invisible. To fix this (and the other sections too,
it's not a problem specific to Activities), Christian has promised me
he will have the sitewide persistent navbar soon, he's super-occupied
with the new baby :-)

As search is local, it's good the search bar indicates in explicitly.

I agree with most of what James said. I can add: the site actually
fulfills a marketing function, unrelated to downloads: it's a quick
way for someone checking out the project to see how much and what
kinds of content are available, if the ecosystem is active, and so on.
A few years ago, from reading magazines and blogs, I was aware that
Firefox had a vibrant add-on offer months before I ever downloaded
one. So yes, there should be a count somewhere which instantly
communicates the richness.

The non US-en bug is still in effect; French users and I suspect other
locales see no content whatsoever, which to my mind is a bigger
problem than which Activities to feature. There is a language selector
which allows magically populating the empty site, but it's practically
unfindable. I would suggest disabling the language selector if that
bug can't be easily fixed (upstream).

GCompris is fine where it is; it is very well known in Europe and
elsewhere and has a five year headstart on us in word-of-mouth and
credibility with teachers. Although marketing/branding of GCompris has
been minimalist, it has a well-deserved reputation for quality. I'm
very excited GCompris is arriving in Sugar and I hope collaboration
will work in those Activities too.

I disagree that common baseline Activities should be absent; a common
scenario could be replacing an Activity removed by a Learner. Forgive
my ignorance, but is the OLPC notion of a "set" applicable? is it
possible to tag some Activities as "baseline", to have section for
them (can an Activity be in more than one section)? I agree though
that they shouldn't be featured unless a major upgrade is available.

As well, there are more than one reading Activities; the logical place
to locate them is here, but some parents or teachers on a Sugar
learning curve may believe that baseline Read "needs" to be
uninstalled to install Read eTexts. We need a short intro explaining
the install procedure (it took me days to figure out how to do it). I
had mentioned this a while back but I don't remember if someone
besides me had volunteered to look at that

thanks.

Sean


On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Aleksey Lim wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 12:09:56PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
>> Aleksey,
>>
>> That will teach me to open my mouth.
> :)
>
>> At the moment the only Activities
>> I'm really familiar with are my own, Read, and your Library Activity
>> which isn't finished (but would definitely be worthy otherwise).  I'll
>> have to add some more Activities to my XO and give them a try.  Any
>> suggestions on what might be worth a recommended status will be welcomed.
> well, we have not so much sugar activities on ASLO(I hope just for now)
> ..and I guess we should add some kind of filter to separate native sugar
> activities from GCompris, now we have 40 vs. 100 :)
>
>> Your other ideas sound good, but I still think we need some highly
>> visible counts in there.  As someone once said, "You gotta tell 'em to
>> sell 'em!"
> the problem is - we depend on upstream AMO code, so patching ASLO code a lot
> will mean problems while merging new AMO commits (we can suggest our changes
> directly to AMO but thats another story).
>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> James Simmons
>>
>>
>> Aleksey Lim wrote:
>>> You are an editor now and can do the best on
>>> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/editors/featured ;)
>>>
>>> And after fixing #948 all featured activities will appear on main page
>>> and per category main pages.
>>>
>>>
 I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities
 are related to each other, but the relationship would not be
 meaningful to a teacher or a student.

>>> fixed
>
> --
> Aleksey
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[James Simmons]

Aleksey,

I see the need to avoid changing upstream code.   Maybe we could get 90% 
of the benefit by just having some text under the "sugarlabs Activities" 
logo saying "Over 140 Activities available!"  Just enough to indicate 
there *is* a lot available and encourage visitors to search.


I played with a few Activities over my lunch break.  I should have some 
recommendations by next week.


James Simmons

Aleksey Lim wrote:


the problem is - we depend on upstream AMO code, so patching ASLO code a lot
will mean problems while merging new AMO commits (we can suggest our changes
directly to AMO but thats another story).
  

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Re: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi Again,I'd like to comment on two of Kathy's comments.

"4. Ensure, as a teacher, you have a printing and paper budget." 

* Don't lay this in the laps of the teachers.  They have far to much to do as 
it is. 

* Every child should have access to a computer al la the OLPC model (that is 
seldom really followed) and printers they can use at school for things from the 
textbook that need to be on paper.  

*Teachers should not be asked to do more than they already have to do.  They 
should be provided with teacher workrooms at least, with up-to-date, working 
equipment at their disposal for duplication of special materials such as lab 
sheets for experiments. Ideally, every teacher would be supplied with their own 
equipment so they could do this in their own classroom (that they don't have to 
share with several other teachers as "traveling teachers" at crowded schools 
often do).



"5. As with everything, never assume funding. Make it work on a shoestring 
budget. Be creative."


*Teachers have been being creative for years.  There is a limit to how much 
that shoestring can be stretched.
*It is time we concentrate on supporting the teachers and treating them like 
the dedicated, highly trained professionals we want them to be, and most are. 
Only then will be find the "best and brightest" scrambling to get into schools 
of education rather than doing, as so many do, teaching until something 
"better" comes along.



Sorry!  It is the old retired educator talking again!


CarylP.S. For some reason the formatting on this message is acting crazy. 
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[IAEP] Texas Tech University work with XO/Sugar

[John Tierney]

Hello All,
Just wanted to pass along this email and video to everyone to show
others like ourselves our hard at work trying to highlight and increase
the effectiveness of Sugar and the XO.
 
Video is about 35min in length-well done and inspires like minded work
to be done.
 
Best,
John Tierney
 
>Subject: TTU's work with XO
>Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 10:47:08 -0400
>From: tcsa...@purdue.edu
>To: rich.r...@ttu.edu; jtis4...@hotmail.com

>Dear John,
 
>I’ve mentioned to you that Rich Rice at Texas Tech University has been using 
>XO laptops for outreach >with k-12 students, and recently, he and his graduate 
>students completed a project with the Science >Spectrum in Lubbock, TX.  
>Science Spectrum is the local science museum.  As you can see from the 
>>following movie, they developed some innovative activities and documented 
>their work with children who >stopped by the Science Spectrum.  They’ve had 
>quite a bit of success using the drawing and >chat .software, among others.
 
http://media.English.TTU.edu/faculty/rice/5365/iplay.wmv
 
>Rich is also a member of the Computers and Writing community and is interested 
>in exploring other >ways that C&W can do outreach with k-12 schools using the 
>XO and the Sugar platform.  I’ve copied him >on this message, so we can 
>continue to talk about options for immediate and long-term projects like 
>>working with the National Writing Project.
 
>Tammy
 
--
>Tammy S. Conard-Salvo
>Associate Director, Writing Lab 
>Purdue University

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Re: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[James Simmons]

Caryl,

I can certainly understand expecting the worst here.  I do think the 
idea has potential, even if it takes awhile to achieve it.

My niece went to the Illinois Math and Science Academy, a public 
boarding school for gifted kids.  One of the things that impressed me 
about this school was that they don't use textbooks at all.  The 
teachers create all the class materials.  Her father's complaint about 
the school was that, "The teachers don't teach!"  I don't think anyone 
missed having textbooks, though.

Creating textbooks has a lot of politics involved in it.  School boards 
cannot be offended by anything in History or Biology textbooks, and the 
dumbest, most easily offended school boards in the country end up 
choosing what textbooks get used by most of the country.  A couple of 
years ago I took a vacation in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, etc.  I 
learned a lot of things about U.S. History that I wish I had learned as 
a kid.  For instance, the first ships in the U.S. Navy were captured 
from the British by pirates.  In colonial Williamsburg, church 
attendance was required by law, and you could be punished for arriving 
late.  If you wanted to attend a church other than the official one you 
could only do that with permission from the government, and you still 
had to tithe to the official church.  What is the likelihood of any of 
that information making it into a high school textbook? 

I read a story that a Biology teacher got in trouble for pointing out 
that men and women have the same number of ribs!  Mike Huckabee claimed 
during the last election that most of the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence were clergymen, and *nobody* corrected him.

Having digital textbooks might be a way to get around that, because 
different states could publish their own books at a low cost.  States 
could use each other's books, etc.  I'm not saying it would be easy but 
it would be possible.  The school boards in Texas and elsewhere would 
not be able to hijack the whole process.  Eventually this should lead to 
better textbooks.

If the books were in the public domain (and they should be) then cheap 
printed copies of the textbooks should also be available.

James Simmons

> Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 09:53:04 -0700
> From: Caryl Bigenho 
> Subject: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California
> To: Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond t
>   , IAEP SugarLabs
>   
> Message-ID: 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
> Hi...
> Adam Holt alerted me to Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to go digital with 
> textbooks statewide in California high schools, starting with math and 
> science this year.  Here is my retired teacher's view of the situation...
>
>
> (See: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/12455/)
>
>
> The Good:
>
>
> Textbooks can be up to date and, hopefully, will be.
>
>
> The Bad
>
> Gov. Schwarzenegger suggests teachers can "print out pages for students who 
> do not have computers."  Who pays?  Probably the teachers!  This really shows 
> no commitment to supplying the schools with computers
>
> The Ugly
>
>
> Textbook publishing is a big, competitive business.  Lots of profits are to 
> be made in publishing textbooks.  What incentive will there be to publish 
> free online books? You can bet they will not be free for long.
> Hum...Maybe we do need Jerry Brown to run for governor.  He had a huge 
> commitment to educational technology when he was in office.
> Any comments?
> Caryl

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Re: [IAEP] Please help us choose a Sugar on a Stick boot animation

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi... 


FWIW, I like the "Variant of XO Avatar Sugar Boot, Grey to Colour Dot 
Transition." It is familiar, makes the progress seem faster, and reminds folks 
that the XO and Sugar are related.


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Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] Please help us choose a Sugar on a Stick boot animation sequence by tomorrow

[John Tierney]

+1 for the ring-signifies Connectedness, Completeness, and Community
 
> Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 19:07:17 +0200
> From: sdaly...@gmail.com
> To: market...@lists.sugarlabs.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; 
> sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: [Marketing] Please help us choose a Sugar on a Stick boot animation 
> sequence by tomorrow
> 
> We are on a tight schedule for the SoaS LinuxTag release and following
> the mega-thread on the subject we have narrowed the choice down to two
> variants:
> 
> Progress Bar
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#Animation_of_Eben.27s_Above_Design
> 
> Ring of Dots
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#XO_Sugar_Boot_With_Overlap
> 
> 
> This needs to be decided by tomorrow, so if you have a strong
> preference, please speak up now or hold your peace until the next
> release.
> 
> There seems to be a slight preference for the Ring (I myself prefer it
> since similar to familiar OLPC experience).
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Sean
> ___
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> market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Please help us choose a Sugar on a Stick boot animation sequence by tomorrow

[Lucian Branescu]

+1 for the ring

2009/6/9 Sean DALY :
> We are on a tight schedule for the SoaS LinuxTag release and following
> the mega-thread on the subject we have narrowed the choice down to two
> variants:
>
> Progress Bar
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#Animation_of_Eben.27s_Above_Design
>
> Ring of Dots
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#XO_Sugar_Boot_With_Overlap
>
>
> This needs to be decided by tomorrow, so if you have a strong
> preference, please speak up now or hold your peace until the next
> release.
>
> There seems to be a slight preference for the Ring (I myself prefer it
> since similar to familiar OLPC experience).
>
> Thanks
>
> Sean
> ___
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> sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Aleksey Lim]

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 12:09:56PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
> Aleksey,
>
> That will teach me to open my mouth.
:)

> At the moment the only Activities  
> I'm really familiar with are my own, Read, and your Library Activity  
> which isn't finished (but would definitely be worthy otherwise).  I'll  
> have to add some more Activities to my XO and give them a try.  Any  
> suggestions on what might be worth a recommended status will be welcomed.
well, we have not so much sugar activities on ASLO(I hope just for now)
..and I guess we should add some kind of filter to separate native sugar
activities from GCompris, now we have 40 vs. 100 :)

> Your other ideas sound good, but I still think we need some highly  
> visible counts in there.  As someone once said, "You gotta tell 'em to  
> sell 'em!"
the problem is - we depend on upstream AMO code, so patching ASLO code a lot
will mean problems while merging new AMO commits (we can suggest our changes
directly to AMO but thats another story).

>
> Thanks,
>
> James Simmons
>
>
> Aleksey Lim wrote:
>> You are an editor now and can do the best on
>> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/editors/featured ;)
>>
>> And after fixing #948 all featured activities will appear on main page
>> and per category main pages.
>>
>>   
>>> I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities 
>>> are related to each other, but the relationship would not be 
>>> meaningful to a teacher or a student.
>>> 
>> fixed

-- 
Aleksey
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Re: [IAEP] linuxtag 2009

[David Farning]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Simon Schampijer wrote:
> On 06/09/2009 05:36 PM, David Farning wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Sean DALY  wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Tomeu, I've updated the wiki with my name, shifts, and banner info
>>>
>>> I too am interested in the 4-6 pers. room crashpad
>>>
>>> I like the idea of colocating with FUDCon, if that's not complicated;
>>> I would very much like to see that.
>>>
>> I am pinging Max Spevack the event coordinator from Fedora/RedHat
>
> Awesome. Collaborating with FUDCon would be the best imho. Room wise, people
> wise and I guess working wise. We could for example work on the things we
> are highly dependent on Fedora, like Soas for example. LTSP might be another
> interesting one.

True to the type of response I have grown the expect (and greatly
appreaciate), Max basically said the more the merrier at FudCon.

Lets see what sort of good things we can make happen.

I'll let Max explain what he has to offer:)

david



> Regards,
>   Simon
>
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Re: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[Kathy Pusztavari]

Yeah, I got a few comments.
 
1. At some point, schools will be so poor, textbooks will no longer be an
issue.  They will be forced to make or use freely created texts.  I see it
already.  My son's Saxon math book literally fell apart.  It is so old, I
had to buy it on ebay for $14.  No kidding.
 
2.  Saxon math sucks. What the hell are we doing with crappy math books.
Can we take a little from a bunch of books and make our own?  A little of
Saxon, a little of Singapore, a little (well preferably a lot) of SRA
Connecting Math Concepts.  Put em all together, that's what it's all about!
 
3. As with grades online, if the kid or parents don't have access, print it
for the kid.  Hopefully teachers spend enough time to know each kid and
family situation.  Heck, send out a survey and call the parents that don't
return the survey.  At our school, they try to line up enough computer lab
time but that doesn't alway work out.  Lend out computers with the book
loaded or a CD.  Hey, how bout one of them OLPC XO jobs?
 
4.  Ensure, as a teacher, you have a printing and paper budget. For goodness
shake! (as my Hungarian father used to say)
 
5.  As with everything, never assume funding.  Make it work on a shoestring
budget.  Be creative.
 
-Kathy - mom of Calvin, attemptor of python programming, previous open
"sores" hater, and shoe-string budgeter

  _  

From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org
[mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Caryl Bigenho
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2009 9:53 AM
To: Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond t; IAEP SugarLabs
Subject: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California


Hi... 

Adam Holt alerted me to Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to go digital with
textbooks statewide in California high schools, starting with math and
science this year.  Here is my retired teacher's view of the situation...





(See:  
http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/12455/)




The Good:




Textbooks can be up to date and, hopefully, will be.







The Bad




Gov. Schwarzenegger suggests teachers can "print out pages for students who
do not have computers."  Who pays?  Probably the teachers!  This really
shows no commitment to supplying the schools with computers







The Ugly




Textbook publishing is a big, competitive business.  Lots of profits are to
be made in publishing textbooks.  What incentive will there be to publish
free online books? You can bet they will not be free for long.




Hum...

Maybe we do need Jerry Brown to run for governor.  He had a huge commitment
to educational technology when he was in office.




Any comments?




Caryl

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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[James Simmons]

Aleksey,

That will teach me to open my mouth.  At the moment the only Activities 
I'm really familiar with are my own, Read, and your Library Activity 
which isn't finished (but would definitely be worthy otherwise).  I'll 
have to add some more Activities to my XO and give them a try.  Any 
suggestions on what might be worth a recommended status will be welcomed.


Your other ideas sound good, but I still think we need some highly 
visible counts in there.  As someone once said, "You gotta tell 'em to 
sell 'em!"


Thanks,

James Simmons


Aleksey Lim wrote:

You are an editor now and can do the best on
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/editors/featured ;)

And after fixing #948 all featured activities will appear on main page
and per category main pages.

  
I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities 
are related to each other, but the relationship would not be meaningful 
to a teacher or a student.


fixed
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[IAEP] Please help us choose a Sugar on a Stick boot animation sequence by tomorrow

[Sean DALY]

We are on a tight schedule for the SoaS LinuxTag release and following
the mega-thread on the subject we have narrowed the choice down to two
variants:

Progress Bar
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#Animation_of_Eben.27s_Above_Design

Ring of Dots
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#XO_Sugar_Boot_With_Overlap


This needs to be decided by tomorrow, so if you have a strong
preference, please speak up now or hold your peace until the next
release.

There seems to be a slight preference for the Ring (I myself prefer it
since similar to familiar OLPC experience).

Thanks

Sean
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Re: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[Caroline Meeks]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Caryl Bigenho  wrote:

>  Hi...
> Adam Holt alerted me to Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to go digital with
> textbooks statewide in California high schools, starting with math and
> science this year.  Here is my retired teacher's view of the situation...
>
>
> (See: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/12455/)
>
>
> The Good:
>
>
> Textbooks can be up to date and, hopefully, will be.
>

Sets the stage for more competition in text books and being able to buy or
download for free different chapters or lessons from different places.  I'm
thinking like iTunes. Before you had to buy the album, now you can just buy
the song you want.  Overall maybe the cost hasn't gone down but what I pay
to get what I want has gone down quite a bit.  I think levels the playing
field some for organizations and individuals who want to put out truely free
learning objects.

>
>
> The Bad
>
>
> Gov. Schwarzenegger suggests teachers can "print out pages for students who
> do not have computers."  Who pays?  Probably the teachers!  This really
> shows no commitment to supplying the schools with computers
>

Perhaps an opportunity for Sugar on a Stick and School Key (my old name for
a more standard Linux desktop version for older students) and donated
computers.

Integrating with Moodle and Google Gears means the learning content they
need that week can be automatically downloaded to the stick and then
students could access it on very low end hardware, with or without internet.


Without a solution like this I can see huge disparies between kids who have
computers and fast internet connections and those without.  Even printing
costs aside, one kid is using video, interactive models, and adaptive quizes
from home, and another is getting printouts to put in his backpack?


>
> The Ugly
>
>
> Textbook publishing is a big, competitive business.  Lots of profits are to
> be made in publishing textbooks.  What incentive will there be to publish
> free online books? You can bet they will not be free for long.
>

Oh yeah, its going to be interestingI've heard some pretty interesting
stories about how text book purchasing decisions are madeI wonder if the
whole process will get a bit more sunshine on it.

Thanks Caryl ,  this is certainly huge news for us.


> Hum...
>
> Maybe we do need Jerry Brown to run for governor.  He had a hugecommitment to 
> educational technology when he was in office.
>
>
> Any comments?
>
>
> Caryl
>
> ___
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> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
carol...@solutiongrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ASLO Suggestion

[Aleksey Lim]

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 09:50:31AM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
> The new style sheet for ASLO reminds me that something has bugged me 
> about the design of the site from the beginning.  The site does not do a 
> good job of showing just how much is available.  When you click on a 
> category you see entries for three or four Activities, seemingly picked 
> at random, and no indication that these Activities are not the only ones 
> available in the category.  Yes, there is a link to show everything in 
> the category.  It's not that you can't find anything if you really want 
> to.  It's that the site doesn't do a good job of selling what it has.
> 
> What I would suggest is to put totals for each category in a prominent 
> place on the page.  When you first come into the site and no category is 
> selected you should see something like "500 Great Activities 
> Available!"  Choose a category like Documents and the line would read 
> "10 Activities In This Category."

In my mind we can do something similar w/o patching upstream code much,
now ASLO does this:

* on the main page it shows 5(6) featured activities in "We Recommended"
  and 3 others in below list
* in category list it shows "We Recommended"(if there are recommended
  activities in this category) and random list of 3 other activities
  in this category

So, we can just increase amount of activities from 3 to 10(or so)
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/947
and instead of random list show list of featured activities
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/948

> The other thing that has bugged me is the Recommended Activities.  We 
> need to put more thought into what gets recommended.  Currently one of 
> the Activities that is recommended is Read.  Now an XO owner or SoaS 
> user already has Read, so why recommend it?  Is there some reason I 
> should remove the Read I already have and install this one?
> 
> Recommended Activities should promote Sugar.  They should meet the 
> following criteria:
> 
> 1).  Fairly robust.
> 2).  Not included by default with anything.
> 3).  Should do something interesting.  Think of the iPhone commercials 
> that show all the apps that are available.  Why not recommend something 
> like Food Force or Story Builder?

You are an editor now and can do the best on
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/editors/featured ;)

And after fixing #948 all featured activities will appear on main page
and per category main pages.

> I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities 
> are related to each other, but the relationship would not be meaningful 
> to a teacher or a student.
fixed

> 
> A little salesmanship could go a long way in making this site better.
> 
> James Simmons
> 

-- 
Aleksey
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[IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi...
Adam Holt alerted me to Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to go digital with 
textbooks statewide in California high schools, starting with math and science 
this year.  Here is my retired teacher's view of the situation...



(See: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/12455/)


The Good:


Textbooks can be up to date and, hopefully, will be.




The Bad


Gov. Schwarzenegger suggests teachers can "print out pages for students who do 
not have computers."  Who pays?  Probably the teachers!  This really shows no 
commitment to supplying the schools with computers




The Ugly


Textbook publishing is a big, competitive business.  Lots of profits are to be 
made in publishing textbooks.  What incentive will there be to publish free 
online books? You can bet they will not be free for long.
Hum...Maybe we do need Jerry Brown to run for governor.  He had a huge 
commitment to educational technology when he was in office.
Any comments?
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Re: [IAEP] linuxtag 2009

[Simon Schampijer]

On 06/09/2009 05:36 PM, David Farning wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Sean DALY  wrote:
>> Hi Tomeu, I've updated the wiki with my name, shifts, and banner info
>>
>> I too am interested in the 4-6 pers. room crashpad
>>
>> I like the idea of colocating with FUDCon, if that's not complicated;
>> I would very much like to see that.
>>
> I am pinging Max Spevack the event coordinator from Fedora/RedHat

Awesome. Collaborating with FUDCon would be the best imho. Room wise, 
people wise and I guess working wise. We could for example work on the 
things we are highly dependent on Fedora, like Soas for example. LTSP 
might be another interesting one.

Regards,
Simon
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Re: [IAEP] linuxtag 2009

[David Farning]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Sean DALY wrote:
> Hi Tomeu, I've updated the wiki with my name, shifts, and banner info
>
> I too am interested in the 4-6 pers. room crashpad
>
> I like the idea of colocating with FUDCon, if that's not complicated;
> I would very much like to see that.
>
I am pinging Max Spevack the event coordinator from Fedora/RedHat

> thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> some thoughts about the upcoming Sugar presence in LinuxTag:
>>
>> - please add yourself to
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Events/LinuxTag2009#Attendees
>> if attending
>>
>> - David and me are looking for people to share an apartment close to
>> the conf venue: 100e/night for 4-6 people
>>
>> - the Sugar booth, we are being asked to fill a shift in
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Events/LinuxTag2009#Sugar_Booth
>> but may be better that we first know who is available for helping,
>> then filling the table based on that
>>
>> - LinuxTag ends Saturday and we are thinking about dedicating the
>> whole Sunday to Sugar matters. Fedora's FUDCon is also going on that
>> day and because some Sugar Labs members are interested in
>> participating in FUDCon and some Fedora people might be interested in
>> knowing more about Sugar, perhaps we should hold this Sugar day as
>> part of FUDCon like we did in Brno and in Boston. Ideas?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Tomeu
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Re: [IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

[David Farning]

I think the Recommended activities are still those which were uploaded
early just to test the the recommendations worked.

IIRC, for a long time search was more broken than recommendations
Thus, search got the love.

That being said, modifying and updating recommendations are handled
through a web interface by editors.  If you have the time and interest
recommendations could use some love from you:)

david


On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 9:50 AM, James Simmons wrote:
> The new style sheet for ASLO reminds me that something has bugged me
> about the design of the site from the beginning.  The site does not do a
> good job of showing just how much is available.  When you click on a
> category you see entries for three or four Activities, seemingly picked
> at random, and no indication that these Activities are not the only ones
> available in the category.  Yes, there is a link to show everything in
> the category.  It's not that you can't find anything if you really want
> to.  It's that the site doesn't do a good job of selling what it has.
>
> What I would suggest is to put totals for each category in a prominent
> place on the page.  When you first come into the site and no category is
> selected you should see something like "500 Great Activities
> Available!"  Choose a category like Documents and the line would read
> "10 Activities In This Category."
>
> The other thing that has bugged me is the Recommended Activities.  We
> need to put more thought into what gets recommended.  Currently one of
> the Activities that is recommended is Read.  Now an XO owner or SoaS
> user already has Read, so why recommend it?  Is there some reason I
> should remove the Read I already have and install this one?
>
> Recommended Activities should promote Sugar.  They should meet the
> following criteria:
>
> 1).  Fairly robust.
> 2).  Not included by default with anything.
> 3).  Should do something interesting.  Think of the iPhone commercials
> that show all the apps that are available.  Why not recommend something
> like Food Force or Story Builder?
>
> I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities
> are related to each other, but the relationship would not be meaningful
> to a teacher or a student.
>
> A little salesmanship could go a long way in making this site better.
>
> James Simmons
>
>
> ___
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>
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Re: [IAEP] collaborative testing session (tomorrow's meeting) reminder

[David Farning]

I'll tune in as well!

Running Sugar Jhbuild on Ubuntu.

david

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 9:16 AM, David Van Assche wrote:
> Hi folks,
>    This is a reminder about the collaborative sugar testing session we are
> having tomorrow, Wednesday 10th June at 20:00 UTC (That is 4 pm EDT, 3pm
> EST, 2 pm CST, 1 pm MST, and 12 pm PST, most of Europe that will be 9 pm, 8
> pm for the UK)
>
> We will have a good 5-10 people present, but more are welcome as we really
> want to see how collaboration works on many activities where it isn't quite
> obvious. We will be taking notes and storing log files of the sessions, and
> will suggest ways in which the activity in question might be more
> collaborative, or may need less of it (who knows :-)
>
> We will be testing the activities that come pre-installed on the openSUSE
> sugar images, but we'd like to test various distribution methods (virtual
> appliance, cd, usb, hd) and various distros (at least Fedora SoaS, openSUSE
> sugar, Mandriva or Caixa Magica) I dont believe 0.82 images are compatible
> with 0.84 for collaboration, so am afraid this is for 0.84 only... Please
> post your willingness to participate so we have an idea on who/how many will
> be collaborating. We also need a volunteer to take notes, and a volunteer to
> store logs files. There will of course be a transcript of the irc session
> too (we will meet at #sugar-collaboration) We forsee this taking between 1
> and 2 hours...
>
> I need a volunteer that is shell savvy and can track cpu/ram usage on the
> server that is running ejabberd. It will be a good opportunity to see real
> life results within ejabberd, in terms of bandwidth usage, cpu usage, ram
> usage, etc.
>
> Here is the list of activities we will be testing, so make sure you have
> them installed if you plan to take part (not all have collaborative
> abilities, and for those that don't it can be a brainstorming session on
> whether/how we can make them collaborative:
>
> sugar-finance
> etoys
> sugar-flipsticks-activity
> sugar-freecell
> sugar-imageviewer
> sugar-implode
> sugar-infoslicer
> sugar-jigsaw-puzzle-activity
> sugar-joke-machine-activity
> sugar-jukebox
> sugar-labyrinth
> sugar-maze
> sugar-memorize
> sugar-moon
> sugar-paint-activity
> sugar-pippy
> sugar-playgo
> sugar-read
> sugar-readetexts-activity
> sugar-record
> sugar-slider-puzzle-activity
> sugar-speak
> sugar-storybuilder
> sugar-tamtam-common
> sugar-tamtam-edit
> sugar-tamtam-jam
> sugar-tamtam-mini
> sugar-tamtam-synthlab
> sugar-analyze
> sugar-turtleart
> sugar-typing-turtle
> sugar-viewslides
> sugar-write
> sugar-browse
> sugar-irc
> sugar-calculate
> sugar-xomail (sugar-sweetmail)
> sugar-cartoonbuilder
> sugar-clock
> sugar-colors
> sugar-connect
> sugar-drgeo-activity
> xoEditor
> sugar-evince
> sugar-fiftytwo
> sugar-chat
> sugar-terminal
> sugar-journal
> sugar-physics
> sugar-library
> sugar-poll
> sugar-tuxpaint
>
> kind Regards,
> David (nubae) 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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[IAEP] ASLO Suggestion

[James Simmons]

The new style sheet for ASLO reminds me that something has bugged me 
about the design of the site from the beginning.  The site does not do a 
good job of showing just how much is available.  When you click on a 
category you see entries for three or four Activities, seemingly picked 
at random, and no indication that these Activities are not the only ones 
available in the category.  Yes, there is a link to show everything in 
the category.  It's not that you can't find anything if you really want 
to.  It's that the site doesn't do a good job of selling what it has.

What I would suggest is to put totals for each category in a prominent 
place on the page.  When you first come into the site and no category is 
selected you should see something like "500 Great Activities 
Available!"  Choose a category like Documents and the line would read 
"10 Activities In This Category."

The other thing that has bugged me is the Recommended Activities.  We 
need to put more thought into what gets recommended.  Currently one of 
the Activities that is recommended is Read.  Now an XO owner or SoaS 
user already has Read, so why recommend it?  Is there some reason I 
should remove the Read I already have and install this one?

Recommended Activities should promote Sugar.  They should meet the 
following criteria:

1).  Fairly robust.
2).  Not included by default with anything.
3).  Should do something interesting.  Think of the iPhone commercials 
that show all the apps that are available.  Why not recommend something 
like Food Force or Story Builder?

I also question the category GCompris.  I understand these Activities 
are related to each other, but the relationship would not be meaningful 
to a teacher or a student.

A little salesmanship could go a long way in making this site better.

James Simmons


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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] collaborative testing session (tomorrow's meeting) reminder

[Aleksey Lim]

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 04:16:38PM +0200, David Van Assche wrote:
> Hi folks,
>This is a reminder about the collaborative sugar testing session we are
> having tomorrow, Wednesday 10th June at 20:00 UTC (That is 4 pm EDT, 3pm
> EST, 2 pm CST, 1 pm MST, and 12 pm PST, most of Europe that will be 9 pm, 8
> pm for the UK)
> 
> We will have a good 5-10 people present, but more are welcome as we really
> want to see how collaboration works on many activities where it isn't quite
> obvious. We will be taking notes and storing log files of the sessions, and
> will suggest ways in which the activity in question might be more
> collaborative, or may need less of it (who knows :-)
> 
> We will be testing the activities that come pre-installed on the openSUSE
> sugar images, but we'd like to test various distribution methods (virtual
> appliance, cd, usb, hd) and various distros (at least Fedora SoaS, openSUSE
> sugar, Mandriva or Caixa Magica) I dont believe 0.82 images are compatible
> with 0.84 for collaboration, so am afraid this is for 0.84 only... Please
> post your willingness to participate so we have an idea on who/how many will
> be collaborating. We also need a volunteer to take notes, and a volunteer to
> 
> store logs files. There will of course be a transcript of the irc session
> too (we will meet at #sugar-collaboration) We forsee this taking between 1
> and 2 hours...
> 
> I need a volunteer that is shell savvy and can track cpu/ram usage on the
> server that is running ejabberd. It will be a good opportunity to see real
> life results within ejabberd, in terms of bandwidth usage, cpu usage, ram
> usage, etc.
> 
> Here is the list of activities we will be testing, so make sure you have
> them installed if you plan to take part (not all have collaborative
> abilities, and for those that don't it can be a brainstorming session on
> whether/how we can make them collaborative:
> 
> sugar-finance
> etoys
> sugar-flipsticks-activity
> sugar-freecell
> sugar-imageviewer
> sugar-implode
> sugar-infoslicer
> sugar-jigsaw-puzzle-activity
> sugar-joke-machine-activity
> sugar-jukebox
> sugar-labyrinth
> sugar-maze
> sugar-memorize
> sugar-moon
> sugar-paint-activity
> sugar-pippy
> sugar-playgo
> sugar-read
> sugar-readetexts-activity
> sugar-record
> sugar-slider-puzzle-activity
> sugar-speak
> sugar-storybuilder
> sugar-tamtam-common
> sugar-tamtam-edit
> sugar-tamtam-jam
> sugar-tamtam-mini
> sugar-tamtam-synthlab
> sugar-analyze
> sugar-turtleart
> sugar-typing-turtle
> sugar-viewslides
> sugar-write
> sugar-browse
> sugar-irc
> sugar-calculate
> sugar-xomail (sugar-sweetmail)
> sugar-cartoonbuilder
> sugar-clock
> sugar-colors
> sugar-connect
> sugar-drgeo-activity
> xoEditor
> sugar-evince
> sugar-fiftytwo
> sugar-chat
> sugar-terminal
> sugar-journal
> sugar-physics
> sugar-library
> sugar-poll
> sugar-tuxpaint

Some of these activities don't support collaboration by design(afaik):

sugar-infoslicer
sugar-storybuilder
sugar-tamtam-common
sugar-tamtam-edit
sugar-tamtam-synthlab
sugar-library(for v1)
sugar-tuxpaint

-- 
Aleksey
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[IAEP] collaborative testing session (tomorrow's meeting) reminder

[David Van Assche]

Hi folks,
   This is a reminder about the collaborative sugar testing session we are
having tomorrow, Wednesday 10th June at 20:00 UTC (That is 4 pm EDT, 3pm
EST, 2 pm CST, 1 pm MST, and 12 pm PST, most of Europe that will be 9 pm, 8
pm for the UK)

We will have a good 5-10 people present, but more are welcome as we really
want to see how collaboration works on many activities where it isn't quite
obvious. We will be taking notes and storing log files of the sessions, and
will suggest ways in which the activity in question might be more
collaborative, or may need less of it (who knows :-)

We will be testing the activities that come pre-installed on the openSUSE
sugar images, but we'd like to test various distribution methods (virtual
appliance, cd, usb, hd) and various distros (at least Fedora SoaS, openSUSE
sugar, Mandriva or Caixa Magica) I dont believe 0.82 images are compatible
with 0.84 for collaboration, so am afraid this is for 0.84 only... Please
post your willingness to participate so we have an idea on who/how many will
be collaborating. We also need a volunteer to take notes, and a volunteer to

store logs files. There will of course be a transcript of the irc session
too (we will meet at #sugar-collaboration) We forsee this taking between 1
and 2 hours...

I need a volunteer that is shell savvy and can track cpu/ram usage on the
server that is running ejabberd. It will be a good opportunity to see real
life results within ejabberd, in terms of bandwidth usage, cpu usage, ram
usage, etc.

Here is the list of activities we will be testing, so make sure you have
them installed if you plan to take part (not all have collaborative
abilities, and for those that don't it can be a brainstorming session on
whether/how we can make them collaborative:

sugar-finance
etoys
sugar-flipsticks-activity
sugar-freecell
sugar-imageviewer
sugar-implode
sugar-infoslicer
sugar-jigsaw-puzzle-activity
sugar-joke-machine-activity
sugar-jukebox
sugar-labyrinth
sugar-maze
sugar-memorize
sugar-moon
sugar-paint-activity
sugar-pippy
sugar-playgo
sugar-read
sugar-readetexts-activity
sugar-record
sugar-slider-puzzle-activity
sugar-speak
sugar-storybuilder
sugar-tamtam-common
sugar-tamtam-edit
sugar-tamtam-jam
sugar-tamtam-mini
sugar-tamtam-synthlab
sugar-analyze
sugar-turtleart
sugar-typing-turtle
sugar-viewslides
sugar-write
sugar-browse
sugar-irc
sugar-calculate
sugar-xomail (sugar-sweetmail)
sugar-cartoonbuilder
sugar-clock
sugar-colors
sugar-connect
sugar-drgeo-activity
xoEditor
sugar-evince
sugar-fiftytwo
sugar-chat
sugar-terminal
sugar-journal
sugar-physics
sugar-library
sugar-poll
sugar-tuxpaint

kind Regards,
David (nubae) Van Assche
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Re: [IAEP] Introducing kids to Sugar

[Caroline Meeks]

Hi Bernie,

Sorry to be so slow in answering.

I suggest trying to find out some of the things that the teacher and school
are already focusing on and relate your use of Sugar to those.  Often, the
teacher, grade or school will have some area of instruction that they are
trying to improve.

Research shows that schools with instructional coherence perform better then
those with lots of interesting programs that don't fit together.  Sugar can
be used to deepen instruction in almost any area.

So many things are sold to schools as stand alone programs that the teachers
may be initially confused by this approach but, I've found that once they
understand what you are trying to do, they are very interested and
receptive.

Once you find out what the class is already doing, come back to the list and
we can all help you brainstorm some good Sugar activities that will deepen
the student's thinking on the topic.  You don't want to introduce too many
activites at first, but I think you also want teachers to understand that
there are many activities available.

Good luck!
Caroline

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Bernie Innocenti wrote:

> There's a possibility for a class of five graders in Florence to pilot
> SoaS next year.
>
> Our friends of OLPC Italia came up with a good question: how would an
> introductory class for Sugar work in practice?  Both teachers and kids
> will be present to learn simultaneously, which makes things more
> interesting.
>
> Who actually went through such experience already?  How was the class
> organized?  What materials were used?  And, more importantly, ware there
> any issues to watch out for?
>
> --
>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>  \X/  Sugar Labs   - http://sugarlabs.org/
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
carol...@solutiongrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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Re: [IAEP] linuxtag 2009

[Sean DALY]

Hi Tomeu, I've updated the wiki with my name, shifts, and banner info

I too am interested in the 4-6 pers. room crashpad

I like the idea of colocating with FUDCon, if that's not complicated;
I would very much like to see that.

thanks

Sean


On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> Hi,
>
> some thoughts about the upcoming Sugar presence in LinuxTag:
>
> - please add yourself to
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Events/LinuxTag2009#Attendees
> if attending
>
> - David and me are looking for people to share an apartment close to
> the conf venue: 100e/night for 4-6 people
>
> - the Sugar booth, we are being asked to fill a shift in
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Events/LinuxTag2009#Sugar_Booth
> but may be better that we first know who is available for helping,
> then filling the table based on that
>
> - LinuxTag ends Saturday and we are thinking about dedicating the
> whole Sunday to Sugar matters. Fedora's FUDCon is also going on that
> day and because some Sugar Labs members are interested in
> participating in FUDCon and some Fedora people might be interested in
> knowing more about Sugar, perhaps we should hold this Sugar day as
> part of FUDCon like we did in Brno and in Boston. Ideas?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tomeu
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[IAEP] linuxtag 2009

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi,

some thoughts about the upcoming Sugar presence in LinuxTag:

- please add yourself to
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Events/LinuxTag2009#Attendees
if attending

- David and me are looking for people to share an apartment close to
the conf venue: 100e/night for 4-6 people

- the Sugar booth, we are being asked to fill a shift in
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Events/LinuxTag2009#Sugar_Booth
but may be better that we first know who is available for helping,
then filling the table based on that

- LinuxTag ends Saturday and we are thinking about dedicating the
whole Sunday to Sugar matters. Fedora's FUDCon is also going on that
day and because some Sugar Labs members are interested in
participating in FUDCon and some Fedora people might be interested in
knowing more about Sugar, perhaps we should hold this Sugar day as
part of FUDCon like we did in Brno and in Boston. Ideas?

Thanks,

Tomeu
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