[IAEP] Afghanistan schools
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/world/asia/20clinton.html?scp=2sq=afghanistan+girlsst=nyt http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/world/asia/24kabul.html?_r=1scp=1sq=afghanistan+childrenst=nyt http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/opinion/29kristof.html?scp=1sq=afghanistan%20schools%20%20talibanst=cse Secretary Clinton said the following: When Mr. Karzai first took office in 2002, there were one million students in Afghanistan, virtually all boys. Today, there are seven million, 40 percent of them girls. She said Mr. Karzai deserved some credit for that, as well as for other advances during his tenure. I have no desire to debate the US political situation, or Mr. Karzai, but I hadn't seen this very interesting statistic before, and was wondering if anyone else had? I saw elsewhere that over 44% of Afghanistan's population is 14 and under. second link worth a read, poor parents scraping by to send their children to school... the one thing the state provides third link is N. Kristof's recent column about Afghanistan schools thanks Sean ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sunflower for Science on XO
Hi there I just wanted to write to let people know we've been experimenting with some success with getting our Sunflower for Science product (www.sunflowerlearning.com) running on an XO. It's a Windows/Mac product but I've got it running through SugaredWine and it's looking very promising. I have a few questions that I wondered if anyone might be able to help with: 1) Screen resolution The biggest problem we have is that the screen res of the XO seems unnecessarily high and can't be changed. This leads to two big problems, one of readibility (which we can fix with a bit of work) and one of performance. Given the low spec of the machines, running full-screen animations, some of them in 3d, is pretty hard work for them at that resolution. Does anyone have any suggestions for ways to get round this issue? For example, I've been thinking about whether we could run the software at half-res and then use a screen magnifier app to bring it back to fullscreen 2) Launching and packaging Although SugaredWine is great, it would seem that a more sensible option would be to package the software together with Wine as a single activity that can be launched directly from a stick or installed as a .xo. Our product doesn't have an installer, although it does write to the Registry - anyone tried anything like this? I'm afraid I'm a total Linux novice, so any advice would be welcome, but if you could talk to me like a small child that would be very helpful :) Thanks Danny ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] FW: Tutorius Meeting minutes - 2009/11/19
JujJust wanted to mention my admiration for the Tutorious team: they have pushed forward a big feature that affects shell and activities, have set up their instance of AMO for tutorials, have pinged periodically the community for feedback, have made a spin of SoaS so others can more easily test their work, have contacted the testing team at NZ for feedback, etc. And not because that's a lot of work, but because it's the _right_ work to do. Kudos to them and whoever is mentoring! Regards, Tomeu Hello All, Myself and Gerald Ardito had a Skype meeting with Erick Lavoie and Michael Montclam from the Tutorius Project last Thursday Nov. 19th, the notes from that session are below. Since the comments/suggestions from Gerald and I are U.S. based, I am in the process of trying to set up a second meeting between Tutorious and Enhanced Learning Strategy-Ron Canuel had a Team that went down to Uruguay recently and visited 18 schools. This will give the Tutorius Team an additional view to incorporate into the project and allow for the internationalization of Tutorious, which is one of their objectives. They are due to finalize the Project and give a Final Presentation in early December to complete this class project. They have indicated an interest to merge Tutorius ability into Sugar when it is at a stable state. I indicated to them I would reach out to the Sugar Developer community-Tomeu,Walter, and others to see if there can be some joint planning or conversations that would lead to this possibilty. Please let me know how we can proceed on this front. I look forward to trying to facilitate these initiatives, which I believe will be very valuable for students, teachers, and activity developers alike. Best! John Tierney Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:17:23 + Subject: Meeting minute - 2009/11/19 From: michael.jmontc...@gmail.com To: jtis4...@hotmail.com; gerald.ard...@gmail.com Hi guys! Here are the notes for today's meeting. Feel free to add precisions and comments if anything was missed. You can access the document right here : https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVT_nzmWT2B2ZGN3dDd2MzRfNTF0dzMyNGdnaghl=en Thank you for your time and the great ideas! Michael Meeting minute 2009/11//19 Attendees : John Gerald Érick Michael Minute : Introduction Gerald's tests 5 XO classrooms since January in middle school Doctoral thesis on Sugar Focus on curricular needs with teachers Ex : Using etoys to do an interactive story book Pre-testing with Test Team students in class, then attempting with the whole class Works really well and adds much more depth to the teaching Gerald's view of Tutorius Offer assistance on learning the platform (journal, using write activity, etc...) Using the platform is one of the hurdles to getting the most out of activities To have Tutorius to walk them through those skills would be incredibly useful Gerald's perception Tutorius would be immediately useful in teaching the basic Sugar skills But not so much for the specifics of the activity John's suggestion It would be great to have tutorials on how to do tutorials Technical details How can we deploy Tutorius on the XOs? Is it an activity? Can it be easily installed? No, it's a direct integration with the Sugar OS Questions from John What are the details for the merging? Tutorius would need to stabilize its code base The activities are not all consistent (e.g. save_state function) A screencast utility for Sugar Make a tutorial inside a screencast Dump the screencast on the web Point the students to the web Gerald is concerned on application on the XO Re-flashing the XOs is not hard but would wipe all data Could we have an automatic upload to YouTube? The XO is a great computer for kids because of its form factor It is slower, but the kids relate to the device differently Akin to the way they use their iPhones and MP3 players Re-flashing would be ok, providing a way to save data and restore it A screencast would be a backup plan Erick's question What does a tutorial adds to a screencast? Gerald : Having a label is for actions is great information John The important first step is to get a screencast tool out there with Tutorius First steps John : Short term is more important than long term Erick's question : Is internationalization important? We could offer it in an easy way or a complete support. John : Support for this would be awesome, but sounds a bit more on the long term approach. Walter and Tomeu could point us better Error case support : if students click on the wrong button, how do we address this? Gerald : We could inspire ourselves from an Adobe product that does interactive screencast? Adobe Captivé Sharing : we have a basic, non-secure prototype. We do not have a full-fledged sharing platform. Gerald : There are no really good way to share things in Sugar yet. You can collaborate, but you cannot share products easily.
Re: [IAEP] Wanted: List of Sugar activities for the XO-1.5
Also this should be asked to future XO 1.5 deployments, they could have another ideas for activities to be included in the list. Rafael Ortiz On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Jim Simmons nices...@gmail.com wrote: Chris, I agree with Gerald on either Get Books or Get IA Books (not both). Get Books is still being worked on by Sayamindu Dasgupta but perhaps he could get it in shape for inclusion in time. Right now it doesn't work on .82, but I can't see that being an issue. Get IA Books works on either but is limited to the books in the Internet Archive. There are only about a million books there! It is, however, ready to go. It isn't a popular download on ASLO but it deserves to be. You might also consider Read Etexts, because of its text to speech with highlighting feature and its own built in book search. It only works with Project Gutenberg titles, so no pictures. The present version is useable, but I'm working on a new version that supports word wrapping on PG texts and saving font size and speech preferences (pitch and rate). This is a popular download on ASLO. I've never tried the IRC Activity so I'm not knocking it, but I wonder if children would find that useful. They already have Chat and Speak. If you're going to include Read you should consider what evince modules, etc. to include with it. With the right modules Read can do DJVU, .cbz, and EPUB documents as well as PDFs. DJVU in particular is useful for Internet Archive books. James Simmons Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:26:22 -0500 From: Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [IAEP] Wanted: List of Sugar activities for the XO-1.5 To: Chris Ball c...@laptop.org Cc: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org, de...@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: 9403b1570911231226j58f91cafhbce60f25d00c...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Chris, I would suggest at least one of the Activities to get books, like Get IA Books. Otherwise, this list looks good. Thanks. Gerald ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Please help suggest illustrated eBooks for Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry launch
Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry will be launched at the Netbook World Summit in Paris on December 8th and Walter will open the summit with the keynote presentation! Sebastian and other members of the SoaS team are working hard on finalizing the master this weekend. In this holiday season with $250 Kindles and $299 Nooks and $$$ eBooks, we want to talk about Sugar's great eBook tools as well as open access eBooks - that eBooks shouldn't be only pricey DRM'd downloads for pricey gadgets. To do this, we want to populate Blueberry's Journal with a small number of eBooks. Small, so the Journal is not overstuffed; eBooks there will help new Sugar users to understand the Journal. We do feel though that it is important that of the handful of eBooks, not all should be in English. We won't have room for every language (that needs to wait for a later version of Sugar or SoaS which could have filter logic by language). But an eBook in half a dozen languages, with instructions for parents and teachers where to find others, will effectively demonstrate Sugar's potential as an eBook reader solution. Books written in the native language will be preferable to translations of books originally written in English - we'd like to show that Sugar content can be localized and not merely translated. Please suggest eBooks! ideally, an illustrated eBook in EPUB format (although we may be able to convert from other formats by hand since there will only be a few). Send links! If it's possible before Sunday, it would be fabulous if we could include an eBook created by children in the classroom! Even a collection of scans could be fairly easily bound into an eBook file. Thanks for your help! Sean Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] R: [SoaS] Please help suggest illustrated eBooks for Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry launch
For italian: http://www.liberliber.it/biblioteca/c/collodi/pinocchio/epub/collodi_pinocchio.epub ciao carlo --- Gio 26/11/09, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com ha scritto: Da: Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com Oggetto: [SoaS] Please help suggest illustrated eBooks for Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry launch A: iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org, Sugar Labs Marketing market...@lists.sugarlabs.org, Sugar-Labs Mailing lists s...@lists.sugarlabs.org Data: Giovedì 26 novembre 2009, 00:02 Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry will be launched at the Netbook World Summit in Paris on December 8th and Walter will open the summit with the keynote presentation! Sebastian and other members of the SoaS team are working hard on finalizing the master this weekend. In this holiday season with $250 Kindles and $299 Nooks and $$$ eBooks, we want to talk about Sugar's great eBook tools as well as open access eBooks - that eBooks shouldn't be only pricey DRM'd downloads for pricey gadgets. To do this, we want to populate Blueberry's Journal with a small number of eBooks. Small, so the Journal is not overstuffed; eBooks there will help new Sugar users to understand the Journal. We do feel though that it is important that of the handful of eBooks, not all should be in English. We won't have room for every language (that needs to wait for a later version of Sugar or SoaS which could have filter logic by language). But an eBook in half a dozen languages, with instructions for parents and teachers where to find others, will effectively demonstrate Sugar's potential as an eBook reader solution. Books written in the native language will be preferable to translations of books originally written in English - we'd like to show that Sugar content can be localized and not merely translated. Please suggest eBooks! ideally, an illustrated eBook in EPUB format (although we may be able to convert from other formats by hand since there will only be a few). Send links! If it's possible before Sunday, it would be fabulous if we could include an eBook created by children in the classroom! Even a collection of scans could be fairly easily bound into an eBook file. Thanks for your help! Sean Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator ___ SoaS mailing list s...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Mac Disaster at DFW
Hi My Mac got smashed today at security at DFW. Ed placed the tray with my computer on the track going thru the scanner and as he turned to put another tray on (there was a 18-24 gap between the track and the table), the TSA agent backed the track about 8 knocking the tray with my computer into the gap and onto the floor. It still boots and runs fine, but the screen has lost its backlight. It I use a really bright flashlight, I can barely make out the image. Now I need to do work for the SG and my presentation for Moorpark College. :-( Not sure how I will pull it off I will visit the Apple store this weekend and file a claim with the TSA, but I think this will end up costing me a lot of $$$. Caryl (written on my XO test machine) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Mac Disaster at DFW
Often you can get by with grabbing a spare monitor or working with the data projector. Good idea perhaps now to run time-machine and backup all the stuff on your HDD. good luck. :-) 2009/11/26 Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com Hi My Mac got smashed today at security at DFW. Ed placed the tray with my computer on the track going thru the scanner and as he turned to put another tray on (there was a 18-24 gap between the track and the table), the TSA agent backed the track about 8 knocking the tray with my computer into the gap and onto the floor. It still boots and runs fine, but the screen has lost its backlight. It I use a really bright flashlight, I can barely make out the image. Now I need to do work for the SG and my presentation for Moorpark College. :-( Not sure how I will pull it off I will visit the Apple store this weekend and file a claim with the TSA, but I think this will end up costing me a lot of $$$. Caryl (written on my XO test machine) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Mac Disaster at DFW
Well despite the scare, it's good that your laptop is running and displaying something on the dark screen. If your screen isn't cracked, the dead backlight might just be a loose internal connector that a technician can reseat. On Nov 25, 2009, at 8:51 PM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi My Mac got smashed today at security at DFW. Ed placed the tray with my computer on the track going thru the scanner and as he turned to put another tray on (there was a 18-24 gap between the track and the table), the TSA agent backed the track about 8 knocking the tray with my computer into the gap and onto the floor. It still boots and runs fine, but the screen has lost its backlight. It I use a really bright flashlight, I can barely make out the image. Now I need to do work for the SG and my presentation for Moorpark College. :-( Not sure how I will pull it off I will visit the Apple store this weekend and file a claim with the TSA, but I think this will end up costing me a lot of $$$. Caryl (written on my XO test machine) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Mac Disaster at DFW
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 18:12, Roland Gesthuizen rgesthui...@gmail.com wrote: Often you can get by with grabbing a spare monitor or working with the data projector. Good idea perhaps now to run time-machine and backup all the stuff on your HDD. +1 Last year my son and I set up a terabyte RAID backup server at home, and I just this week restored all of my essential files after a hard drive failure. good luck. :-) 2009/11/26 Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com Hi My Mac got smashed today at security at DFW. Ed placed the tray with my computer on the track going thru the scanner and as he turned to put another tray on (there was a 18-24 gap between the track and the table), the TSA agent backed the track about 8 knocking the tray with my computer into the gap and onto the floor. It still boots and runs fine, but the screen has lost its backlight. It I use a really bright flashlight, I can barely make out the image. Now I need to do work for the SG and my presentation for Moorpark College. :-( Not sure how I will pull it off I will visit the Apple store this weekend and file a claim with the TSA, but I think this will end up costing me a lot of $$$. Caryl (written on my XO test machine) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
