Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] meeting reminder
Am 07.06.2011 20:59, schrieb Walter Bender: We will be having a Sugar oversight board meeting on Thursday, 9 June at 18:00 EST (23 UTC) on irc.freenode.net http://irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting. We have 4 items on the agenda: (1) Scratch License (Walter) (2) OSD vs FS definition of FOSS licenses (Walter) (3) Membership fees (Bernie) (4) 3rd party Sugar merchandising (Dogi) Please join us. Hi, unfortunately I didn't have time to attend the meeting:-( Are the meeting minutes and/or logs available already? I can't seem to find them on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] meeting reminder
Am 12.06.2011 04:27, schrieb Chris Ball: Hi, On Sat, Jun 11 2011, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Am 07.06.2011 20:59, schrieb Walter Bender: We will be having a Sugar oversight board meeting on Thursday, 9 June at 18:00 EST (23 UTC) on irc.freenode.net http://irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting. We have 4 items on the agenda: (1) Scratch License (Walter) (2) OSD vs FS definition of FOSS licenses (Walter) (3) Membership fees (Bernie) (4) 3rd party Sugar merchandising (Dogi) Please join us. Hi, unfortunately I didn't have time to attend the meeting:-( Are the meeting minutes and/or logs available already? I can't seem to find them on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes They're always at meeting.sugarlabs.org straight away: http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/2011-06-09 Hi Chris, thanks for the heads-up. I have added a corresponding note as well as direct link to the June 9 meeting log to http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes#Past_meetings Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Useful resource about organizing future OLPC / Sugar hackathons
Hi all, I just stumbled across an article called Hosting Hackathons: The Organizer's Checklist ( http://alexeymk.com/hosting-hackathons-the-organizers-checklist) and it contains some great information which could be very helpful for the organization of future OLPC / Sugar related events. Please also note the first article in that series which focuses on the team required for setting up such events: http://alexeymk.com/hosting-hackathons-the-team Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Next slobs meeting?
Am 05.06.2011 06:33, schrieb Bernie Innocenti: On Sun, 2011-06-05 at 04:03 +0200, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Am 05.06.2011 02:57, schrieb Bernie Innocenti: I'd like to propose the following agenda topics: * Membership fees Could you elaborate what you have in mind here? :-) It's a prototype idea, not yet discussed anywhere yet. I'd like to know what the board members would think about asking a yearly fee from members and, in case there's interest, how it could be implemented. I've done some research on how other foundations and free software projects like us handle memberships, but I've not yet made my mind on what works best. Interesting stuff! Looking forward to reading the SLOBs meeting log to see what everyone else thinks about this idea:-) Oh, and what about the licensing issue, has that topic been settled or will it require further discussion among the SLOBs and/or the larger community? We've discussed Scratch's licensing issues last week on #sugar and then on #acetarium (a social channel in which some Media Lab folks hang out). The very short summary is that there are two different licenses for Scratch: one for the source code, which prohibits calling the resulting binary Scratch and uploading projects to the website, and one for binaries, which doesn't allow modification. It's hard to notice the problem, because they don't mention it even in the license FAQ. I'm not in direct contact with whoever came up with these licensing terms, I've just been told that someone at the Media Lab was afraid that, if Scratch were distributed as free software, people would create incompatible forks of the language. Then one would wonder why popular free software languages such as Python, PHP, Perl and Ruby haven't ever been forked. There are better ways than a non-free license to prevent fragmentation. As things stand, Scratch is in violation of our licensing policy (which coincides with the licensing policy of Fedora and most distributions). We could make an exception just for Scratch because it's so popular, but now there are additional complications. TOAST, which adheres to Trisquel's free software rules, can't even distribute the Sugar with the activity updater pointing at ASLO until we remove Scratch. I'd like to discuss our options during the next board meeting. (until then, let's try to avoid having another licensing flame on iaep) Okay, that sounds like a tough nut to crack. However the licensing issue I had meant to inquire about (though I did not at all make that clear in my previous message, mea culpa) is the one about GPL v2 vs. v3. In the May 13 Sugar-Digest Walter wrote At the most recent Sugar oversight-board meeting, we agreed to use a referendum to take the pulse of the community (See http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2011-05-08). Details to follow. so I had assumed that this topic would continue to be discussed by the SLOBs. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Next slobs meeting?
Am 05.06.2011 17:55, schrieb Bernie Innocenti: On Sun, 2011-06-05 at 15:19 +0200, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: It's a prototype idea, not yet discussed anywhere yet. I'd like to know what the board members would think about asking a yearly fee from members and, in case there's interest, how it could be implemented. I've done some research on how other foundations and free software projects like us handle memberships, but I've not yet made my mind on what works best. Interesting stuff! Looking forward to reading the SLOBs meeting log to see what everyone else thinks about this idea:-) You're also welcome to join the meeting and propose your ideas on membership and fundrising! Okay, will do so on the appropriate thread:-) However the licensing issue I had meant to inquire about (though I did not at all make that clear in my previous message, mea culpa) is the one about GPL v2 vs. v3. In the May 13 Sugar-Digest Walter wrote At the most recent Sugar oversight-board meeting, we agreed to use a referendum to take the pulse of the community (See http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2011-05-08). Details to follow. so I had assumed that this topic would continue to be discussed by the SLOBs. At the last board meeting, Luke Faraone was mentioned as someone who could run the GPLv3 referendum, but he's been too busy with other things. We could also ask someone else, but there's no urgency and Luke has previous experience setting up an election on Selectricity. Thanks for the update, good to know! Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Next slobs meeting?
Am 05.06.2011 02:57, schrieb Bernie Innocenti: I'd like to propose the following agenda topics: * Membership fees Could you elaborate what you have in mind here? :-) Oh, and what about the licensing issue, has that topic been settled or will it require further discussion among the SLOBs and/or the larger community? Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] ASUS Eee PC X101 @ $199: A worthy non-XO platform for Sugar?
Hi all, it's still early days but it looks like the ASUS Eee PC X101 presented at a pre-Computex press event today could be a good platform for Sugar. At a price-point of $199, less than 1kg of weight, and with a 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU this really does look like an interesting product for schools, both in developing and developed nations. Since it runs Meego I would assume that on the software side of things getting other Linux distributions to run on it shouldn't be too hard, but others will know more here. Engadget has a quick hands-on video of the X101 which might of interest to some of you: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/30/asus-brings-out-extra-skinny-eee-pc-x101-running-meego-hands-on/ Anyway, I'll definitely keep an eye on this one! :-) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] copy files to/from server
On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 1:41 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Interesting. Does WebDAV work as a normal mount, like CIFS or NFS? From the PoV of the user, yes, it looks like a mountpoint. Technically, you can mount it at the linux kernel level, at the gnome IO libraries level, or from Sugar, with a pure python implmentation. What would be the best way to get this working on Sugar? You don't have a lot of time it seems. I'd implement it on top of gnome VFS of in pure Python. In both cases, I'd make it look like another disk from the Journal (as an initial implementation at least). I'd say talk with Martin Abente, he's looking into this problem space. Could we maybe split this thread and keep technical discussions focused on XS-devel and Sugar-devel lists? I think this could also also help in getting some non-technical and/or end-user feedback and suggestion from people on IAEP who aren't into all the technical details (something which I think tch was also interested in). Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Suggestion to close some mailing lists
Am 11.05.2011 07:08, schrieb Chris Leonard: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at mailto:e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Hi all, Pablo's question during eduJAM!'s tools for community panel about whether we have too many or too few tools and spaces got me thinking about improving the mailing lists setup we have at the moment. Sugar Labs' lists (http://lists.sugarlabs.org) seem fine at the moment with the possible exceptions of: * http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/italia (which Bernie says we should suggest to close) * http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-desarrollo/ (which has seen very little traffic indeed and most of that has been cross-posts from sugar-devel from what I can tell) However looking at the approximately 100 lists available on http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/ I think there's definitely room for improvements there. Looking into how active these lists are or aren't might be a good project for a rainy or sick day;-) One small initial idea which has come up is to merge olpc-o...@lists.laptop.org mailto:olpc-o...@lists.laptop.org with grassro...@lists.laptop.org mailto:grassro...@lists.laptop.org and possible move the result into iaep since the traffic on both lists is very low indeed and they seem to provide very little value by themselves. What do people think about these suggestions and the topic in general? Here is my analysis of lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org. Some calls are easy, others people may feel differently about. Feel free to follow the hotlinks in the first column and make your own annotations and recommendations. In any event, I think lists targeted for closure or merging should be given the chance to argue for their continuation. The real question is who will make the final judgement calls and who would implement them? The link I sent earlier was wrong, this page should be updated if any changes are made. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mailing_lists Hi again, thanks a lot for taking the time to review all the lists. Briefly looking through your analysis and the lists I agree on most counts. The one area where I'd probably be more lenient than you is allowing local-/country-lists which are half-decently active to exist separately and not be merged into grassroots@ or olpc-sur@ (examples here are most of the South American country lists). With regard to the process for moving ahead here I'm also not sure how to proceed. IIRC especially in the early days it was often SJ who set up mailing-lists for local communities so he might know more here. In general I'd suggest sending a friendly e-mail to all lists which are considered for merging or closure, explaining the rationale, and asking for input. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Suggestion to close some mailing lists
Hi all, Pablo's question during eduJAM!'s tools for community panel about whether we have too many or too few tools and spaces got me thinking about improving the mailing lists setup we have at the moment. Sugar Labs' lists (http://lists.sugarlabs.org) seem fine at the moment with the possible exceptions of: * http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/italia (which Bernie says we should suggest to close) * http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-desarrollo/ (which has seen very little traffic indeed and most of that has been cross-posts from sugar-devel from what I can tell) However looking at the approximately 100 lists available on http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/ I think there's definitely room for improvements there. Looking into how active these lists are or aren't might be a good project for a rainy or sick day;-) One small initial idea which has come up is to merge olpc-o...@lists.laptop.org with grassro...@lists.laptop.org and possible move the result into iaep since the traffic on both lists is very low indeed and they seem to provide very little value by themselves. What do people think about these suggestions and the topic in general? Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] I'd like to put Make Your Own Sugar Activities! on the Kindle store
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:39 AM, James Simmons nices...@gmail.com wrote: Right now the FLOSS Manual Make Your Own Sugar Activities! is available on the FM website, as a bound and printed book from Lulu, as a free PDF download from Lulu, and in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats on the Internet Archive. I'd like to add the Kindle Store to this list. I would price it at 99 cents, and in the Introduction I would add some text explaining where the book could be downloaded for free, so if someone got a free preview from the Kindle store he would not be required to pay the 99 cents unless he wished to. The profits from these purchases, if there are any, would go to me. If Oprah chooses the book as one of her Favorite Things I might be persuaded to share the windfall with Sugar Labs and/or FLOSS Manuals. Don't count on this happening. The Amazon Kindle uses the MOBI format, and it will be a fair amount of work for me to convert the EPUB I can get from Booki to what Amazon requires. Among other things I need to create a cover image and a Table Of Contents with links, plus I need to clean up the page formatting. I will not change the licensing of the book or use DRM, but I WILL put my name on the cover image and other places as appropriate. I will use a new cover image because the picture used on the bound and printed book was given to me by the artist with the understanding that I wouldn't be making any money on the book. Right now if you look One Laptop Per Child on the Kindle Store you get three items returned. If what I propose to do works well it might be a good idea to get other FLOSS Manuals, especially OLPC and Sugar-related titles, on there as well. Great idea! And I definitely hope Oprah discovers and subsequently tells the world about it;-) Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Awesome day 0 for eduJAM.
Am 01.05.2011 08:20, schrieb Bert Freudenberg: On 01.05.2011, at 07:22, David Farning wrote: Yesterday was have picture perfect start to eduJAM! The day was planned by the Ceibal-volunteer associations as part of their annual (sometime biannual) meeting. For lack of a better word, my Spanish is still rather fuzzy, I will use the term Ceibal-volunteer associations to describe Ceibal-Jam, Rap-Ceibal, and Flordeceibo. Many of us in Sugar Labs are familiar with Ceibal-Jam, the software-arm of the project, from the public work at http://ceibaljam.org/ . Particularly interesting is their work on Sugar activities at http://ceibaljam.org/drupal/?q=lista_proyectos . Rap-Ceibal is the volunteer support organization. There public work is at http://rapceibal.blogspot.com/ . They are doing really interesting work creating regional centers. Basic service and support happens in the schools, while more complicated or specialized service and support happen in the regional centers. It is a great model. Thirdly, Flordeceibo, is the education arm that builds on the technical work of Ceibal-Jam, Rap-Ceibal, and other organization to enable a efficient and effective education for student in Uruguay. http://www.flordeceibo.edu.uy/ The morning started with the groups giving status reports of current projects and roadmaps for next year. It was a great example of people saying, 'we see a problem and we are trying to fix it.' The afternoon was a series of videoconferences with distant schools. Groups from various school shared their experiences and concern. This was followed by an open discussion on how to meet their needs. Midafternoon we broke up and shared a meal, ( The proper translation for the dish was 'delicious heart attack on a plate' ) with others planning on attending the Tour of Uruguay. Overall two thumbs up to everyone involved. As special shout out to Antel, a Uruguayan telecommunications firm, for providing the facilities -- which included an video conferencing system that would make any hacker want to get in there and take in apart to figure out how it works :) The moderator, Latise (sp?) did an outstanding job of keeping the program running smoothly and on schedule. Which can be harder than it appeared when you have a room full of smart, curious, and passionate people. david Second that. It was very refreshing to see all these different volunteer groups doing great stuff, even if my missing Spanish skills did not allow me to understand much ;) Also, when we left the building, we were greeted by an awesome drum-and-dance performance: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9643745/2011-UY-Dance1.mp4 Caryl also set up a blog at http://olpcuruguay2011.wordpress.com where a couple of us are documenting the experiences and impressions we make at the tour and summit. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Glow: the world’s first national intranet and online community for education
Hi all, browsing through Association of Learning Technology's current newsletter I stumbled across an article called Glow: the world’s first national intranet and online community for education (http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/rrm1o11lb6j). Glow is an online community platform which is apparently widely used in Scotland. From what I understand it connects pupils, teachers, and parents and provides them with a broad variety of communication and collaboration tools. I haven't had time to look into Glow into much detail but at first sight it looks very interesting indeed and might also provide some inspiration as to where Sugar Labs' online presence could go. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ANNOUNCE: Moving Sugar to GPLv3+
On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 7:14 AM, Bernie Innocenti ber...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: [cc += christoph] On Fri, 2011-04-22 at 21:25 -0400, Paul Fox wrote: i think i've missed the point of all this. bernie's original mail points to the FSF rationale for GPL3 as the reason for moving sugar to GPL3, but somehow i think there must be more to it. i.e., what exactly are the arguments in favor of _sugar_ changing licenses? i have no stake in this decision at all -- i'm just wondering about the why. Sorry Paul, I had missed your reply to the list. You and Christoph asked similar questions and I'd like to answer both of them comprehensively, but tonight I'm too tired to write more than just a short summary :-) To me, the reasons already given in the GPLv3 quick guide (*) are relevant to most free software, and therefore also to Sugar. Even if some of the reasons for updating the license are of legal nature and we're not lawyers, it doesn't mean there's no tangible advantage for the project. A license is a legal document, after all, so if we're looking for technical advantages, we're simply looking in the wrong place. Christoph also asked what strategic advantages the GPLv3 would bring in the surrounding ecosystem: Sugar is a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy, and has a strong bound with the Free Software Foundation in the form of donated hosting and infrastructure for the past 3 years. In this regard, it makes sense for us to be using the latest published version of their license. If we managed to make Sugar endorsed by the GNU project, or even make it to the high-priority free software list, this could result in extra visibility and funding for development. Currently, Sugar official releases don't even make it to the LWN announcements page, unlike tiny and obscure GNU packages such as m4 and gettext. The main point being debated in this thread is the so-called anti-TiVo clause. For people like me, it's a necessary fix to make the GPL continue to work as intended in this era of locked-down devices and laws prohibiting modifications such as the DMCA. For Martin (and Scott?) the anti-TiVo clause is overly restrictive and the manifestation of a radical political agenda. Since this is the core point of disagreement within the community, the act of accepting or rejecting the GPLv3 assumes for us the deeper meaning of refusing or endorsing TiVo-ization and DRM in conjunction with Sugar. (*) http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html Bernie, thanks a lot for your response, much appreciated. Having said that I'd be lying if I claimed to understand all the details now. Both sides of the argument seem to make some good points though without having any experience in the area nor training in the deeper legal issues I personally think it's hard if not impossible to make a call here. So what I'm more focused on at this point is the process for this decision. You started this thread by writing The oversight board is considering a motion to upgrade the license of Sugar from GPLv2 or later to GPLv3 or later. which sounds like SLOBs will be taking an executive decision on this matter, or am I misunderstanding something here? If that is indeed the case then I'd love to hear what other board members think because apart from you and Sebastian nobody has commented on this topic yet. Secondly you wrote Before proceeding to a vote, we'd like to request feedback from the community. In particular, we'd like to know how this change might affect you as a Sugar end-user, distributor, contributor or maintainer. It can be argued that contributors and maintainers have so far spoken up in this thread but users and distributors haven't. I'm not quite sure why this is the case but it's probably safe to assume that David has somewhat of a point when he says that licensing isn't necessarily on the critical path of tasks for users and deployments (which says nothing about whether licensing should or shouldn't be a critical task for Sugar Labs itself IMHO). Additionally I would suggest that reaching out to the relevant people and organisations privately, pointing them to this thread, and encouraging them to post their opinion might get some replies as not everybody follows sugar-devel and IAEP religiously. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] another book
Am 25.04.2011 13:47, schrieb Walter Bender: On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 6:38 AM, Cynthia Solomon cynt...@media.mit.edu wrote: I just posted my book, Computer Environments for Children: A Reflection on Theories of Learning and Education. http://computerenvironments.wikispaces.com yeah. Good stuff! Is there a way to download the whole book as a single .pdf instead of per chapter? Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2011-04-24
Am 24.04.2011 18:38, schrieb Walter Bender: 4. In a follow-up exercise to the Massachusetts 4th Grade math project [http://wiki.suagrlabs.org/go/Math4Team], Claudia Urrea and I have been developing a correlation between Sugar activities and the Florida 4th-Grade math curriculum (See [http://wiki.suagrlabs.org/go/Math4Team/Florida]). This is some excellent stuff, thanks for sharing! :-) Also, check out [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Innovation_in_Evaluation the preliminary write up on the Assessment Summit] (more details to follow). While still fairly abstract this is certainly a great start. It's particularly encouraging to see key stakeholders from various deployments working together and with OLPC / Sugar Labs on this. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ANNOUNCE: Moving Sugar to GPLv3+
On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 7:05 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 12:54 PM, C. Scott Ananian csc...@laptop.org wrote: Yes, you seem to be confused Bernie. You can redistribute under a license however you like, usually without explicitly stating it. But if you alter the source files or replace COPYING, you are *changing the license*. That is a different act. You are right but in practice in this case there isn't much difference. Anybody, following GPLv2, can just redistribute it under GPLv3, and you *could* track each file as to GPLv2, v3, or mixed. But that would be a lot of bureaucracy that wouldn't help anyone -- anybody interested in GPLv2 sources should just go to the last commit or release under v2. A more passive-aggressive means to your end might be to announce that SugarLabs will only accept new contributions which are licensed GPLv3+. That will effect the redistribution change you want, while still (a) pissing off parts of the community, and (b) not illegally altering the license on code you do not own. Honestly, option b is rather annoying if relevant authors/owners of the copyright aren't in agreement. But it has notthing illegal. The copyright lines are advisory only, and nonbinding. Of course, courts look unfavourably upon knowing infringers that remove (as upon anyone found hiding evidence) them but they aren't sacred in the normal course of things. Before this thread ends up something that only copyright lawyers really understand I'd like to take a step back and ask what the SLOB's rationale behind the proposed motion to move from GPLv2 to GPLv3 is? In other words: What specific advantages does GPLv3 offer for Sugar, its community and the individuals, groups, and organizations/deployments using it? Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] New: Sugar Labs finances status page
Am 22.04.2011 00:46, schrieb Mel Chua: At the SLOBs meeting a few hours ago Are minutes or the log available from that meeting? Couldn't find a link to them yet on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] New: Sugar Labs finances status page
Am 22.04.2011 02:45, schrieb Chris Ball: Hi, On Thu, Apr 21 2011, Walter Bender wrote: Log's at http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/2011-04-21#i_2660201 The links are in the wiki now as well. Not sure where all the meeting minutes went to... need to investigate. We had another meeting afterwards, that's why it looks like there aren't any minutes. For the SLOBS meeting, the links are: minutes: http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2011-04-21T19:00:15.html full log: http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2011-04-21T19:00:15 Chris, Walter, thanks a lot for the quick replies! :-) Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] TODAY: Germany, Austria, Swiss OLPC/Sugar Presentation (9PM Berlin Time, Mon Apr 18)
Hi all, the slides I'll be using are now available at derndorfer.eu/files/permanent/olpc_dach_20110418.pdf Please also note the questions for the trivia contest at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OlpcMAP/OLPC_DACH_Trivia#Trivia_Questions See you in exactly 15min! :-) Christoph Am 18.04.2011 16:47, schrieb Holt: Call is 3PM Boston Time TODAY! Volunteer community organizers will rapidly summarize their truly great work from the last 3+ years -- backstopping deployments in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Europe: http://olpc-deutschland.de http://olpc.at http://olpc.ch A Red XO laptop will be awarded to the participant who asks/evokes/answers the best questions -- hope to see you there, full details coming from Christoph Derndorfer! /See you in just over 4 hrs -- please reply with your SkypeID if you can hopefully join -- backchannel being:/ http://forum.laptop.org/chat (#olpc-help on irc.freenode.net) Show off your German if you want, but today's call will be in English! Calendar of emerging future calls showcasing/connecting the (far too often unknown) work of Sugar/OLPC volunteers worldwide/: / http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OlpcMAP Kenya and Washington DC map jams/presentations coming soon this spring likely in May :) -- Help kids everywhere map their world, at http://olpcMAP.net ! ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Vargas Llosa en UCU Montevideo Uruguay
Carlos, basado en tu reacción creo que no me he expresado muy bien en mi e-mail. Muchos de tus e-mail son muy interesantes pero hay canales diferentes para difundir informaciones diferentes. Te estaba comentando (en privado, por esto no incluye las listas) que creo que en varios casos en las ultimas semanas has mandado cosas al IAEP que no tienen mucho que ver con el tema de esta lista en particular. Eso fue todo. La verdad es que me hubiera gustado tener la oportunidad de discutir esto en privado en vez de involucrar tanta gente... Oh well:-/ En todo caso espero que te quedas en las listas! Saludos, Christoph Am 16.04.2011 21:56, schrieb Carlos Rabassa: Christoph, gracias por tu mensaje. He tenido tantas y tan buenas reacciones, que pensaba que los mensajes que envío eran apreciados. Ahora que sé que molestan, la solución es muy simple: Borré IAEP de mi lista de direcciones. Este será mi último mensaje. Pido disculpas por haberlos molestado. Agradezco lo mucho que he aprendido de los miembros que contribuyen. Si no les molesta, seguiré leyendo los mensajes de otros miembros, que frecuentemente encuentro muy interesantes y me enseñan mucho. Si esto también les molesta, por favor Christoph, avísame y me borraré completamente. El mundo es muy grande, no deseo estar donde no soy bienvenido. Dices En las ultimas semanas has mandado muchos correos que tienen muy poco (o nada, como este) que ver con OLPC, Sugar o la educación en general. Creo que el mundo tal vez ha cambiado más de lo que se dice. Yo pensaba que discutir entre amigos la obra de un literato latinoamericano de tal nivel que mereció el Premio Nobel, estaría muy dentro del campo de la educación. Hasta siempre, Carlos Rabassa Voluntario Red de Apoyo al Plan Ceibal Montevideo, Uruguay On Apr 16, 2011, at 12:13 PM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Hola Carlos, por favor limita tus mensajes a la lista de IAEP un poco. En las ultimas semanas has mandado muchos correos que tienen muy poco (o nada, como este) que ver con OLPC, Sugar o la educación en general. Dado que todos nosotros estamos recibiendo tantos e-mails cada día ayudaría mucho poder saber que las cosas que vienen en las listas tienen que ver con las temas que se discuten allí. Saludos desde Madrid, Christoph Am 16.04.2011 16:37, schrieb Carlos Rabassa: Vargas Llosa en Universidad Católica del Uruguay https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Ew0eXcu0A2PDk82FJijKsnIkz-aX49NA935VSfycjfw Carlos Rabassa Voluntario Red de Apoyo al Plan Ceibal Montevideo, Uruguay ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Khan academy content
In related news you might also be interested to learn that per Miguel Brechner's tweet (http://twitter.com/#!/mbrechner/status/54588790618062848) Uruguay's Plan Ceibal is currently looking for volunteers to translate Khan Academy's videos to Spanish. Cheers, Christoph Am 04.04.2011 21:57, schrieb Chris Leonard: I haven't really looked into this, but I thought it might be of interest to some on the list. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/04/the-khan-academy-and-educ_n_844390.html http://www.khanacademy.org/ One might imagine these videos being stored on the School Server for local access. According to the page below it is all cc-by-sa https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/home/mission-principles-and-values I was very happy to see this statement begin to translate the lessons into Arabic, Bengali, French, German, Hindi-Urdu, Indonesian, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish so they could be distributed globally. This page covers their localization process: http://www.khanacademy.org/contribute cjl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] eduJam: Call for speakers / Llamado a disertantes
Gonzalo, this call raises an interesting question that I hadn't really thought of so far: What language are the sessions of eduJAM! going to be held in? On the one hand some of the international participants might not speak Spanish on the other hand the idea is to really provide a low barrier to entry for local/regional folks interested in the topic and some of them probably aren't too fluent in English... Thanks, Christoph Am 03.04.2011 09:26, schrieb Gonzalo Odiard: This is a call to all the interested in participate in eduJam event. eduJam is a community event, then need the active participation of all the community. We have written a few objectives for the event: * Analyze the state of Sugar platform and plan the steps for the near future. * Know the main achievements and challenges faced by existing deployments. * Join the development community, build links Are you interested in talk about any topic related to these objectives or you have a great talk to share with us? Please send a mail to edujam2...@ceibaljam.org mailto:edujam2...@ceibaljam.org The program committee -- Este es un llamado a todos los interesados en participar del evento eduJam. eduJam es un evento de la comunidad, entonces necesita de la participación activa de toda la comunidad. Hemos escrito unos pocos objetivos para el evento: * Analizar el estado de la plataforma Sugar y planear los pasos en el futuro cercano. * Conocer los principales logros y desafíos que enfrentan los deployments existentes * Unir la comunidad de desarrollo, crear lazos Si estas interesado en hablar acerca de dealgun tema relacionado con estos objetivos o tenés una charla para compartir, envía un mail a edujam2...@ceibaljam.org mailto:edujam2...@ceibaljam.org El comité de pograma ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] eduJam: Call for speakers / Llamado a disertantes
Am 04.04.2011 22:38, schrieb Gonzalo Odiard: On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at mailto:e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Gonzalo, this call raises an interesting question that I hadn't really thought of so far: What language are the sessions of eduJAM! going to be held in? On the one hand some of the international participants might not speak Spanish on the other hand the idea is to really provide a low barrier to entry for local/regional folks interested in the topic and some of them probably aren't too fluent in English... Thanks, Christoph Yes, the local team is trying to contract a translators service. Okay, so that means you are currently encouraging both English and Spanish speakers to apply, right? I was also wondering what formats are available to speakers? Are we talking longer sessions, lightening talks, workshops, etc.? Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Any olpc/Sugar/ICT4E people in Spain?
If we take a step back I think David's observation really hits the nail on the head in a broader sense. While FLOSS solutions don't have the traditional vendor lock-in they do often seem to come with some sort of platform lock-in (as per David's example wrt custom educational tools). Hence for example in the Sugar context I think that the efforts by Walter and others to get a foot in the door of Argentina's Conectar Igualdad program early on is vitally important. Two, three years down the road it would probably take significantly more momentum to get Sugar accepted in an already established environment. As we'll probably see several initiatives similar to Conectar Igualdad in the coming years and it makes sense to reach out to them early on. Cheers, Christoph Am 22.03.2011 20:36, schrieb David Van Assche: While working at guadalinex I seriously pushed to include sugar. Resistance was futile as the Borg might say. You see they have a pretty established Linux environment that has many custom educational tools. It is an extremely uphill battle to get them using even a tiny part of sugar, and that coming from an ex-INSIDER. so good luck. Regards David On Mar 21, 2011 4:46 PM, Juan Rafael Fernández García jrf...@gmail.com mailto:jrf...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/3/21 Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at mailto:e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at: Especially given how much Linux is used around schools in the country and that Latin America is... I'm also surprised that I've seen a bigger OLPC/Sugar community in France than in Spain. I have an explanation, though: PCs with some GNU Linux educational distro are deployed all around Spain, taken care of by the regional authorities, which makes the situation different from the French one (individual or local initiatives) or the Central/South American one (OLPC or similar hardware). Consider the case in Andalusia. All the computers, the thousands of them, are administered and updated remotely - so the operating system has to be the same all around, the network configuration and services, etc. From the Spanish point of view, Sugar running on GNU LInux, as an environment like Squeak, would be more interesting than as an alternative independent approach. IMHO. -- Juan Rafael Fernández http://people.ofset.org/jrfernandez/ -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Any olpc/Sugar/ICT4E people in Spain?
Gustavo, David, thanks for the information, background and links, keep 'em coming. Given the constraints of my situation (mainly time) the main (only) thing I'd like to do is try and establish some sort of olpc/Sugar presence while I'm here. Especially given how much Linux is used around schools in the country and that Latin America is the hotbed for all things OLPC and 1-to-1 computing at the moment I'm simply surprised that there's no established olpc/Sugar community here already. Cheers, Christoph Am 21.03.2011 15:03, schrieb David Van Assche: Bah... ok...perhaps that was a bit of harsh statement. meh would be better... However, I have met many south Americans down here who want to get involved and us the sugar environment in their future endevours once they return home. I worked for Guadalinex.-edu, the largest single Linux deployment in the world conclusion: Great softwware, not tailored enough for them (5 million computer, 500 laptops per year, Ubuntu latest, but via something complex like rsync or anything like that... that just made a great job at adding important parts if they were educational, and spoke about them the folllowing year to see if others might want to include it. The biggest advantage here is that because Spain now had over 10 years fo successfully using Linux in all areas of life, its just a mtter of showing any new things to make teahcers lives easier and really kissing their asses so they cna push the rest if spain. Its clear though, Linux is here to stay in Andalucia now hwat to u primtive northern folks say to that. kind regrads, David Van Assche [Please Please read above] On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Gustavo Ibarra ibarr...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Not an OLPC project, but there is a lot of Linux in the schools in Extremadura. You could talk to the local government about using Sugar on their laptops. http://news.squeak.org/2006/11/17/squeak-in-extremadura/ more related links: http://tinyurl.com/5w7ocee http://squeak.educarex.es/Squeakpolis squeakpo...@juntaextremadura.net Diego an José L worked in the squeak inextremadura project and as far as iknow they live in spain Diego Gomez Deckdiegogomezd...@consultar.com José L. Redrejo Rodríguez jredr...@edu.juntaextremadura.net Have you asked on the OLPC-SUR list? There seems to have been a very modest OLPC España effort, but its Wiki page has vanished away. Perhaps you can help restart it. On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 05:56, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Hi all, as some of you might know I moved to Madrid about a month ago How's your Spanish? and will be here at least until the end of May but possibly also until late summer. Now I was wondering whether anyone here knows people working on olpc/Sugar/ICT4E who are based here in Madrid or elsewhere in Spain? I've looked around quite a bit but unfortunately didn't find anything related to olpc/Sugar/ICT4E so far, plus similarly minded communities (e.g. LUGs, hacker spaces, etc.) also seem to be quite rare around here. Well the first step has been to try and get `people together here which is damn hard... Iv'e ad 4-5 people involed here and we are quickly moving towards creating a more ideas towards creating some sort of charter fo what is an ettiquette of sorts, but nothing too restrictive, more things like, if u'd like to something, then just set a non conflicting date and do it David Anyway, I'd appreciate any pointers, suggestions or contacts in this area. Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ 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 -- Saludos, Gustavo.- ___ 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 -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Any olpc/Sugar/ICT4E people in Spain?
Juan, Martin, Gustavo, thanks a lot for the information and pointers, much appreciated! :-) Have a great weekend, Christoph Am 18.03.2011 18:44, schrieb Gustavo Ibarra: you might want to write to Diego Gomez Deck http://diegogomezdeck.blogspot.com/ On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 6:56 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Hi all, as some of you might know I moved to Madrid about a month ago and will be here at least until the end of May but possibly also until late summer. Now I was wondering whether anyone here knows people working on olpc/Sugar/ICT4E who are based here in Madrid or elsewhere in Spain? I've looked around quite a bit but unfortunately didn't find anything related to olpc/Sugar/ICT4E so far, plus similarly minded communities (e.g. LUGs, hacker spaces, etc.) also seem to be quite rare around here. Anyway, I'd appreciate any pointers, suggestions or contacts in this area. Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Any olpc/Sugar/ICT4E people in Spain?
Hi all, as some of you might know I moved to Madrid about a month ago and will be here at least until the end of May but possibly also until late summer. Now I was wondering whether anyone here knows people working on olpc/Sugar/ICT4E who are based here in Madrid or elsewhere in Spain? I've looked around quite a bit but unfortunately didn't find anything related to olpc/Sugar/ICT4E so far, plus similarly minded communities (e.g. LUGs, hacker spaces, etc.) also seem to be quite rare around here. Anyway, I'd appreciate any pointers, suggestions or contacts in this area. Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Am 02.03.2011 06:34, schrieb John Watlington: On Mar 1, 2011, at 7:41 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Am 01.03.2011 13:36, schrieb Christoph Derndorfer: Am 28.02.2011 22:59, schrieb John Watlington: On Feb 23, 2011, at 10:27 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: I'm still absolutely clueless about the total figures but what I do know is that Argentina's Conectar Igualdad program (http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/) will distribute 3 million Classmate PCs in part of its public secondary school system by the end of 2012. By late December approximately half a million of them had supposedly been distributed. According to the web site at the URL provided above, none have been delivered to children as of Feb. 28. When I was in Buenos Aires in mid-December for a 3-day workshop organized by the Argentinian MoE I also met my former Argentinian host brother and his cousin who had received their Classmate PCs in late November. So I know that at least two of them have actually been distributed (and no, this time not based on dubious information from Kigali;-) We continue to hear that Classmates are being deployed, but nobody can provide concrete information about where and how many. I'll get in touch with some people in Buenos Aires to try and figure out what the current figure there is. Okay, just found http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/sobre-el-programa/evaluacion-y-seguimiento/informe-de-avance-de-entregas/ which supposedly provides the number of distributed netbooks and is updated on a weekly basis. The count as of today is 358,227. Impressive number. What software are they running ? It's dual-boot with Windows and Linux. According to a manual (www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/wp-content/themes/conectar_igualdad/pdf/Manual_alumnos.pdf) on the Conectar Igualdad Web site for Linux they're using the Debian-based (IIRC) OS from http://www.pixartargentina.com.ar/ however one of the project leads just told me that it's Ubuntu so they might have changed their mind since the manual was written. On the Windows side there's also slightly confusing information with again the manual making a reference to Windows XP whereas http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/la-netbook/descripcion-de-los-equipos/tecnologia/tecnologia/ talks about Windows 7 Professional. But again I've asked that project lead for a clarification and will report back once I know more. Hope that helps. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Am 02.03.2011 16:41, schrieb Christoph Derndorfer: Am 02.03.2011 06:34, schrieb John Watlington: Impressive number. What software are they running ? It's dual-boot with Windows and Linux. According to a manual (www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/wp-content/themes/conectar_igualdad/pdf/Manual_alumnos.pdf) on the Conectar Igualdad Web site for Linux they're using the Debian-based (IIRC) OS from http://www.pixartargentina.com.ar/ however one of the project leads just told me that it's Ubuntu so they might have changed their mind since the manual was written. On the Windows side there's also slightly confusing information with again the manual making a reference to Windows XP whereas http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/la-netbook/descripcion-de-los-equipos/tecnologia/tecnologia/ talks about Windows 7 Professional. But again I've asked that project lead for a clarification and will report back once I know more. Okay, just got a reply: The initial batches of netbooks came with Windows XP and now they're using Windows 7. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Am 28.02.2011 22:59, schrieb John Watlington: On Feb 23, 2011, at 10:27 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: I'm still absolutely clueless about the total figures but what I do know is that Argentina's Conectar Igualdad program (http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/) will distribute 3 million Classmate PCs in part of its public secondary school system by the end of 2012. By late December approximately half a million of them had supposedly been distributed. According to the web site at the URL provided above, none have been delivered to children as of Feb. 28. When I was in Buenos Aires in mid-December for a 3-day workshop organized by the Argentinian MoE I also met my former Argentinian host brother and his cousin who had received their Classmate PCs in late November. So I know that at least two of them have actually been distributed (and no, this time not based on dubious information from Kigali;-) We continue to hear that Classmates are being deployed, but nobody can provide concrete information about where and how many. I'll get in touch with some people in Buenos Aires to try and figure out what the current figure there is. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Am 01.03.2011 13:36, schrieb Christoph Derndorfer: Am 28.02.2011 22:59, schrieb John Watlington: On Feb 23, 2011, at 10:27 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: I'm still absolutely clueless about the total figures but what I do know is that Argentina's Conectar Igualdad program (http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/) will distribute 3 million Classmate PCs in part of its public secondary school system by the end of 2012. By late December approximately half a million of them had supposedly been distributed. According to the web site at the URL provided above, none have been delivered to children as of Feb. 28. When I was in Buenos Aires in mid-December for a 3-day workshop organized by the Argentinian MoE I also met my former Argentinian host brother and his cousin who had received their Classmate PCs in late November. So I know that at least two of them have actually been distributed (and no, this time not based on dubious information from Kigali;-) We continue to hear that Classmates are being deployed, but nobody can provide concrete information about where and how many. I'll get in touch with some people in Buenos Aires to try and figure out what the current figure there is. Okay, just found http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/sobre-el-programa/evaluacion-y-seguimiento/informe-de-avance-de-entregas/ which supposedly provides the number of distributed netbooks and is updated on a weekly basis. The count as of today is 358,227. And that half a million figure I had mentioned earlier in the thread is the goal of the first distribution phase not the number handed out by December. Mea culpa! :-/ Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Am 23.02.2011 14:19, schrieb Robert Fadel: On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 23:06, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: I agree with Walter. About two million. I don't have access to the internal figures. See also 1,834,500 in a probably partial list of laptop orders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Summary_of_laptop_orders http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments There are over 2.1 million XOs in the field as of January, 2011. we update the wiki and the map every 4-8 weeks based on the actual order and producation schedules a mapping of many of those same deployments: http://one.laptop.org/map I still don't buy that 2.1 million figure. Ordered maybe, shipped by Quanta possibly, but definitely not in the hands of children and teachers. The data on http://one.laptop.org/map also adds up to about 1,800,000 with no significant omissions that I can find (definitely none that add up to 300,000) so I think this is pretty much the upper bound right now. Peru had 250,000 XOs in the field (with 40,000 more in a warehouse in Lima) as of late August 2010, I have a hard time believing that since then an additional 620,000 XO have actually been distributed. The map and corresponding wiki pages also indicate that in Rwanda 110,000 XOs have been distributed when at least as of three weeks ago that number was actually closer to 15,000. In the U.S. G1G1 numbers also seem to be included in the total 95,000 tally. So overall my personal *guesstimate* at this point is that 1.5 million is at the very best the *number of children and teachers with an XO* with a more likely figure being somewhere in the area of 1.2 million. I know others don't think these details matter, but as I explained to Robert back in Vienna exactly one year ago I believe getting these numbers right is important considering how historically OLPC hasn't been too good in matching the numbers it has thrown around ($100 laptop, 1W laptop, etc.) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Yes, it's *great* that this note is on that wiki page however I'm mainly concerned about the major public interfaces such as http://one.laptop.org/map as well as Nicholas and Rodrigo constantly refer to 2,100,000 children and teachers have XO laptops when that is quite clearly not the case. As Caryl will talk about OLPC at the Scale conference this week I wanted to use the opportunity to share what I feel are more realistic figures;-) Christoph Am 23.02.2011 15:38, schrieb Ed McNierney: There are over 2.1 million XOs in the field as of January, 2011. The information below represents the number of XOs delivered, shipped or ordered for each country or region. Not all XOs are currently in schools. That seems to be exactly what the wiki page is saying. - Ed On Feb 23, 2011, at 9:33 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Am 23.02.2011 14:19, schrieb Robert Fadel: On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 23:06, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: I agree with Walter. About two million. I don't have access to the internal figures. See also 1,834,500 in a probably partial list of laptop orders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Summary_of_laptop_orders http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments There are over 2.1 million XOs in the field as of January, 2011. we update the wiki and the map every 4-8 weeks based on the actual order and producation schedules a mapping of many of those same deployments: http://one.laptop.org/map I still don't buy that 2.1 million figure. Ordered maybe, shipped by Quanta possibly, but definitely not in the hands of children and teachers. The data on http://one.laptop.org/map also adds up to about 1,800,000 with no significant omissions that I can find (definitely none that add up to 300,000) so I think this is pretty much the upper bound right now. Peru had 250,000 XOs in the field (with 40,000 more in a warehouse in Lima) as of late August 2010, I have a hard time believing that since then an additional 620,000 XO have actually been distributed. The map and corresponding wiki pages also indicate that in Rwanda 110,000 XOs have been distributed when at least as of three weeks ago that number was actually closer to 15,000. In the U.S. G1G1 numbers also seem to be included in the total 95,000 tally. So overall my personal *guesstimate* at this point is that 1.5 million is at the very best the *number of children and teachers with an XO* with a more likely figure being somewhere in the area of 1.2 million. I know others don't think these details matter, but as I explained to Robert back in Vienna exactly one year ago I believe getting these numbers right is important considering how historically OLPC hasn't been too good in matching the numbers it has thrown around ($100 laptop, 1W laptop, etc.) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Am 23.02.2011 15:44, schrieb Robert Fadel: I still don't buy that 2.1 million figure. Ordered maybe, shipped by Quanta possibly, but definitely not in the hands of children and teachers. The data on http://one.laptop.org/map also adds up to about 1,800,000 with no significant omissions that I can find (definitely none that add up to 300,000) so I think this is pretty much the upper bound right now. Peru had 250,000 XOs in the field (with 40,000 more in a warehouse in Lima) as of late August 2010, I have a hard time believing that since then an additional 620,000 XO have actually been distributed. The map and corresponding wiki pages also indicate that in Rwanda 110,000 XOs have been distributed when at least as of three weeks ago that number was actually closer to 15,000. where did you get that number from? Someone who was in Kigali around New Year's and then followed up with people there upon my request. The exact comment was along the lines of: 75,000 XOs are supposed to be distributed by the end of April, right now approximately 15,000 are actually in schools with the rest sitting in regional warehouses. But please do feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (particularly if I'm horribly wrong), there's a reason why I used the word guesstimate;-) Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] How Many XOs?
Am 23.02.2011 16:09, schrieb Robert Fadel: On Feb 23, 2011, at 9:55 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Yes, it's *great* that this note is on that wiki page however I'm mainly concerned about the major public interfaces such as http://one.laptop.org/map as well as Nicholas and Rodrigo constantly refer to 2,100,000 children and teachers have XO laptops when that is quite clearly not the case. As Caryl will talk about OLPC at the Scale conference this week I wanted to use the opportunity to share what I feel are more realistic figures;-) Short of polling every deployment - which is done - on the distributed versus locally warehoused number unless you also want to know the number of xo's in repair status (how literal are you being about have?); Point taken;-) I'd reduce the number by 100-200k; approximately a month's production and an equivalent number in transit whose time which can take up to 8 weeks for land-locked countries. The upper-bound might capture local inventories too. Thanks a lot for the clarification, much appreciated Oh, and I guess that also means Quanta is still producing approximately 50,000 XOs per month? so, about that rwanda number you are quoting...? Should be in that other e-mail I sent (sorry, that one took a little longer as I'm theoretically supposed to get some real work done in this software engineering management class I'm currently sitting in;-) also curious about the classmate deployment figures you were researching some time ago, what did you find? I had an interesting lunch earlier in the month in this context and will follow up on this story in early March;-) I'm still absolutely clueless about the total figures but what I do know is that Argentina's Conectar Igualdad program (http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/) will distribute 3 million Classmate PCs in part of its public secondary school system by the end of 2012. By late December approximately half a million of them had supposedly been distributed. In Brazil the presidency created a credit line for regional governments (states municipalities) to be used for the purchase of up 1.5 million Classmate PCs until mid-2012. The information available online leaves much to be desired but http://www.bndes.gov.br/SiteBNDES/bndes/bndes_pt/Institucional/Apoio_Financeiro/Programas_e_Fundos/prouca.html and http://www.fnde.gov.br/index.php/laptops-educacionais-apresentacao contain a quick overview. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Call for Papers Learning Technologies for the Developing World (LT4D) – Issues, Constraints and Solutions
Thanks for the reminder! I'm planning to submit something and have even come as far as jotting some key words, unfortunately I'm not sure whether I'll actually have the time to turn them into something reasonable in the next 3 days... :-/ Christoph Am 17.02.2011 19:38, schrieb Manusheel Gupta: FYI. Interesting conference to participate. Regards, Manu From: *Imran Zualkernan* Date: Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 11:03 PM Subject: Call for Papers Learning Technologies for the Developing World (LT4D) – Issues, Constraints and Solutions To: m...@seeta.in mailto:m...@seeta.in Dear Manu, I hope that we can find people who are able to share their experiences with OLPC for this workshop. Please encourage your contacts to submit papers to the workshop. On another note, we would like to start experimenting with the platform here in UAE. Thanks. Best, Imran --- Call for Papers Learning Technologies for the Developing World (LT4D) – Issues, Constraints and Solutions http://cadmium.cs.umass.edu/LT4D in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2011) http://www.ask4research.info/icalt/2011/ 6-8 July 2011, Athens, Georgia, USA The LT4D workshop aims to provide a forum for discussion of a sensible introduction of learning technologies in the developing world. Focus of the workshop is to explore the economic, social, political and cultural constraints that shape affordances for learning technologies in the developing world. The workshop invites submissions addressing all aspects of learning technologies in the context of development. Important Dates * February 20th, 2011 paper submission * March 11th,2011 Notification to the authors * March 15th,2011 Workshops authors' registration deadline * April 15th,2011 Final camera ready manuscript and IEEE Copyright form submission Best regards, Imran Zualkernan Associate Professor Computer Science and Engineering American University of Sharjah PO Box 2, Sharjah United Arab Emirates http://www.aus.edu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] For Sugar Everywhere, Google-ize!
Am 17.02.2011 01:31, schrieb C. Scott Ananian: Stepping back for a moment, the key question is: how can we get Sugar out of the window manager and network manager and activity update and UI toolkit business, where it's just not keeping up (and wasting our efforts), and concentrate on the stuff we're all really here for: enabling kids to learn and explore and share? How much can we strip away and still have Sugar? --scott Hi Scott, as always your thoughts and perspectives are leading to some interesting discussions, much appreciated. :-) The inner geek in me certainly loves the ideas presented in your initial message. However in the end I think the question in your last e-mail (concentrate on the stuff we're all really here for: enabling kids to learn and explore and share?) is what it's really all about. And I don't see Android being a part of the solution here but rather, as Martin likes to put it, A Distraction. The main reasoning for me is quite simple: As of today - and from what we know also the foreseeable future - basically all Sugar users will be using an XO-1/1.5/1.75. Yes, Sugar Labs has done a tremendous job of making it possible to run Sugar on other devices. Yet the simple fact is that in terms of numbers there are no significant non-XO projects today and though I'd personally like to see it happening I don't think it will anytime soon. And yes, OLPC is working on a tablet that should start shipping at some point in 2012 but even in a best case scenario it will likely take until 2013 or 2014 until the number of OLPC tablets even comes close to the XO-laptop user base installed by that time. So based on these assumptions, given the limited amount of resources available, and assuming I haven't missed anything your suggestion would basically mean sacrificing the potential to significantly improve the experience of the current 1 million Sugar users to develop something for unproven potential future markets and users. I'd rather see every available resource being poured into working on things that matter in the field: More activities, enhancing current activities, an interactive help system, upgradability (which IIRC is an important goal for 11.2.0 already), trying to make collaboration work (even if it's only in tiny groups, via view-only, etc.), a classroom management activity which could for example allow pupils to project the contents of their display to a projector connected to the teacher's XO-with-USB2VGA, adding PhotoBooth-like effects to Record, improving the Journal, implementing the Group View, etc. ad infinitum What I'm basically suggesting - and also think is a more realistic approach given the current environment - is to make Sugar on the XOs so superbly awesome and powerful that other parties, e.g. a country doing 1-to-1 but with Intel Classmates rather than XOs or a hardware manufacturer wanting to break into the education market, will take care of the necessary work to make Sugar run, and run well that is, on their devices. Which again seems to be not too different to how the Android ecosystem is developing these days. Anyway, just my 2 eurocents, and thanks again for the impulse which got this discussion started. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] For Sugar Everywhere, Google-ize!
Am 17.02.2011 02:53, schrieb Chris Ball: Hi Christoph, So based on these assumptions, given the limited amount of resources available, and assuming I haven't missed anything your suggestion would basically mean sacrificing the potential to significantly improve the experience of the current 1 million Sugar users to develop something for unproven potential future markets and users. I'm not so quick to posit a zero-sum allocation of resources here -- we haven't got everyone interested in free educational software on this list yet, right? And having a different platform that's more accessible (i.e. runs cross-platform in browsers) or more hackable (view source that just works) seems like it could easily attract more developers into the fold. So I don't think this is a good enough reason to dismiss radical new work out of hand. Okay, maybe I'm just somewhat burned here because of the experiences with Karma but personally I just don't see any technology change yielding a lot of extra helping hands for Sugar Labs or OLPC one way or another. Of course there are people interested in making the current Sugar environment more powerful for its large installed base, and there are people interested in new cutting-edge technology designs, and they aren't necessarily the same people. Yes, you're 100% right, that's certainly an important consideration here. Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Material, ideas, slides to talk about Sugar?
Thanks, I also normally do that during hands-on sessions but it's a bit hard to pull of on a stage in front of 150 people;-) Christoph Am 09.02.2011 05:34, schrieb Edward Cherlin: I like to take two laptops running Sugar connected to the same Jabber server, and demonstrate collaboration in Write, Paint, TamTam...As they say in the movie business, show, don't tell. On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 16:31, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Am 08.02.2011 05:05, schrieb Walter Bender: On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:05 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Hi all, I'm giving two presentations about OLPC in Switzerland later this week and so I'm currently in the process of planning them as well as (re-)designing the accompanying slides. I realized that I'm not entirely happy about the part where I talk about Sugar which essentially hasn't changed since mid-2008 (slides 35 to 42 in this slide-deck: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/attachments/1487_26c3_derndorfer.pdf) Now I'm looking for suggestions on how to improve / revamp that section. One of the two talks will be in front of an audience mainly consisting of teachers and IT administrators from Swiss and German schools and cantons. Hence I'm particularly interested in hearing what people who have presented in front of such an education-focused crowd talked on when it comes to Sugar. I typically try to make the point that the culture of FOSS is a culture that sets the expectation of engagement and that is synergistic with the goals of learning. Walk them through an activity that enables the end user to make modifications: Memorize, Abacus, Turtle Art, etc. Thanks, that sounds like a great idea. Last night I actually wanted to go and re-watch your TEDxBrussels talk for inspiration, unfortunately it's not available on YouTube yet. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Google Summer of Code 2011
Great news! Is there some sort of review or overview of the achievements of last year's projects available? I remember some cool proposals and interesting discussions on the mailing-lists but now I can't seem to find a page which details what exactly ended up being done. Thanks, Christoph Am 06.02.2011 00:20, schrieb Walter Bender: Sugar Labs will be applying to Google Summer of Code again for 2011. Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero dir...@gmail.com has kindly volunteered to be our coordinator. He is in the process of updating the wiki. We will be seeking mentors, students, and project ideas. regards. -walter -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Google Summer of Code 2011
Thanks, that was exactly what I had been looking for:-) Christoph Am 07.02.2011 23:06, schrieb Walter Bender: 3. Dinko Galetic, Lucian Branescu Mihaila, and Sebastian Dziallas all successfully completed their Google Summer of Code projects. Congratulations and thanks to Google for sponsoring the work and to their mentors Stefan (Dogi) Unterhauser, Luis Gustavo Lira, Michael Stone, and Sascha Silbe, and to Tim McNamara for organizing the Sugar Labs GSoC program. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2010/Improved_Sugar_on_a_Stick http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2010/Pippy_improvements and http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2010/Abstract_Browser -walter On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Am 07.02.2011 19:23, schrieb Frederick Grose: On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Rafael Ortiz raf...@activitycentral.com mailto:raf...@activitycentral.com wrote: Hi Christoph On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at mailto:e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Great news! Is there some sort of review or overview of the achievements of last year's projects available? I remember some cool proposals and interesting discussions on the mailing-lists but now I can't seem to find a page which details what exactly ended up being done. I haven't found such page also. afaik there isn't one. Thanks, Christoph Am 06.02.2011 00:20, schrieb Walter Bender: Sugar Labs will be applying to Google Summer of Code again for 2011. Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero dir...@gmail.com mailto:dir...@gmail.com has kindly volunteered to be our coordinator. He is in the process of updating the wiki. We will be seeking mentors, students, and project ideas. regards. -walter -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com http://www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com mailto:christ...@olpcnews.com http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code#Subpages http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code#Subpagesand http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Category:GSoC http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Category:GSoChave some references. I'm aware of these pages but after looking through them (like I did last September: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-September/026545.html) I still couldn't figure out which projects had been worked on, what their progress was, whether the results had made it into the related activities and packages, etc. The reason why I thought of this again is because showing the impact past GSoC projects had on Sugar could be a great way to attract students this time 'round. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Material, ideas, slides to talk about Sugar?
Hi all, I'm giving two presentations about OLPC in Switzerland later this week and so I'm currently in the process of planning them as well as (re-)designing the accompanying slides. I realized that I'm not entirely happy about the part where I talk about Sugar which essentially hasn't changed since mid-2008 (slides 35 to 42 in this slide-deck: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/attachments/1487_26c3_derndorfer.pdf) Now I'm looking for suggestions on how to improve / revamp that section. One of the two talks will be in front of an audience mainly consisting of teachers and IT administrators from Swiss and German schools and cantons. Hence I'm particularly interested in hearing what people who have presented in front of such an education-focused crowd talked on when it comes to Sugar. Thanks in advance, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Communities around technology for learning (was: Re: [support-gang] When teaching restrains discovery)
I finally got around to reading Claudia's article and one of the core take-aways for me is that building communities (plural!) which help disseminate knowledge about how to use technology for learning is a core challenge which hasn't been sufficiently addressed yet. To me 2010 did show the first promises of this happening within the OLPC / Sugar community with collaboration starting between Plan Ceibal and ParaguayEduca, the work of organizations and communities such as ceibalJAM and RAP Ceibal, a better integration of Latin American contributors in the global community, eKindling's work in the Philippines, all the time Bernie, Daniel, Claudia, Walter and others are spending sharing with and learning from deployments, events such the community summit in San Francisco and the realness summit, the olpcMAP.net project, etc. And with some OLE Nepal staff having started the year by flying out to Rwanda to support the deployment there 2011 is also definitely beginning on a high-note. Having said that I personally feel that at the moment this network of networks (or community of communities, take your pick;-) is wide rather than deep - often seemingly ending at people living in capitals or major cities, being experienced with FLOSS and/or innovative education, etc. rather than reaching and benefiting the children, parents, teachers, principals, and administrators who are really the major stakeholders of education initiatives. I don't have a simple answer on how to deal with this (and who knows, it might just be an issue perceived by yours truly) but I think keeping it in the back of the head might be a start. Cheers, Christoph Am 20.01.2011 17:24, schrieb Holt: Thanks Bastien. Back on the home front, also check out Claudia Urrea's (OLPC Assoc's Chief Learner ;) article today on one-to-one edutech etc: http://edutechdebate.org/ict-in-schools/technologies-for-learning-vs-learning-about-technology/ On 1/20/2011 9:46 AM, Bastien wrote: Hi Christoph and all, I always enjoy those resources about education, thank you for the pointers -- and to everyone for the comments! Let me share two recent readings of mine: John Maeda : The Laws of Simplicity http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Simplicity-Design-Technology-Business/dp/0262134721 My attention got caught when I saw John Maeda referring to Nicholas Negroponte in the chapter « Context ». While discussing the importance of focusing, he mentions this advice from NN : Be as an electric bulb, not as a lazer ray. Which I found to be quite an inspiring metaphor in the context of learning: let's all learn how to shed light on things as bulbs, taking care of others and the context, not as lazer ray, only taking care of the subject matter. George Steiner - « Éloge de la transmission - Le maître et l'élève » http://livre.fnac.com/a1904995/George-Steiner-Eloge-de-la-transmission-le-maitre-et-l-eleve (Sorry, only published in french.) In the debate about instructionisme vs. [constructionisme, project-based method, Montessori method, etc.], most people would certainly say that Steiner -- George, not Rudolph! -- is rather conservative, expressing opinions shared by teachers with a classical-instructionist attitude. The title of this book says it all. Still, he proposes a definition for what it is to be a master: it is someone from which students can always feel the love behind the irony. Of course, Socrates comes to mind as a master of both irony and love towards its pupils -- I bet Steiner would agree. I like this definition. It is general enough to escape the opposition between instructionism / [constructionisme, ...]. But still, I feel this definition captures something essential that any teacher could fruitfully think about. My 2 cents, -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] When teaching restrains discovery
Hi all, I just stumbled across this fascinating article called When teaching restrains discovery (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/01/18/when-teaching-restrains-discovery/) which is based on a very recently published paper whose title really says it all The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL_udi=B6T24-51WV6VK-1_user=10_coverDate=01/08/2011_rdoc=1_fmt=high_orig=search_origin=search_sort=d_docanchor=view=c_acct=C50221_version=1_urlVersion=0_userid=10md5=b3319a977badfb35348871b64a9e1d4csearchtype=a). Definitely well worth a read in my opinion. :-) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Great article on Cheating in Computer Science
Regardless of the counter views or comments or whatever that 15min video was one of the most intense things I've seen in quite a while... Thanks a lot for sharing that link! Christoph Am 29.12.2010 12:00, schrieb Rakesh Biswas: There is this other article seemingly providing a counter view until you read the comments section. http://castingoutnines.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/cheating-at-central-florida/ :-) regards, rakesh On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 5:07 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at mailto:e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Hi all, I just stumbled across this great article called Cheating in Computer Science (http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1865908) which - despite its title - isn't really all that much about cheating in CS but rather an interesting reflection about our current education system in general. I'm sure that when reading through the last paragraph of page 1 others will also be strongly reminded of the great phrase Walter has used in many of his presentation: school is the only place where collaboration is called cheating:-) Cheers Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com http://www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com mailto:christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Great article on Cheating in Computer Science
Hi all, I just stumbled across this great article called Cheating in Computer Science (http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1865908) which - despite its title - isn't really all that much about cheating in CS but rather an interesting reflection about our current education system in general. I'm sure that when reading through the last paragraph of page 1 others will also be strongly reminded of the great phrase Walter has used in many of his presentation: school is the only place where collaboration is called cheating:-) Cheers Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] In Buenos Aires next week: Who should I meet?
Hi all, I'll be in Buenos Aires next week and I was wondering whether there were OLPC / Sugar Labs people there who I should meet up with? :-) Bernie suggested getting in touch with folks from Sugar Labs Argentina however I admittedly I'm not sure what the best way to contact them is. Do they have a seperate mailing list (couldn't find anything on lists.sugarlabs.org) or do folks use OLPC's Argentina list (http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/argentina)? Are there any other individuals who I should meet while I'm there? I'd appreciate all suggestions and pointers:-) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] TSA Loves XOs!
Excellent stuff which got me some odd looks on the subway when I read your e-mail and started laughing uncontrollably;-) Happy Turkey Day! Cheers, Christoph Am 25.11.2010 19:36, schrieb Caryl Bigenho: Hi All, I flew from DFW yesterday, the day before Thanksgiving, which is supposed to be one of the busiest days for flying. We arrived early because we had heard of plans for lot of people to opt out of the body scanners and ask for the enhanced pat-down search instead. The protest didn't show up in the security area we went through and the TSA agents were very overstaffed and very good natured and friendly. Because of my knee replacements I always set off the alarm and get the pat-down. Yesterday was no exception, but the procedures have changed. No more metal detecting wands. Instead they pat you down all over... and I do mean all over! So, there I was with my arms out like a hovering bird, getting the treatment when another, smiling TSA agent came over to ask me about OLPC and the Contributors Program! She had seen the XO-1.5 I brought (to demo at New Tech High @ Coppell) go through the scanner. She asked my husband about it as he was gathering my things. He gave her one of my cards with lots of links on the back, told her more about it and sent her over to talk to me. So, while I was getting that enhanced pat-down I was pleasantly distracted by being able to tell her about our Contributors Program. She was very interested in the possibility of doing a project at a place where she volunteers once a week in the Dallas area. I was pleasantly distracted and almost didn't notice the thoroughness of the pat-down! You never know when traveling with an XO will pay off in new and interesting ways! Happy Thanksgiving! Grannie B (aka Caryl) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Anyone else going to TEDxBrussels?
Hi all, I was wondering whether anyone else here is planning to attend TEDxBrussels (http://www.tedxbrussels.eu/) on December 6? Seeing that Nicholas, Walter, and Mary Lou Jepsen will be speakers, several folks from OLPC Europe are likely to attend and some of the OLPC France people have also said that they'll be there OLPC / Sugar Labs will have quite a presence there:-) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2010-11-01
/ and make up their own mind. :[2] One place where Christoph and I are somewhat on the same page is in regard to the level of community involvement in Peru. While there are fruitful collaborations with some of the local universities, as described by Oscar, and while parents are becoming more involved in their children's learning, as hinted at in the IDB report, there is an untapped potential in the people of Peru to engage in much the same way that Ceibal RAP and Ceilbal JAM contribute to the efforts in Uruguay. How to unleash that potential within Peru remains an unresolved question. While this is indeed a harder issue than in Uruguay (in many ways I would assume due to the different socio-economic situation of most people in Peru vs. Uruguay) I see a variety of ways forward here. I think the first step is simply to build more personal ties between the global community and the folks in Peru such as Kiko, Sebastian, and Sdenka (all in CC). While I unfortunately couldn't make it by all accounts the OLPC SF meeting was an excellent event because it finally brought so many different people together into the same physical location. So as Walter pointed out in the previous Sugar Digest I can also only recommend everyone here to go out and visit an OLPC / Sugar deployment if in any way possible. Luckily many of them happen to be in excellent tourism destinations such as Peru, Nicaragua or Nepal so it's easy to combine play and work and an excellent way to meet folks who will give you a great insight into the local culture. (Rereading this paragraph I think I really ought to start olpc-adventures.com;-) Secondly, I think as a community we need to become better at appreciating and publicly recognizing the great work that many people in Peru are doing today. Yes, the Sugar Digest community section, planet.sugarlabs.org, OLPC News articles, etc. are a start but why not become more active in reaching out to the Peruvian community. Let's for example have a this week / month in Peru's community section / article in the Sugar Digest, on OLPC News and on the Web site or wiki. Thirdly, and I know many people don't want to touch this topic but funding is an important issue here. While generally it's comparatively feasible for a software developer, teacher or even student in places like North America and Europe to dedicate extra time to other efforts such as OLPC we must recognize that this is a form of luxury that often isn't available in places such as Peru. Crowd-funding enabled some people to attend the Community Summit in San Francisco and was used for one of the early-day Sugar Camps in Boston, why not at least try and use it for funding small projects in Peru? Also, for any sort of larger grant at least here in Austria and the EU it often helps to have a local partner organization in a country one is trying to work with. The fourth point is that we need to make some of the processes and associated documentation we rely on more open to non-English speakers. While writing these lines I for example got an e-mail from some Uruguayan volunteers I had met who are asking me to review their proposal to OLPC's Contributor's Program. We should realize that more than 50% of all OLPC / Sugar users are based in South America and adapt things like the Web site, wiki, etc. accordingly. This process could in turn be a weekend project (a la GdK) and easy way for new Spanish speaking people to get involved. Last but not least, and maybe even most importantly, we should ask the existing Peruvian communities what they think, where and how the OLPC / Sugar community can support them, etc. ===In the community=== 3. We are finalizing the list of candidates for the upcoming election to fill opening in the Sugar Oversight Board. I'm very pleased that we have so many outstanding candidates: * Adam Holt * Steven Parrish * Chris Ball * Rosamel Norma Ramirez Mendez * Gerald Ardito * Sebastian Silva * Aleksey Lim * Claudia Urrea * Pacita Peña This is excellent news indeed! 4. DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP, an international forum on development and social inclusion through the use of ICT in Uruguay will be held on 29th and 30th November 2010 at the Uruguayan Laboratory of Technology (LATU) in Montevideo, Uruguay. On a fun side-note: I was invited to give a talk at that forum (but again had to turn the invitation down due to annoying scheduling conflicts) so I guess some people do actually see some sort of crazy value in my experiences and subsequent sensationalizing reports and writing (sorry, I really couldn't help myself;-). Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] NN, Mitra, and the role of the teacher
Zitat von John Watlington w...@laptop.org: There is no argument that a great teacher influences many children in the right direction. But such an effort to improve teachers is completely orthogonal (i.e. independent) to both Sugar and OLPC. Better teachers are needed whether or not the kids get laptops. +1 Should OLPC or Sugar Labs consider developing and disseminating, this teaching style, and a curriculum for training teachers? The teachers must be trained first is a line frequently used to delay deploying the laptops. Presenting it with Sugar or OLPC would be a disservice, IMO. Sugar and OLPC have the most to offer in classrooms where the teachers are horrible or missing. Where have you seen evidence of this? Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] OpenEd Conference / Mozilla Drumbeat Festival
Am 27.10.2010 19:03, schrieb Werner Westermann: Hello to all. Any Sugar advocates attending any of these events? http://openedconference.org/2010/ http://www.drumbeat.org/festival Best wishes, werner Sugar Labs Chile Hi Werner, I was planning on going and was even awarded a travel scholarship by Mozilla but then had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict:-( Are you or anyone else from Sugar Labs Chile going? The one other person from the OLPC / Sugar community that I know was also applying to go there is Raul from ParaguayEduca fame (in CC). Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] stepping down as maintainer
I'm sorry to see you go. Thanks so much for your outstanding work and commitment over the years. I think it's very safe to say that Sugar wouldn't be anywhere close to where it is today if it weren't for you. Best of luck for your future endeavors and I hope to see you again in the not too-distant future. Thanks, Christoph Am 19.10.2010 18:50, schrieb Tomeu Vizoso: Hi, for personal reasons have to drastically reduce my involvement in the project. Will be leaving maintenance of my modules and unsubscribing from the mailing lists. My place on the board is vacant from now on and I'll be adding to the wiki the new vacancies: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Vacancies Cheers and good luck, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] First evaluation results from OLPC Peru
Hi all, the Peruvian Ministry of Education and the Inter-American Development Bank are currently working on a fairly extensive evaluation of OLPC in Peru. The first preliminary report from that evaluation was just published and it makes for a very good and interesting read: Evaluación Experimental del Programa “Una Laptop por Niño” en Perú: http://www.iadb.org/document.cfm?id=35370099 As to be expected - based on my own experiences while I was in Peru as well as talking to a lot of people who've worked there in the past - these first results aren't particularly great. From an implementation point of view this paragraph from page 11 sums up some key findings: Aspectos relevantes a considerar en la implementación son 1) la demanda de mayor preparación de los docentes, 2) el bajo porcentaje de alumnos que puede llevar la laptop al hogar, 3) la baja conectividad a Internet y a la red local, 4) la falta de soporte técnico y pedagógico en las escuelas y localidades. * demand for better teacher preparation * low percentage of pupils who can use the laptop outside of school (~50%) * lack of connectivity (only 1,4% of schools have Internet access, Mesh use is very limited) * lack of technical and educational support in schools Additional findings are that the use of the XOs in schools drops of significantly after some months, that the use is very often limited to typing up texts written on the chalkboard, and that so far very few impacts in terms of learning have been encountered (though that last point could change in future evaluations given the short amount of time that many schools have had the XOs). I know, I know, some people will be more than happy to shot the messenger here. But in that case I'd suggest that (1) people simply ignore my ramblings (2) read the original report (remembering that it's not Intel, Microsoft or OLPC News but the IADB in collaboration with the Peruvian MoE who wrote it) (3) and then see what you think yourself. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Deadline for Education for the open web fellowship program extended to October 17
Thought some people here might be interested that the deadline for submissions to the Mozilla Drumbeat / Shuttleworth Education for the open web fellowship program has been extended to October 17: http://www.drumbeat.org/education-open-web-fellowship-new-deadline I think this could be particularly interesting for people working on content related projects in the context of HTML / JavaScript. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Fwd: [escuelab noticias ] OLPC: Una perspectiva europea - Charla de Christoph Derndorfer - Miercoles 25, 7:30pm
Hi all, thought some of you might be interested in a talk (OLPC: Una perspectiva europea) I'm giving here in Lima's escuelab.org tomorrow evening which will be streamed live via http://www.escuelab.org/envivo The talk and QA will be Spanish and the thing should get started at around 7:30PM local time (8:30PM EST if I'm not mistaken). Given the thing called Peruvian time it's of course very possible that we'll only get rolling at around 8PM or so;-) Cheers, Christoph Original-Nachricht Betreff:[escuelab noticias ] OLPC: Una perspectiva europea - Charla de Christoph Derndorfer - Miercoles 25, 7:30pm Datum: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:00:17 -0500 Von:escuelab.org i...@escuelab.org An: christ...@olpcnews.com OLPC: Una perspectiva europea - Charla de Christoph Derndorfer - Miercoles 25, 7:30pm *también por STREAMING VÍA www.escuelab.org/envivo* * http://www.escuelab.org/contenido/olpc-una-perspectiva-europea-charla-de-christoph-derndorfer?utm_source=newsletterutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=escuelab%20noticias%20 * *Una laptop por niño*, es el nombre que recibe el despliegue de One Laptop per Child (OLPC) en el Perú. El despliegue peruano junto con el uruguayo, son los dos más grandes a nivel mundial. Paralelamente existe una comunidad global de OLPC y Sugar, grupos como OLPC Alemanía, OLPC Austria y OLPC Francia eson muy activos en contribuir a los esfuerzos globales. n esta charla Christoph presentará proyectos que se están realizando en Austria. Además revisará el trabajo de OLPC - Nepal donde la ONG OLE Nepal ha estado trabajando en crear contenido interactivo para sus escuelas que usan los XO (OLPC) desde el 2007. Al final se hará un resumen de la gira de investigación que vien realizando Christoph en torno de los proyectos de OLPC en Uruguay, Paraguay y el Perú. *El evento está dirigido a: * Todas las personas que se interesan por el proyecto Una laptop por nino (OLPC) en general, y en el Perú en particular, así como el uso de tecnologia en el contexto de aprendizaje en las naciones en vías de desarrollo. *Fecha: Miércoles 25 de Agosto* *Hora: 7:30 a 9:00pm* *Ingreso libre, sin Inscripción * *Lugar: Escuelab, Jr de la Unión 1044, Cercado, Lima* *Sobre el expositor* Christoph Derndorfer estudia computación en la Universidad Tecnica de Viena, Austria. Empezó a contribuir a OLPC en 2007, primero escribiendo artículos para olpcnews.com, donde ahoraocupa el cargo de co-editor, y luego iniciando OLPC Austria, una ONG basada en Austria que se dedica a suportar OLPC, Sugar Labs y proyectos en la área de tecnología abierta y educación. Christoph ha contribuido en varios proyectos, desde escribir el Activity Handbook para ensenar como programar Activities para el XO, ha dado presentaciones en universidades Austriacas y en conferencias y encuentros de la comunidad de software libre en Europa, hasta trabajar como voluntario con el grupo OLE Nepal en Kathmandu en 2009. Tambien esta coordinando el trabajo en el piloto OLPC en Austria, uno de los pocos proyectos piloto de OLPC que existe en Europa. En estos meses de invierno esta pasando por Uruguay, Paraguay y Peru para aprender más sobre como funcionan los proyectos de OLPC en estos paises. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] meeting minutes
Am 24.08.2010 13:32, schrieb Walter Bender: One topic only touched upon briefly was the need for a Sugar Camp. We have two offers of venues: Bolzano the week of November 6 and Miami during a time to be determined. If you would be interested in attending a Sugar camp sometime in the November/early December time frame, please contact me and also, if you have a preference of venue, please voice it. I'm definitely up for another Sugar Camp, it's been too long since Sugar Camp Paris (since I unfortunately missed the last one in Bolzano). In terms of timing be advised that some of the people who might be interested in attending Sugar Camp will just come out of the grand meeting that OLPC-SF is organizing in late October. So that first week of November might be a bit too close for some of them. Anyway, I'll keep a close eye on this and hope to be able to make it to the Camp if indeed takes place in Europe:-) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Requesting Feedback MarketLab Opportunity
One area inside marketing that could be interesting for them to work on is communicating that Sugar isn't tied to the XO anymore. I think having other (netbook) manufacturers also offer Sugar as a pre-installed environment or just mentioning that Sugar runs on their machines would be a great step forward. Also can't wait to hear what Sean has in mind here! :-) Cheers, Christoph Am 17.08.2010 10:04, schrieb John Tierney: Hello Everyone, We have an opportunity this Fall to be part of a MarketLab Student Project, http://web.mit.edu/marketingclub/marketlab/ We have been asked to submit a proposal for the marketing needs of Sugar Labs on Friday, August 20th. I have sent this to the multiple lists because I believe all parts of Sugar Labs should weigh-in and let us know how Sugar Labs Marketing in collaboration with MarketLab Team members can help in your efforts. This is an excerpt from IRC Chat this morning discussing the MarketLab project possibilities: JT4sugar walterbender, I guess question is do we want them to work on certain areas or do we want them to come up with a marketing straegy for us JT4sugar Strategy walterbender JT4sugar: I think the more focused, the more likely we will get something useful/actionable from them JT4sugar walterbender, I think then Public Awareness, Teacher Awareness Participation, Fundraising-Mostly for Teacher Events? Your thoughts/ideas walterbender JT4sugar: I've got pretty limited time for writing this week -- a competing deadline -- so perhaps we can come up with a specific plan of action for getting this proposal out the door? walterbender JT4sugar: I'd like to fund more developer and developer/deployment face-to-face time as well walterbender JT4sugar: we are lacking a 1-page this-is-what-we-are here-is-how-you-can-help pamphlet as well JT4sugar walterbender, I will put it together. I will send email to list about opportunity to gather feedback. Will add developer needs to fundrasing part walterbender JT4sugar: if there is some specific writing you'd like me to do, let me know JT4sugar walterbender, I will plan to get you a draft by Thursday so you can make additions/changes walterbender JT4sugar: +1 Please take a few minutes to reflect on your area of Sugar Labs. Please identify the areas/subjects you believe this student team at MIT Sloan MarketLab can help Sugar Labs with. Appreciate Your Time, Thoughts, and Ideas! John Tierney ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [laptop.org #63100] [Prakash Educational Software Package (ESP), Harpreet Singh Sareen, Patiala/Punjab, India; was: OLPC Contributors Program: Project Proposal]
Hi there, Plan Ceibal in Uruguay has done a lot / is doing a lot of work when it comes to making the XO and Sugar more accessible. Their efforts range from special input devices to virtual keyboards, changes of the fonts, etc. For more details I'd suggest you get in touch with Andrea Mangiatordi (andrea.mangiato...@gmail.com), an Italian researcher who has been working in this area in Uruguay for quite some time. Hope that helps, Christoph Am 15.08.2010 00:09, schrieb harpreet.sa...@live.com: Hi, OLPC has a wide penetration amongst the primary school kids in developing nations with more than a million laptops already in the open and target of many more in several nations. Amongst this, I wanted to know the figure for the times accessibility problems being faced with ‘special kids’ not able to take the benefit of the XO laptops. Gathering these statistics would be helpful as a point for requirement analysis point for my softare applications so that I could contribute a utility package for the laptops. Regards Harpreet Singh Sareen ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] kids hacking sugar?
Hi Soren, good to hear from you, how's the thesis coming along? Bernie Innocenti (in CC) who's currently working with the OLPC / Sugar project in Paraguay has held some successful classes and programming workshops with relatively young people. I don't remember the details but I'm sure he can tell you more about it. Also in Paraguay there's a brother and a sister who are doing what seems to be truly amazing stuff with Scratch (I'm talking about designing games with 9 levels and whatnot!). It might not be Python coding or Kernel hacking but this is definitely some very advanced use right there. Morgan Ames (also in CC) has all the details there. That's about all that comes to mind right now... Cheers from Peru, Christoph Am 10.08.2010 09:42, schrieb Søren Hougesen: I'm a curious outsider. Do kids actually hack sugar, change codes, do language translation, etc? Or is it just an option that they have with Sugar-FOSS? If so, where can I find some data on kids involved with sugar-hacking-activity? i.e. videos, community-discussions, documents, or your own descriptive observations regards Soren student in educational anthropology ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Looking for suggestions
Hi Brett, I don't have much to add to Kevin's comments besides the fact that your vision is indeed ambitious. I'm not sure whether there are any other OLPC / Sugar aficionados in your area but if so then I'd try to organize some sort of meetup with them. Else finding other groups or organizations who work in the space you're interested might be a worthwhile thing to do. Given that you seem to have some UX experience it might also be a good idea to sit down and sketch some of the ideas you have in terms of the UI. That would (a) be good material for your blog and (b) would give people a better idea of what you have in mind when saying the Sugar user experience is in no way optimized for the high school learner. Cheers for now and good luck! :-) Christoph Am 01.08.2010 23:14, schrieb Kevin Kirton: Hi Brett, I had a quick look at your Project coEL site and your vision is certainly ambitious. And I mean that as a compliment, don't give too much attention to naysayers. I'm not sure what (if any) advice I could give you, except perhaps just become involved in OLPC, IAEP, or your own coEL projects in any way you find enjoyable. When I was a teenager I really enjoyed school and studying (still do), but if you don't, perhaps you could test drive some of the high school activities in Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) and write about the things you like or don't like there. Hope this helps, Kevin Kirton More specifically, I want to start a grassroots effort, but I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Should I apply to the contributors program? Start a regional group? How? Participate in the IRC chatrooms? Edit the wiki? Any other suggestions/advice? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Miguel Brechner presents Plan Ceibal at TEDxBuenosAires
Hi, I haven't seen this one being mentioned on the mailing-lists and since it's very well worth watching I thought some here might be interested in it as well: TEDxBuenosAires - Miguel Brechner about Plan Ceibal - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWOpCDBuhgsfeature=player_embedded Cheers from Paraguay, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Worst practice in ICT use in education
Hi all, I just rediscovered the Worst practice in ICT use in education entry on the World Bank's EduTech blog and thought that it might be a good reminder for everyone to sometimes take a step back and observe the project(s) we're involved in: http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/worst-practice Cheers, Christoph P.S. I've set myself a monthly reminder to re-read that text on a regular basis;-) -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] Sugar Labs 2010 Goals Review
Am 13.07.2010 21:05, schrieb Bernie Innocenti: (I hope my next statement won't result in a flame-war on hardware) My sense is that iPad-like devices with no physical keyboard may be good for reading books and watching videos, not so good for creating content. Hence, they may not support well the learn-by-doing philosophy that Sugar promotes. Perhaps advancements in touch screen technology, virtual keyboard design and hand-writing recognition will change my mind one day. Presently, the iPad is designed as an accessory for a real computer, and tablets capable of fully replacing a computer are in fact regular laptops with a display that can be rotated 360 degrees, like the XO-1. While I tend to agree with your point of view I'm not sure it matters here. OLPC for one seems very much focused on making the XO-3 tablet form-factor an important aspect of their future portfolio even though Ed McNierney is quoted as saying that they want both the notebook-XOs and tablet-XOs to coexist for a long time (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ciencia_tecnologia/2010/07/100701_0955_laptop_tableta_olpc_mcnierney_entrevista_dc.shtml). In light of this development and assuming that one would want Sugar to run on these XO-3s we should start thinking about how to best utilize this form-factor for the things we want to achieve with Sugar. BTW: who's using the XO-1 in tablet mode? Believe it or not, in 3 years I have *never* seen anyone (adult or child) using it this way. Maybe a touch screen would change everything? The Classmate 3 has a touchscreen. Is it being used in tablet mode? I use the XO in tablet mode quite regularly, especially when reading long articles on Web sites or studying off university slides. But admittedly I've never seen children use it that way though I guess that's mostly due to the fact that the interaction possibilities in tablet mode are severely limited. I'd definitely love to see progress in this area (and would try to contribute where I can) to make the tablet mode more usable, especially seeing that some work here has already been done, e.g. during the Summer of Usability 2008 program (http://season.openusability.org/?p=65). If the educators will not come to Sugar Labs, perhaps Sugar Labs could go where the educators already are. +1, though I would argue that we've seen some progress in this area thanks to the efforts of people like yourself, Daniel, Caroline, Walter, Simon, the SoaS team, etc. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Design] Multiple instances of same activity (Was: First steps with Sugar)
Am 16.06.2010 11:40, schrieb Sean DALY: Keep in mind that this precise functionality is provided by what Gary is describing - a single instance, but multiple documents open, what used to be called MDI (Multiple Document Interface) back in the 90s. Today, this is usually presented as tabs (no pun intended ;-) with focus showing the active tab, possibility of closing a tab wiithout returning to it, rearranging tabs, etc. Perhaps the larger question is how to present multiple windows of the same type of data (text, images) simply to children. Stacked windows versus navigating between windows and so on. Apple faced with a similar problem for the iPhone shows a row of grey dots for each page of app icons, the white dot indicating the active page. A similar representation may be preferable to tabs. This could become complicated in collaboration. Are all open documents in the instance shared? That's indeed an interesting discussion to be had. I think at some point a while ago (I might be wrong though) it was suggested that per default Activities should be shared. I guess such a behavior would then also apply to all within an Activity tabs. (Not that I neccessarily think that sharing be default is a good idea...) Christoph Sean On 6/16/10, Tabitha Roder tabi...@tabitha.net.nz wrote: Has anyone seen good real world cases where allowing multiple instances of the same activity to be run was useful or a vaguely common practice? I use multiple instances all the time. Particularly for comparing things, but also for copying bits out of one and into another. Example 1. write about how you describe yourself 2. write about how your family describe you 3. write about why they might be different You need to see the first two texts to carry out the third part of the exercise. You can have the same requirement for multiple instances in many activities - using a calculator, browsing the internet, drawing pictures, all sorts. What if I create something in phsyics or etoys or scratch, and want to create something else to go with it but want to do it in another place so I don't wreck the first bit, then want to join them both together. I want to build on my first concept in one way and another way, then compare the different paths I took and see which was better. These are valuable to the learning process. I think multiple instances are very important. I have experienced the frustration of low memory issues and would rather have the option to wait for the laptop to recover or even restart the laptop, than not have multiple instances as an option. IMHO. Tabitha ___ 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 -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] First steps with Sugar
Zitat von Werner Westermann werne...@gmail.com: Hello, regards from Santiago. We are beginning a short Sugar pilot deployment in the K-3 level (8-9 years), using Mirabelle SoaS: http://cl.sugarlabs.org/go/Piloto_Florence_Nightingale_Macul We have focused on curricular work, exploring, selecting, prioritizing Sugar activities with the teacher. But we haven't thought of the initial encounter with Sugar. What do you suggest to do in class to get in touch on Sugar?, Any ideas, metaphors that could motivate of the environments, activities, journal, etc?, what activities to work on first?, preferring a exploratory or rather approach at first? 3 weeks ago at the Waveplace schools on St. John we only started with Sugar classes on the second or third day. Things we explored in 10 to 20 minute slices at the beginning of each day (we had 90min after-school sessions at the schools) were: * how to stop Activities + not having too many Activities running at once (since many first time users manage to bring their machines / XOs to a halt by having multiple copies of Activities running, depending on the hardware you're using this might be less of an issue however especially young children can also get confused by multiple instances of the same Activity) * the Journal * the different views (especially the 2 views on the Home View can be very confusing in my experience) combined with collaboration (using Chat as a simple example) * Activity-of-the-day We started each day by asking the children whether they had discovered something particularly interesting by themselves on the previous day. That led to some good discussions and their fellow pupils asking them how to do things. Similarly we asked some children who quickly had a good understanding of things to explain how to do certain things, e.g. the aforementioned collaboration in Chat, to the rest of the class. Last but not least: I've found (both on St. John and at the Austrian pilot project) that having a projector and screen on-hand to demonstrate how to use Sugar and some Activities was tremendously useful. Not sure how well equipped the classrooms you'll be working in are but if there's any chance to use a projector (even if it means having to bring one along every single day) then I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. Hope that helps, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2010-06-10
Am 10.06.2010 19:34, schrieb Walter Bender: ==Sugar Digest== 1. In their humorous treatise on political double-speak, ''Aristotle and an Aardvark go to Washington'', Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein define 'contextomy' as a subtle variation on the straw-man argument where you ''yank'' your victim's words out of context. A straw-man argument attributes an opponent to a position that in fact they do not hold. Contextomy adds the twist that you de-contextualize a quote in order to misstate (or overstate) their position. An example of contextomy is Mark Warschauer's post, ''OLPC: How Not to Run a Laptop Program'' [http://edutechdebate.org/one-laptop-per-child-impact/olpc-how-not-to-run-a-laptop-program/]. The premise of Warschauer's article is that the 'OLPC model' is simply passing out XOs and getting out of children’s way. No planning, no training, no teacher engagement... He goes on to say that this is an ill-advised model that does not work. In the article itself Warchauer never cites evidence that this is in fact the 'OLPC model', but in a comment he refers the reader to the OLPC mission statement as justification for his straw-man argument. Contextomy. I am not aware of any OLPC (or Sugar) deployment that in any way resembles Warshauer's straw man, in the United States or elsewhere. I hate to play devil's advocate here (naaa, not really;-) but one might argue that based on what little we know about OLPC in Peru, arguably the 2nd largest OLPC / Sugar project at the moment, this (simply passing out XOs and getting out of children’s way.) is pretty much exactly what seems to be happening. 2. Carolyn Meeks and I submitted the final report for the Gardner Pilot Academy Sugar-on-a-Stick pilot. Is this report publicly available anywhere? Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2010-06-10
Am 10.06.2010 21:38, schrieb Daniel Drake: On 10 June 2010 16:13, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: I hate to play devil's advocate here (naaa, not really;-) but one might argue that based on what little we know about OLPC in Peru, arguably the 2nd largest OLPC / Sugar project at the moment, this (simply passing out XOs and getting out of children’s way.) is pretty much exactly what seems to be happening. While the deployment info is less public (and less publicized?) than most, and while like any deployment it faces a fair share of challenges and difficulties, it's not like this. Glad to hear you're getting a good hands-on impression down there! :-) Out of curiosity: Which provinces are you visiting? From the information that I've gathered from Oscar Becerra, last year's interns and a researcher who spent several weeks in the Ancash area in 2008 and 2009 the difficulties that the project faces in Peru seem to be quite a bit more extensive than in other countries. Two of the most striking examples I've heard are that it often seems to take up to 3 months for broken XOs to be repaired and that between 2008 and 2009 30% of the teachers in one province dropped out and their replacements didn't receive any XO / Sugar teacher training whatsoever. But then again, I should have a clearer understanding of realities on the ground once I arrive in Lima in early August;-) Christoph, -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Working with a commercial entity.
Am 17.05.2010 19:43, schrieb David Farning: There has been discussion on development processes and a development team lead over the past couple of days. As this discussion moves forward, I would like the community to consider the effects of working with commercial entity. Over the past couple of months I have been exploring business opportunities to promote the adoption and development of Sugar. One of these opportunities is a service and support business for deployments. As such, we are building network of developers to work on deployment specific issues. One consideration is that these deployment specific issues are often boring -- stuff like bug fixes. As such we are paying the developers the going rate rate for developers in their country or region. This brings three advantages: 1. The deployment issues are fixed. 2. These fixes are pushed upstream for inclusion into Sugar. 3. There is a growing pool of skilled developers, with knowledge of how to work with the Sugar community, co-located with deployment Looking back at the many discussions (both in-person and on-list) we had on this topic over the past 24 months it's probably not gonna come as a surprise that I think that this is a good step into the right direction. David, thanks for all your efforts in this area, they're much appreciated! Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Working with a commercial entity.
Am 17.05.2010 23:50, schrieb Jonas Smedegaard: On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 12:43:19PM -0500, David Farning wrote: One consideration is that these deployment specific issues are often boring -- stuff like bug fixes. As such we are paying the developers the going rate rate for developers in their country or region. This brings three advantages: 1. The deployment issues are fixed. 2. These fixes are pushed upstream for inclusion into Sugar. 3. There is a growing pool of skilled developers, with knowledge of how to work with the Sugar community, co-located with deployment Another (quite related) consideration is the risk of discouraging similar volunteer efforts. This brings (at least) two disadvantages: 1. Increasing the gap between developers and users. 2. Encumbering the project with (more) discrete communiction. Luke raised similar concerns during the Sugar Labs Budget discussion last April and I still stick to my reply from back then (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005028.html): Quote from http://mako.cc/writing/funding_volunteers/funding_volunteers.html: Done critically, creatively, and transparently, voluntary free software projects can use money and paid labor to a tremendous benefit that only magnifies their accomplishments. I personally think this is something that Sugar Labs should be aiming for. Also I think it's important to realize there's a difference between paying development and paying developers. As a Sugar user I don't particularly care about who commits the code or writes the documentation as long as the job of fixing bugs and improving and advancing the platform gets done. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Peru, OLPC and Wikipedia
This is indeed a truly amazing video, thanks for sharing! Christoph Am 09.05.2010 19:51, schrieb Chris Ball: http://vimeo.com/8709616 -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Any OLPC / Sugar folks based in Zurich, Geneva or Valencia?
Hi all, I'm currently on the road and will be in the following cities over the next two weeks: Zurich (April 30 - May 4) Bern (lunch on May 4) Geneva (May 4 - May 7) Valencia (May 8 - May 12) If you live in these areas and/or know people there who might be interested in learning more about OLPC and Sugar Labs and play around with an XO-1.5 then please give me a shout so we can meet up (preferably over fondue or tapas;-). Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] maintenance
will have spent most of her time triaging and fixing bugs, and will be trying hard to keep the module in order so that in future releases the maintenance burden doesn't grow too much as new code gets in. An important process in keeping the maintenance burden in check is code review, by which the maintainer checks that the new code that gets in a release won't increase the maintenance burden too much. The problem is that very few people in Sugar Labs are willing to do that maintenance work. We have people keen on packaging Sugar, deploying it, training teachers on it, developing new activities and new Sugar features, people write books about Sugar, setup help lines to support Sugar users, universities are given grants to study the use of Sugar, load machines with it, etc. Big amounts of volunteer time and money are being spent around Sugar but almost nothing is going to maintenance. Paradoxically, any use of Sugar requires that it is reasonably stable and most investments are made with the assumption that Sugar will keep being developed. I also want to make explicit that almost all maintenance effort has come from a few volunteers that are tired and disappointed about the little importance that has been given to this work. We are very close to have no maintainers at all in Sugar, meaning as well that nobody with the needed experience will be around to mentor new maintainers. == Proposal A: Get downstreams working better inside Sugar Labs == I would say that the main reason why so many people are keen in investing on Sugar but so little goes into maintenance is miscommunication. Downstreams don't know how Sugar is developed, who develops it nor what is to gain by investing upstream nor what they risk by not doing so. And we cannot keep sitting on our hands waiting for each of them to have an epiphany. I don't want to give the impression that nobody is doing any of that outreach work, Walter has met with OLPC deployment representatives and has tried to explain it to them, Bernie is volunteering at Paraguay, Gonzalo is working at the OLPC deployment in Argentina and I have traveled to Uruguay to talk about this. But while these individual efforts have had a positive effect by themselves, we still have lots of other downstreams to reach and we also must follow up on those relationships. My hypothesis is that we are losing great opportunities by not having better covered this area. In order to do that, I think SLs should give maximum priority to revive the deployment team: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployment_Team == Proposal B: Get our community thinking about resourcing == If the deployment team was working as it should (with participation of several downstreams), the needs of our users and partners would be voiced there. But it's not enough with voicing needs, it can even be harmful if we make exigences on overworked volunteers because some will burnout and stop contributing. We also need to think about how we can get the resources to address those needs. A community team would be working on improving Sugar Labs' community of doing things. They would be making sure that SLs is a good place for downstreams to work together on Sugar and also a good place for volunteers to give their time and skills. Again, some individuals have been doing pieces of this, but my other hypothesis is that we need a coordinated effort. I find very disappointing that almost zero conversations are held about how to resource what we want to happen. == A concrete plan == So I have voiced needs, but how are we going to resource them? First step is to create the teams and keep them alive. Doing so takes very little time if we stick to the minimum required. A team can be considered alive if it has a coordinator, a members list, regular meetings, a to-do list and an updated mission statement. I estimate that this can take the coordinator less than 10 hours per month. Of course, some team coordinators will also want to lead the team with a stronger effort commitment and will be proposing strategies, starting discussions, inviting members, etc. But that's something that is not strictly required for starting a team. If the team is kept alive, people will come and things will start to happen. So in order to get started, we need to find 2 individuals who care enough about Sugar to devote to it 10 hours per month of their time. It's also ok if the team's first item in the TODO list is to find a new coordinator, no need for a long term commitment. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop
Re: [IAEP] Fedora Summer Coding
Am 09.04.2010 um 08:51 schrieb David Farning dfarn...@gmail.com: It might me worth submitting a few of the SoaS relate GSOC projects to Fedora Summer Coding. [1] If any projects are accepted by FSC, it would leave more GCOS slots open for non-SoaS projects. FSC looks close enough to GSoC that the additional overhead of working with both programs would be minimal. Hi David, thanks for the heads-up and pointers. However looking at the current list of GSoC project proposals I can only find Sebastian's that's related to SoaS, all others seem to be focused on broader Sugar issues anyway:-) Cheers, Christoph ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] FOSS VT presentation
Hi Caroline, this is a gorgeous presentation, definitely one of the very best ones that ever have been done on Sugar! While I can't help with the map of OLPC deployments (AFAIK no current one is available at the time) here's to the best of my knowledge the list of countries with OLPC projects in one form or another (@everyone, please let me know if this needs to be updated!): Afghanistan Austria Bhutan Brazil Cambodia China Colombia Ethiopia Ghana Haiti India Iraq Kazakhstan Lebanon Mali Mexico Mongolia Mozambique Nepal Nicaragua Nigeria Niue Pakistan Palestine Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Russia Rwanda Senegal Solomon Islands South Africa Sri Lanka Thailand United States Uruguay Vietnam Cheers, Christoph Am 08.04.2010 04:53, schrieb Caroline Meeks: I am giving a presentation at FOSS VT on Friday, anything anyone wants me to mention or request to an audience of teachers and school IT people? The draft of my presentation is here: http://prezi.com/ffn2vdg0ylcr/ I'd love a map that helps me talk about the OLPC deployments if anyone has done one. Has anyone done any updates or additional activities slides? Thanks! Caroline -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] FOSS VT presentation
Am 08.04.2010 19:25, schrieb Xander Pirdy: Great presentation... I really like the format. One possible typo that I spotted: Under features it says: Sugar can run on almost any PC. A liveUSB stick not touch the existing hard drive installation. Should read: Sugar can run on almost any PC. A liveUSB stick does not touch the existing hard drive installation. Christoph: Out of curiosity is there somewhere that I could find numbers for those projects aggregated? In general http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments is the place to go for this type of information. Unfortunately the page was outdated for a long time but I've repeatedly pushed some folks at OLPC to get back to updating it regularly. Now looking at the page's history you can see that SJ updated it on March 31st and while the page itself still talks about info being from August or December 2009 (depending on where you look) I would assume that it more or less reflects the current state of things. @SJ: Please let me know if my assumptions here are wrong! :-) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] The Observer article on OLPC in Rwanda
Apart from not mentioning Sugar I think this is a well researched and well written article, definitely one of the best ones I've seen in awhile. Two aspects which I did find quite amusing are the following two comparisons: He hands me one of the computers. A little larger than a box of chocolates... Cavallo flips it over, converting it at once into a games console. Box of chocolates? Game console? How about making the more obvious (and given the context more appropiate seeming) comparison to a book in both cases? ;-) Cheers, Christoph Zitat von Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/28/rwanda-laptop-revolution A well-written article which effectively communicates OLPC's goals in the context of Rwanda's troubled recent hostory. 4-page spread in the print version. However, as is unfortunately often the case with OLPC-F sources, Sugar is given short shrift. Software is mentioned in the print version tech-specs sidebar as Linux-based, and referred to elsewhere as being too slow; and Windows will be available in future, the implication being that would correct something. The writer says: The desktop appears as an unfamiliar cartwheel of programmes represented by child-friendly icons, but there's no exploration of Activities, or what the kids are doing - clearly, the unfamiliarity barrier played a role here, and the absence of the boot logo means the system is unnamed. Sean. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] PLE conference in Barcelona deadline extension
Hi Andrea, thanks a lot for the heads-up, the conference definitely sounds very interesting indeed! I'm almost tempted to submit something just because the organizers seem to be quite open to creative suggestions;-) Maybe some sort of mix of introducing Sugar-on-a-Stick in a Bring your own laptop combined with a discussion on which drivers and barriers there are when it comes to leveraging XOs running Sugar within the context of PLEs. What do you think? Anyone else interested in contributing here? Cheers, Christoph Zitat von Andrea Mangiatordi andrea.mangiato...@gmail.com: Hi everybody, an interesting conference about Personal Learning Environments is going to be held in Barcelona in July [0]. The deadline for submissions was extended to April 9th. As the call for contributions includes the possibility of proposing a Bring Your Own Laptop session, I think it would be great to organize a SoaS demo there, as many experts of educational platforms will be present. I am going to participate with a paper on something which is not directly related with Sugar, but if anybody here was interested in participating I would like to help. Bye, Andrea [0] http://pleconference.citilab.eu/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] PLE conference in Barcelona deadline extension
Zitat von Andrea Mangiatordi andrea.mangiato...@gmail.com: Il 29/03/10 11:09, Christoph Derndorfer ha scritto: Hi Andrea, thanks a lot for the heads-up, the conference definitely sounds very interesting indeed! I'm almost tempted to submit something just because the organizers seem to be quite open to creative suggestions;-) Maybe some sort of mix of introducing Sugar-on-a-Stick in a Bring your own laptop combined with a discussion on which drivers and barriers there are when it comes to leveraging XOs running Sugar within the context of PLEs. What do you think? I had a similar idea in mind. I think we should start writing a proposal together, don't you? We can also tell something about our experiences in Uruguay, Nepal, Peru :) Probably the workshop format is the best for this, with a BYOL session attached. Sounds good to me:-) I'll start a Google Docs document and share it with you right away. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] JTLA Special Edition: Educational Outcomes and Research from 1:1 Computing Setting
Hi all, thanks to an article on eschoolnews.com (http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/02/16/11-programs-only-as-good-as-their-teachers/) I stumbled across a special edition of the Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment (JTLA) which focuses on Educational Outcomes and Research from 1:1 Computing Settings. The six articles are all available as free downloads and while I haven't had time to do more than quickly browse through them they are promising to be interesting (weekend) reads: http://escholarship.bc.edu/jtla/ Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Linuxtag Berlin CfP deadline on January 29!
Just saw that the Linuxtag Berlin folks posted the details for the Call for Papers / Speakers. Please note the deadline is January 29! Details at http://www.linuxtag.org/2010/en/program/call-for-papers.html Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Contributors Program Mtg! (Fri 2PM Boston time, #olpc-meeting)
and time between the photos) that will permit calculating velocity or acceleration. 5. Bookwriting photo-interviewing traveling musician - Sallis, Mississippi/MS, USA http://rt.laptop.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=48800 [ MISSING PUBLIC PAGE OFF OF http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects ] Requests 2 XO's over 6-12 months Project Objectives: The aim of this project is to demonstrate the usefulness of a DIY attitude combined with the capabilities of modern technology that both meets creative desires and maintains a balance and strong connection with humanity and nature. It is an expose, a book, of a person who is just like you, me, or anyone else, with thoughts and feelings and troubles and joys. Only when a person shines the brightest are they the most visible to naked eye. ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Slobs election results 2009
Congratulations to everyone! :-) Christoph David Farning schrieb: The results are in for this years election. The winners are in for this years election. Walter Bender Tomeu Vizoso Mel Chua Bernie Innocenti Chris Ball Sean Daly Adam Holt David Farning Slobs Election Referee 2009 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] European OLPC/Sugar communities @ 26C3?
Hi everyone, I just realized that the deadline for submissions for the 26th Chaos Communication Congress aka 26C3 (https://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/) taking place in Berlin from December 27th to 30th is quickly approaching. In fact there are only 48 hours left (deadline is October 9th, 2009 at Midnight UTC)! So I was wondering whether we should try and set up some (more or less) coordinated effort to represent the European OLPC / Sugar communities there? I am tempted to try and submit a talk on the current state of things of One Laptop per Child and Sugar Labs (since we all know there's still plenty of misconceptions about the projects out there, especially among fellow FLOSS types) with a special focus on what's happening both in European projects and at deployments such as Nepal, Peru, Uruguay, etc. We could/should also organize some kind of community gathering like last year where members from the Austrian, French and German commmunities meet and discussed ideas, did some translation work and showed off the XOs and Sugar to interested individuals. What does everyone think of this idea? Yay? Nay? Dunno? Thanks, Christoph P.S. Sorry for the massive cross-posting but I want to make sure that as many European folks read this as possible. -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar - Not necessarily unhealthy (master thesis at the University of Bremen)
This one just came through via the OLPC Germany mailing list and I thought it's probably of interest to some of you here as well... Sven Bergmann wrote his master thesis at the University of Bremen on the use of XOs and Sugar in primary schools and called the thing Sugar - Not necessarily unhealthy. I haven't had time to read it myself but hope to do so over the weekend, you can find the file for download at http://dimeb.informatik.uni-bremen.de/content/view/567/188/ (and yes, in case you were wondering, it's written in English;-). Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] interviews for community building
Tomeu, thanks for bringing this idea up I again - I wish I had a cent for every time I've discussed such a project with someone. (Then again, I deserve to pay a penalty for never following through...) While I'd love to work on something like this my other commitments realistically won't allow me to do this anytime soon. However I would assume Wayan and Yama (CC'ed) would also be okay with making such an interview a regular feature on olpcnews if that were deemed useful;-) I'd also suggest experimenting with different media, it needn't always be a text interview. After some practice it should be reasonably easy and quick for someone to compile something nice based on a Skype audio or even video call for example. Christoph Tomeu Vizoso schrieb: Hi, from time to time interviews to contributors are published in GNOME-related media. I think this is very useful for achieving a coherent community in which nobody is totally unaware of the activity of other teams/subgroups. In this one a translator interviews another translator with an emphasis on accessibility: http://leonardof.org/2009/08/09/interview-with-brazilian-orca-translator-tiago-casal/en/ I think this is even more relevant for us than for most other FOSS projects because we have a very varied community and we really need to integrate people with very little initial technology knowledge and that have never heard of FOSS. So, do we have anyone with the skills and inclination to start publishing short interviews that reflect how contributors work in our community? Thanks, Tomeu -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Assessment in Karma
Hello Tony, thanks a lot for your comment which is definitely some more great food for thought (on top of Martin's earlier comments). I'll have to spend more time thinking about this issue and, more importantly, talking to the educational folks here at OLE Nepal before I can start to wrap my head around this... Thanks, Christoph fors...@ozonline.com.au schrieb: Hi We mostly assess that which can easily be measured rather than that which relates to the important education outcomes. Lower order skills as defined in Blooms Taxonomy, simple recall, rather than understanding and creating. So far its OK, an understandable response to the realities. We then measure the effectiveness of education by these assessments. Teachers and students then concentrate on the learning which is more easily assessable. From generation to generation we are all embedded in this system and come to believe that that which is assessed is the goal of education. Bad practice is already entrenched in national curricula, does automating bad practice (lower order assessment) mean that it can be done in less time, leaving more time for good practice, or does it further entrench bad practice? That seems to be the central point in this discussion. I don't have an answer, but for me, automating lower order assessments would be a low priority project. Tony On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 3:58 AM, Bryan Berrybr...@olenepal.org wrote: I agree that automatic assessment is no magic cure-all but it does free teachers from a lot of drudgery in grading worksheets. I understand your point, and respect your good intentions. I worry -- quite a bit -- about the outcome however... Teachers should be grading student essays not arithmetic exercises or vocabulary exercises. What I worry is that once we automated arithmetic exercises, they'll focus on that... as you say We especially need automatic assessment for contexts where teachers don't have time to grade homework, like Nepal, India, Pakistan, etc. So they don't have time for either. We automate one, and the fact that we provide easy to get, easy to use grades takes over. They still don't have time for essays. [ The sad thing I find is that they *will* find time to make pretty graphs of the paltry numbers they get. The graphs make the teacher look good and in control. ] I think that Karma is approaching from a much different vantage point than teachers in the developed world do. We are not looking to capture excellence but rather diagnose if kids are having trouble with basic skills and give kids instant feedback rather than make them wait a week to get their graded homework back, if it ever comes back. John Hattie, in pretty developed NZ, has done a lot of work on that exact track (early diagnosis of kids falling behind on basics and instant feedback). Hence Asttle. Maybe I am a luddite and it'll happen anyway. Hmmm. m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] Competitive landscape: Intel Classmate executive blog post re updated software
David and me briefly discussed the use of iTALC on Sugar last week as I was interested in giving it a quick shot to see how it works. Unfortunately the Web site doesn't offer direct downloads for Fedora (though it does for Debian, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Suse and Gentoo - http://italc.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?title=Download) and a quick search only turned up RPMs for Fedora 10. Please also note that according to the Web site the last update happened in May of 2008 so it looks like the project is dormant if not dead. One thing I was also wondering about is how well some of the functionalities would work on a wireless network as on first sight many of them look quite bandwidth intensive. Hope that helps, Christoph Caroline Meeks schrieb: italic looks very interesting! Can it be Sugarized? how does it relate/compare to Show'n'Tell or any other solutions we have in the pipeline to this type need. Thanks! On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:08 AM, David Van Assche dvanass...@gmail.com mailto:dvanass...@gmail.com wrote: This actually looks like a commercial ripoff of iTalc, an opensource app that does exactly what synchronous Eyes does: http://italc.sourceforge.net/ On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at mailto:e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Thanks for the link, definitely an interesting article! Some of the features provided by that SMART Classroom Suite (http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SynchronEyes+Classroom+Management+Software/) would also be very useful additions for Sugar... Cheers, Christoph Sean DALY schrieb: http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2009/08/classmate_pc_as_a_one-to-one_l.php * touchscreen for kids * customized Easybits desktop (Inspirus, removes distractions) * Anmeg Parent Carefree, shuts down Classmate if rules transgressed * theft deterrent * system snapshot manager * ArtRage drawing tool * EverNote for note-taking ___ Marketing mailing list market...@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:market...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com http://www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com mailto:christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Ogden Nash http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/o/ogden_nash.html - The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it's always a cat. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org mailto: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 -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] deployment feedback (was Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11))
Walter Bender schrieb: On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Tomeu Vizoso schrieb: On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 03:39, Raul Gutierrez Segalesr...@rieder.net.py wrote: On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 15:06 -0400, Walter Bender wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! Perhaps a section in Sugar Digest with links to highlights of what went on in deployments during the week? Sounds like a great idea to me. Yes, this is indeed a great idea! In order to implement this idea, I need feedback from the field (Catch-22?) I think bug #1128 Remove Erase and Remove favorite Activity palette entries from Home favorite view (http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1128) is a pretty good example of feedback repeatedly coming from the field (in this case even from 2 or 3 different people and places), being turned into a bug-report, subsequently being discussed (the current stage) and then being fixed in time for the next release. IMHO that is a clear, albeit very simple, demonstration of how things can and potentially (if found acceptable for all participants) should work. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] deployment feedback (was Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11))
Walter Bender schrieb: On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Walter Bender schrieb: On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Christoph Derndorfere0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Tomeu Vizoso schrieb: On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 03:39, Raul Gutierrez Segalesr...@rieder.net.py wrote: On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 15:06 -0400, Walter Bender wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! Perhaps a section in Sugar Digest with links to highlights of what went on in deployments during the week? Sounds like a great idea to me. Yes, this is indeed a great idea! In order to implement this idea, I need feedback from the field (Catch-22?) I think bug #1128 Remove Erase and Remove favorite Activity palette entries from Home favorite view (http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1128) is a pretty good example of feedback repeatedly coming from the field (in this case even from 2 or 3 different people and places), being turned into a bug-report, subsequently being discussed (the current stage) and then being fixed in time for the next release. IMHO that is a clear, albeit very simple, demonstration of how things can and potentially (if found acceptable for all participants) should work. Christoph Agreed. As an activity developer, I've also gotten lots of similar feedback from users and deployments. (Trying to keep up with the flood... but the more requests I get, the easier it is to prioritize.) That's a really good point, we should make it clear that the feedback isn't only important to the underlying Sugar base but especially also to individual activity developers (also in the form of motivation as in wow, a classroom in country x is actually using the code I wrote. cool!:-). I think the example you mentioned last week about using integers instead of floats in TurtleArts is a perfect tale to illustrate that. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] deployment feedback (was Re: [Sugar-devel] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11))
Tomeu Vizoso schrieb: On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 03:39, Raul Gutierrez Segalesr...@rieder.net.py wrote: On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 15:06 -0400, Walter Bender wrote: On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:17 PM, David Van Asschedvanass...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Or are you saying the feedback is getting through and I'm just not seeing it? We all seem to agree that feedback is important. We mostly agree that there is value in feedback from all deployments, big and small. We are currently getting valuable feedback from the field: Sur, the Ceibal blogs, reports from Nepal, Greg's reports from GPA, et al. We need more feedback and therefore we are exploring additional means of getting it. You ideas are welcome! Perhaps a section in Sugar Digest with links to highlights of what went on in deployments during the week? Sounds like a great idea to me. Yes, this is indeed a great idea! Wearing a deployer-hat I must confess that we could (Paraguayan Deployment Team) do a better job filing tickets, giving feedback, etc. Will try to keep discipline from now on :-) This will be great. Also, what if each deployment lists somewhere (wiki?) the 10 bugs that would need fixed first and the 10 new features that need most? Definitely worth a shot. That way a volunteer developer would be able to relate his work to something actually useful somewhere else, as opposed to something that _he_ just thought was a good idea. I think this could be a powerful motivator to get more people involved. My thoughts exactly... :-) Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] Competitive landscape: Intel Classmate executive blog post re updated software
Thanks for the link, definitely an interesting article! Some of the features provided by that SMART Classroom Suite (http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SynchronEyes+Classroom+Management+Software/) would also be very useful additions for Sugar... Cheers, Christoph Sean DALY schrieb: http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2009/08/classmate_pc_as_a_one-to-one_l.php * touchscreen for kids * customized Easybits desktop (Inspirus, removes distractions) * Anmeg Parent Carefree, shuts down Classmate if rules transgressed * theft deterrent * system snapshot manager * ArtRage drawing tool * EverNote for note-taking ___ Marketing mailing list market...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] GPA ain't the world (was: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-08-11)
Sean DALY schrieb: IMHO, close study of small deployments makes them incredibly useful to all teachers and Learners. The observations and take-aways need to be triaged of course, starting with what can/should be done by Sugar Labs, but I am convinced many learnings will benefit large deployments. Until reliable means of sharing experiences and feedback (polls, questionnaires, council of deployers, etc.) can be put in place, microscopic study of a classroom using Sugar is well worth the effort, in particular for revealing blockers. I'm not sure I really agree with this statement... Extrapolating the data and drawing conclusions based on observations in a trial that represents less than 0,01% of all current Sugar installations is a risky endeavor at best and a serious mistake at worst. Even more so when the environment between the trial (in this case GPA) and the global deployments really couldn't be more different in just about every way imaginable (SoaS vs. XO, summer classes vs. regular year-long classes, Boston connectivity vs. Rwanda connectivity, 25 installations in a school vs. 1000 installations in a school, US power infrastructure vs. Nepali power infrastructure, having a team consisting of Walter / Greg / Caroline supporting the efforts vs. being lucky to maybe have a single person who has used a computer before, 25 pupils in a classroom vs. 80 pupils in a classroom, users that were raised in urban North America vs. users who don't have electricity at home, and I could go on...). Yes, some of the findings at GPA will indeed be of a broad and general nature and subsequent actions will benefit all Sugar users. Yes, projects like in Alabama, Austria, the UK and similar places will be able to learn many things from the GPA pilot. But let's not forget that the current million Sugar users and (if the reports are to be believed) also the next million Sugar users are much more likely to be found in Ancash, Kigali or Sichuan rather than Boston, London or Vienna. And I doubt that you'll find too many schools in those places that have a profile similar to GPA [1]. Just my 2 Nepali Rupees, Christoph [1] The Gardner Pilot Academy is the flagship full-service community school within the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The school's vision is to educate the minds and develop the characters of all students in partnership with families and community. To achieve this GPA provides high quality teaching along with a range of social, emotional and enrichment programs delivered by means of partnerships with an array of community organizations and individuals. Over the past twelve years, GPA has developed strong associations with four universities, several health and mental health agencies, the YMCA, and various organizations teaching visual and performing arts. As one of just 20 pilot schools in the BPS, GPA is exempt from district mandates. Therefore, GPA has autonomy in the areas of budget and personnel, along with the freedom to implement innovative curricula, assessments, and interventions. (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Gardner_Pilot_Academy) -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] GPA ain't the world
David Farning schrieb: And yes, Christoph I _am_ holding your writing to a higher standard. Several times, you have described yourself as the voice of the project. David, just for the record: I definitely don't consider myself the voice of Sugar Labs, that's just ludicrous and I can't remember ever making such a claim or acting accordingly. At the best of times I might be a voice of many and in this instance I decided to raise it to draw attention to the larger global picture that we're operating in. Some clearly seem to have understood that intention of my message. To smooth the ruffled feathers let me reiterate that I think we can learn many things from the ongoing efforts at GPA. However we mustn't believe that the findings will always be a representative reflection of the issues faced by the 1,000,000 other Sugar users around the globe. Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] NOW: Contributors Program Mtg! (Fri 2PM Boston time, #olpc-meeting)
Holt schrieb: 3. OLPC Bayern Library - Munich/Munchen, Germany http://rt.laptop.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=45454 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bayern (NEEDS REVISING) Requests 15 XO's over 18 months Project Objectives: Translate the english manuals into a German/understandable version. Examine the look and feel of the laptop and how to provide more useful online help on the laptop for the different target groups (eg. developer, child, teacher, other people...) Test the help and search for improve potential The idea of OLPC is good. To see what potential is possible in technical writer environment we will look on the system and seek to write useful help text for user. Looking at the on-ticket transcript of Friday's CP meeting I can't really figure out what was decided regarding this project... Yes, but only with a mentor? Anyway, I know it's a bit late but personally I'm wondering what the point of having a separate Bayern library is seeing that OLPC Germany already has (a) a library (b) a Web site and (c) generally an established presence in both Germany and Europe. What also strikes me as interesting is that none of the 4 people listed as team participants have been active or contributing to the existing OLPC Germany efforts. Looking at their stated goals they initially also seem to focus on a German translation of the existing documentation and generally documention tasks which doesn't necessarily require a laptop, let alone 15 (!). So IMHO what we should ask for them is why they want to set up a completely new infrastructure instead of collaborating with OLPC Germany and rolling their ideas into a joint project which would have a higher chance of success. Just my 2 Nepali Rupees, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] OLPC / Sugar community in China?
Hi all, I was wondering whether anyone happens to know of any OLPC / Sugar community activity happening in China? Doing a quick Google search revealed that a small deployment by OLPC.Asia was recently started in Sichuan (http://www.olpc.asia/en/2009/06/first-olpc-deployment-in-sichuan-china.html) but other than that I'm not really aware of any activities in the country. Any pointers and help are much appreciated! Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] OLPC / Sugar community in China?
Bastien, thanks a lot for your quick reply and all the information! :-) Enjoy your time in Tokyo, Christoph Bastien schrieb: Hi Christoph, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at writes: I was wondering whether anyone happens to know of any OLPC / Sugar community activity happening in China? I was in China last month and I did a presentation about Sugar (and other stuff) to the Beijing Linux User Group: http://www.slideshare.net/bzg/the-ict-for-education-revolution-hasnt-happened-yet There I met people working on the Gdium, mainly trying to use it as a tool for education in remote areas. They are not using Sugar, they are using mandriva and a selected set of educational applications, but they are interested in trying Sugar. OLPC France plans to continue to work on the Sugar-for-Gdium issue, and perhaps they'll try Sugar in remote chinese areas one day. I also met people from the Beijing Normal University, a university to train teachers' trainers. I presented Sugar to them, and they were very interested. I gave them 2 USB keys with Soas v1, I hope this will start a discussion and maybe some deeper testing in some primary schools. BNU is also running a nice community here: http://sociallearnlab.org, this can be a place where to let teachers know about Sugar. Doing a quick Google search revealed that a small deployment by OLPC.Asia was recently started in Sichuan (http://www.olpc.asia/en/2009/06/first-olpc-deployment-in-sichuan-china.html) but other than that I'm not really aware of any activities in the country. I didn't know about this, but I will forward this to the people I know in China, thanks! Any pointers and help are much appreciated! HTH, -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] (engineering) capacity building
Bastien schrieb: Sugar should engage developers in *learning* rather than give them the impression the number of pre-requisites is high. IMHO having a more self-contained documentation could help. I totally agree. Having such a self-contained documentation is also the reason why OLPC Austria started writing the Activity Handbook in late 2007 and it was also the motivation for the original Sugar Almanac by Faisal Anwar. On the topic of job listings I think we need to enforce some kind of template of how these are listed. When I look at the open tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk I can quickly and easily search and browse for things that might be of interest to me. That's currently not the case on sugarlabs.org (and laptop.org never managed to get it right either). So as a first step a took the liberty to copy-paste from the feature template and create a quick'n'dirty Task template at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:ChristophD/Tasks/Task_Template Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Cleaning up 0.86 Roadmap page
Simon Schampijer schrieb: ==Avoid surplus Activity launching== Don't let the user keep opening activities until the machine crashes or is driven to its knees. Make it less likely that a user who is impatient will end up opening multiple copies of an activity. * Priority C for GPA The process for proposing a feature is described at: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Policy#Starting_the_process Caroline, while waiting for a download to finish I started a page at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Avoid_surplus_Activity_launching, could you help me flesh out the details? Thanks, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
