[IAEP] Reflections on giving a Sugar Demo
I wanted to thank Caroline and Walter for doing the presentation at FOSSed. Caroline was very generous with her time and we had many questions! The level of remote support was very impressive. Despite some of the roadblocks encountered during the presentation, I left the conference with enough understanding and software to get a classroom using Sugar. The demo done as we were trying to boot up was helpful. An orientation prior to that would also have been helpful. Laura Johns Middle School Math&Science Penobscot ME la...@penobscotschool.org Begin forwarded message: From: Caroline Meeks Date: June 26, 2009 8:19:11 PM EDT To: iaep Subject: [IAEP] Reflections on giving a Sugar Demo First off it went well. The teacher's loved Sugar, saw a lot of possibilities and are motivated to help us go forward. People talked with me about it the entire conference. That said, I learned a lot of lessons and there are things I would do differently. Always bring an AP. Don't use existing wireless. When I tested before class the wireless seemed great. We packed the room. The wireless network got very flacky. Next time I'm going to bring an AP and just try to collaborate locally. I'm thinking of getting one of the open-mesh $29.00 units and seeing how that works. Either get USB sticks to boot OR teach about Sugar, don't try to do both at once. The class was packed and although most of the computers finally booted to sugar it took a lot of time. Until we really get things down I think I'm going to hand out LiveCDs then after wards tell people I'll work with them one-on-one to get it to boot from USB. We need to create a list of Sugar Basics that we cover before we turn people loose to explore. This is the Home Screen. This icon represents you and its your colors Here is how you get to the frame. This is the Neighborhood view. You can get there from the frame or from F1. Here is how you connect to the AP. More color in the circle means stronger signal (Someone told me that he thought he should go for the empty ones cause it meant they had more room) This the your group view. Your friends will show up here. This is the Journal where your work is saved. To do something go to your Home screen and click on any of these icons. They are the activities. We didn't do this and people got frustrated needlessly. We want them to explore but I think we need to figure out what people need to oriented too before they explore. I wonder if showing the demo movie would have been a good way to cover this. We didn't get to the lesson plan I created because we had so many people and so many problems booting. Luckily Walter can do a Sugar and Turtle Art presentation in his sleep. One thing we should have done, and would have gotten to if we had been able to follow our plan, is to demo Write and peer editing. This is a big deal for teachers. We need to remember to do it early in the presentation, before we get sucked into playing with the cute turtle. -- 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 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Trouble With Helper CD
Problem resolved. Removed battery and forced a restart to the hard drive. Laura Johns la...@penobscotschool.org On Jun 28, 2009, at 11:42 AM, Walter Bender wrote: > Anyone have a clue what this could be about? (I know nothing at all > about Macs.) > > -walter > > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: > Date: Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 10:35 AM > Subject: [IAEP] Trouble With Helper CD > To: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org > Cc: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org > > > I am running a Mac Book with OS 10.5.6. I tried using the Helper CD > and SoaS stick distributed at the FOSSed conference. Following the > wiki directions, the Helper CD booted up then required a decision > about booting options. After choosing the "boot" my machine locked up. > > When I restarted my machine, it did not recognize my boot drive. I can > no longer get into OS X. Before I reimage my machine any suggestions? > ___ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > > > > -- > Walter Bender > Sugar Labs > http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar on Wireless
The idea of running Sugar on the local network is very appealing. The idea of setting up a server is a pretty daunting prospect. Can I do it? Would I be allowed to do it? etc.. I would have 16 students max running Sugar but there could be another 16 or so in the next classroom. Hmm... I have Sugar on three Macbooks. I removed the sugar labs server address from all three and verified that I could get on the internet. I could not see the other Mac books. Next, I created my own network, got all three Macbooks on the network. Nothing. I verified the network by turning on internet sharing. Still nothing. On Jun 25, 2009, at 4:40 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: > Caroline Meeks wrote: >> What can she do for a Jabber server. > > Does she need one? Sugar has serverless collaboration that works very > well... as long as there isn't too much collaboration traffic for the > network to handle. The maximum number of students seems to vary > between > 20 and 40, depending on wireless network hardware, physical classroom > layout, RF environment, etc. The limits are probably much higher for > wired networks. > > In other words, if she is only working with one classroom, she > probably > doesn't need a server. If the laptops are plugged into a wired > network, > then a server is even less likely to be necessary. > > If a server is necessary... that's trickier. Setting up a server is > a lot > of work. Personally, I think "XS as a service" would be a great > business > for some enterprising company (or even Sugar Labs itself, though that > seems less likely these days), and a free taster limited to 30 > students > per school might be just the way to get started. > > --Ben > ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
