[IAEP] Fwd: Videos from OLPC-SF may meeting

[Sameer Verma]

-- Forwarded message --
From: Sameer Verma 
Date: Sun, May 16, 2010 at 9:02 AM
Subject: Videos from OLPC-SF may meeting
To: OLPC SF 


Videos from yesterday's meeting:

Carol Ruth Silver on OLPC -related efforts in Afghanistan and Nepal:
http://qik.com/video/6688327 and http://qik.com/video/6689320
Cherry Withers on OLPC micro-deployment in Lubang, the Philippines:
http://qik.com/video/6690657
Sameer Verma on OLPC micro-deployment near Hyderabad, India:
http://qik.com/video/6691942

cheers,
Sameer
--
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Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Campus Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Peru, OLPC and Wikipedia

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 12:39 PM, Martin Langhoff
 wrote:
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:49 PM,   wrote:
>> the interviewed social Darwinist is Robert Wright, the author of  Nonzero
>> http://www.nonzero.org/
>>
>> The filmmaker is Righteous Pictures http://righteouspictures.com/
>>
>> Wright seems to believe that there is a higher purpose to biological
>> and social evolution, that in some way, we will be fulfilling our
>> destiny if we become one globalised culture.
>
> When I watched the videos, I did get a similar feeling of concern. And
> Robert Wright's answers can be read as neo-social-darwinist. But note
> the "can be read"... I am not sure if he is actually darwinist;
> reading his book right after reading Guns, Germs and Steel may lead to
> a completely different perspective.
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> 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
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>

I didn't quite see the concern the same way as some others did. That's
perhaps because I'm not a trained anthropologist :-)

I do see a trail, in my own life, of changing cultures as I moved all
through my life. My family comes from Varanasi in northern India, but
I grew up in Hyderabad, in south-central India. Varanasi and Hyderabad
are perhaps more distant culturally than Hyderabad and SF Bay Area
these days. The move did not force me to shed cultural icons and
language. Sure, I don't speak Bhojpuri, like my parents did (although
I follow it), but I picked up Telugu, in Hyderabad. Moving from
Hyderabad to Atlanta was another shift in ideas, etc. and I gained a
few more things. Atlanta to SF was also culturally different (the
southerners in Atlanta thought Californians were weird and vice
versa).

All through this journey, I don't feel like I've lost much. Its all
still embedded somewhere. I can still relate to biryani (HYD), grits
(ATL), and cioppino (SF) quite well. While I haven't read "Nonzero" as
yet, looking at the summary, it indicates to the concept of zero sum
game (vs non-zero) from game theory. Although my observations are a
sample of 1, I'd argue that we don't really shed one set to gain
another. Instead we absorb all that we can.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Campus Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Peru, OLPC and Wikipedia

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Cherry Withers  wrote:
> Excellent. Thank you for sharing this. Looking forward for more.
>
> On May 9, 2010 10:54 AM, "Chris Ball"  wrote:
>
> http://vimeo.com/8709616
>
> --
> Chris Ball   
> One Laptop Per Child
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A confession. I saw all this video last night, and I don't know
why...maybe it was a long day...but I found tears streaming down my
face when I saw the classroom scene with the kids (4:14). Very
touching. Thank you for sharing.

cheers,
Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Girls in Open Source

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 7:22 PM, Caryl Bigenho  wrote:
> Oops! I forgot the link:
>
> http://www.mercurynews.com/mike-cassidy/ci_14478986
>
> 
> From: cbige...@hotmail.com
> To: support-g...@laptop.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:20:55 -0800
> Subject: [IAEP] Girls in Open Source
>
> Hi All...
>
> Check this out!  I found the link on Twitter.
>
> I missed the girls session as I was involved in the OSSIE track and they
> were in the WIOS track.
>
> Caryl
>
> ___
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> support-g...@lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang
>
>

Yup! Larry Cafiero and Karsten Wade's girls. Very cool indeed.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Campus Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Announcing the OLPC OS 10.1.0 final release!

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 10:48 PM, Chris Ball  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm very pleased to announce build os64 as the final 10.1.0 release
> build for XO-1.5 laptops.  Here are its release notes:
>
>   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.0
>
> Instructions for installing the release on an XO-1.5 can be found at:
>
>   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.0#Installation
>
> Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this release!
>
> - Chris.
> --
> Chris Ball   
> One Laptop Per Child
>
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> fedora-olpc-l...@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list
>


Hearty congratulations!!!

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] sounds in Speak

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:54 PM, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:

> On Monday 14 December 2009 09:00:23 pm Aleksey Lim wrote:
> > > Hello everybody,
> > >
> > > This afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a Montessori
> > > teacher, about Speak. She asked me why Speak says "a" when "a" is
> pressed
> > > and not the sound of the letter "a". Montessori teachers teach the
> shape
> > > and sound of letters first, and then the name of the alphabet. I did
> not
> > > have an answer for her, but I wondered if it would be possible to have
> an
> > > option in Speak to do so.
> >
> > not sure it could be done in existed Speak(it just passes string to
> > speak engine). But it could separate activity or mode in Speak which
> > teaches alphabet.
> Isn't Speak an overkill for such basic lessons?
>
> Montessori teachers would find Scratch or EToys useful for such exercises.
> They
> can prepare a list of words and record their associated 'a' sounds. Script
> word objects to respond with the appropriate sound when letter 'a' is
> dropped
> on them (or the 'a' key is pressed with the mouse hovering over a word) .
> This
> puts more control on the quality of pronunciation in the hands of teachers.
>
> Subbu
>

The concern was more along the lines of "It will confuse our students
because we teach them phonetically" as opposed to anything else.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
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Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] an interesting article on an article on learning styles...

[Sameer Verma]

Almost certainly, you were told that your instruction should match your
students' styles. For example, kinesthetic learners—students who learn best
through hands-on activities—are said to do better in classes that feature
plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse.
Now four psychologists argue that you were told wrong. There is no strong
scientific evidence to support the "matching" idea, they contend in a paper
published this 
week<http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/index.cfm?journal=pspi&content=pspi/9_3>in
*Psychological Science in the Public Interest. *And there is absolutely no
reason for professors to adopt it in the classroom.

http://chronicle.com/article/Matching-Teaching-Style-to/49497/

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
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Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] OLPC-SF Community Summit 2009: Schedule is up!

[Sameer Verma]

http://tinyurl.com/olpcsf-summit Nov 21, 2009 in San Francisco.

Line-up of topics and presenters/facilitators is now up at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea/OLPCSF_Community_Summit_2009#Presenters_and_Facilitators

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
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Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] OLPC SF Summit

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Edward Cherlin  wrote:
>> I would be happy to.
>>
>
> Excellent! Can we combine this with your session on python in schools,
> or should we do these separately? Most tech session are in the PM, so
> I'll book a slot in the afternoon.
>
> Sameer
>

I'll see if I can double up with you and do a Sugar via LTSP demo.
--
Sameer

>> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:33, Sameer Verma  wrote:
>>> We are looking for someone in the SF bay area to run a session on
>>> Sugar and/or Sugar on a Stick at the upcoming OLPC-SF Community Summit
>>> (http://tinyurl.com/olpcsf-summit). Anyone interested? Any pointers?
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Sameer
>>> --
>>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>>> Associate Professor, Information Systems
>>> Director, Center for Business Solutions
>>> San Francisco State University
>>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>>> http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
>>> http://is.sfsu.edu/
>>> ___
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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/
>>
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Re: [IAEP] OLPC SF Summit

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Edward Cherlin  wrote:
> I would be happy to.
>

Excellent! Can we combine this with your session on python in schools,
or should we do these separately? Most tech session are in the PM, so
I'll book a slot in the afternoon.

Sameer

> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:33, Sameer Verma  wrote:
>> We are looking for someone in the SF bay area to run a session on
>> Sugar and/or Sugar on a Stick at the upcoming OLPC-SF Community Summit
>> (http://tinyurl.com/olpcsf-summit). Anyone interested? Any pointers?
>>
>> cheers,
>> Sameer
>> --
>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor, Information Systems
>> Director, Center for Business Solutions
>> San Francisco State University
>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>> http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
>> http://is.sfsu.edu/
>> ___
>> 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/
>
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[IAEP] OLPC SF Summit

[Sameer Verma]

We are looking for someone in the SF bay area to run a session on
Sugar and/or Sugar on a Stick at the upcoming OLPC-SF Community Summit
(http://tinyurl.com/olpcsf-summit). Anyone interested? Any pointers?

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Fwd: Sugar Digest 2009-11-02

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Farning  wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:28 AM, Walter Bender  wrote:
>> I think there are more "recommended" activities than fit at any one
>> time. They are chosen randomly from the list. As to how the list is
>> compiled, I do not know, but I believe that Etoys is already a
>> recommended activity. I'll double-check.
>
> Currently there is not a formal "recommended" policy.  Basically,
> whenever I see a cool new activity I add it to the recommend list and
> remove an activity that has been around for awhile.  I think Aleksey
> does the same.
>
> If anyone would like to create and maintain more formal "recommended"
> list it is very easy to create an activities.sl.o editor's account for
> them.
>
> david
>

I had written about this a long time ago. My approach was to rank
activities based on a list of attributes (weighted scoring). The
activities with the highest attributes would be the ones installed.
The same approach could be used for "Recommended" activities. The
thread is at 
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2008-September/000707.html
. The GoogleDocs spreadsheet is at
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p_Xhb6KcXLyEViA50CnCaDg&hl=en

Sameer

>> -walter
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Rita Freudenberg  
>> wrote:
>>> Walter Bender wrote:

 5. Thanks to the efforts of Josh Williams, Aleksey Lim, and David
 Farning, the new http://activities.sugarlabs.org site went on-line
 over the weekend. The new look is clean and also in compliance with
 Mozilla copy



>>>
>>> I would like to know how the activities on the starting page are chosen.
>>> What does it require from an activity to be "recommended"?
>>> My question is not just out of curiosity, I would like to see Etoys there.
>>> So I would like to know if we could do anything to be considered a
>>> recommended activity?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Rita


>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Rita Freudenberg
>>> Squeakland Foundation
>>> http://www.squeakland.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [IAEP] 'apt-get install sugar-platform' available for Ubuntu9.10.

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Gerald Ardito  wrote:
> I also had a strange problem, which I replicated (sadly :)).
>
> When I launched Sugar for the first time (and I had the same Browse problem)
> and then closed it, I could use the track pad and keyboards, but the mouse
> clickers wouldn't work. Removing Sugar did not fix the problem. Both times,
> I had to reinstall Ubuntu.
>
> I am working on a Dell Latitude 2100. Everything else I have tried with
> Ubuntu has worked fine.
>
> For what it's worth.
> Gerald
>

Browse doesn't load for me as well. When I use TurtleArt, it works
fine, but upon exiting, it throws me out to GDM. Looks like we still
have some X issues.

Where do we report bugs?
--
Sameer

> On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Dave Bauer  wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 8:02 PM, Ryan Kabir  wrote:
>> > For what it's worth - the install worked fine for me.
>> >
>> > Browse doesn't want to load, but I figure that's probably an issue on my
>> > part.
>>
>> I can confirm browse does not work for me either. I tried on 9.10 beta
>> and a 9.10 final new install.
>> I have not had a chance to collect the logs but I'll be doing that.
>>
>> Dave
>> >
>> > Awesome! Great work!
>> >
>> > Ryan.
>> >
>> > On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Edward Cherlin 
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 14:34, Grant Bowman  wrote:
>> >> > You may have some other sources in your /etc/apt/source.list file
>> >> > that
>> >> > are conflicting.  I've got David's packages installed and running
>> >> > without those errors.  I saw errors like that were from the older
>> >> > packages.
>> >>
>> >> I removed the old ppa repositories beforehand.
>> >>
>> >> > I don't think David's packages uninstall or conflict with the older
>> >> > packages yet to make the upgrade as seamless as it soon will be.  You
>> >> > can try remove all the older sugar packages.  To find the older
>> >> > packages try `dpkg -l | egrep sugar` and then apt-get remove the old
>> >> > ones before installing the new ones.
>> >>
>> >> I did that before installing. I still have the conflict.
>> >>
>> >> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of sugar-platform:
>> >>  sugar-platform depends on olpcsound; however:
>> >>  Package olpcsound is not installed.
>> >> dpkg: error processing sugar-platform (--configure):
>> >>  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
>> >>
>> >> I tried the alternate command
>> >>
>> >> python /usr/bin/sugar-session &
>> >>
>> >> which produces an almost usable Sugar session, with lots of missing
>> >> icons.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> [1] 4997
>> >> moku...@mokurai-laptop:~$
>> >> ** (sugar-session:4997): WARNING **: Trying to register gtype
>> >> 'WnckWindowState' as flags when in fact it is of type 'GEnum'
>> >>
>> >> ** (sugar-session:4997): WARNING **: Trying to register gtype
>> >> 'WnckWindowActions' as flags when in fact it is of type 'GEnum'
>> >>
>> >> ** (sugar-session:4997): WARNING **: Trying to register gtype
>> >> 'WnckWindowMoveResizeMask' as flags when in fact it is of type 'GEnum'
>> >>
>> >> > Grant Bowman
>> >> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CaliforniaTeam
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Edward Cherlin 
>> >> > wrote:
>> >> >> There seems to be something missing in the repository, or perhaps
>> >> >> something else is wrong.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> python-sugar-toolkit-0.86:
>> >> >>  Depends: python-sugar-0.86  but it is not installable
>> >> >>  Recommends: sugar-0.86  but it is not installable
>> >> >>  Recommends: python-carquinyol-0.86  but it is not installable
>> >> >>  Recommends: sugar-presence-service-0.86  but it is not installable
>> >> >>  Recommends: python-jarabe-0.86  but it is not installable
>> >> >>
>> >> >> This is named -0.86, but the version listed is 0.85.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Leaving that out, and installing the rest,
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Errors were encountered while processing:
>> >> >>  sugar-platform
>> >> >>
>> >> >> E: /var/cache/apt/archives/olpcsound_1%3a5.10.90-1~ppa2_amd64.deb:
>> >> >> trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/libcsnd.so.5.2', which is also in
>> >> >> package libcsnd5.2 1
>> >> >>
>> >> >> This is a broken dependency sugar-platform-->olpcsound-->libcsnd5.2
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Then when I try sugar-emulator, Xephyr starts, but not Sugar.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> sugar-emulator
>> >> >> [dix] Could not init font path element
>> >> >> /usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic,
>> >> >> removing from list!
>> >> >> [config/dbus] couldn't take over org.x.config:
>> >> >> org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied (Connection ":1.79" is not
>> >> >> allowed to own the service "org.x.config.display101" due to security
>> >> >> policies in the configuration file)
>> >> >> unrecognised device identifier!
>> >> >> (EE) config/hal: NewInputDeviceRequest failed (2)
>> >> >> unrecognised device identifier!
>> >> >> (EE) config/hal: NewInputDeviceRequest failed (2)
>> >> >> unrecognised device identifier!
>> >> >> (EE) config/hal: NewInputDeviceRequest failed (2)
>> >> >> unrecognised devic

Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] (Please read) Re: Proposed Trac - > Launchpad migration

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Chris Ball  wrote:
> Dear Sugar folks,
>
> This mail didn't get any replies, but it's important to know whether
> people agree with it before going ahead.  So, please understand that:
>
> * bugs.sugarlabs.org is moving from Trac to Launchpad.
> * Existing bug data will be imported, but the bug numbers won't be the
>  same.
> * It will be hosted by Canonical externally, rather than by SL as Trac
>  currently is.
>
> If any of these are not to your liking, the time to speak up is now,
> before it all happens.  :)
>
> Thanks for reading,
>
> - Chris.
> --
> Chris Ball   
> One Laptop Per Child
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What's the reason for this migration?
--
Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] 'apt-get install sugar-platform' available for Ubuntu9.10.

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 4:11 PM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:50 PM, David Farning  wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:29 AM,   wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>> After a couple of weeks of reading tutorials, help from Aleksey, and
>>>> some Ubuntu developers there are Sugar packages available for Ubuntu
>>>> 9.10.
>>>
>>> Thank you for your work. After some testing, I wrote a small blog-entry with
>>> some screenshots on OLPC France's blog, here:
>>>
>>> http://olpc-france.org/blog/2009/10/un-cartable-numerique-pur-sucre/
>>>
>>> The Ubuntu variant used ist UNR 9.10.
>>>
>> Thanks Samy,
>> We have been struggling on the Ubuntu side of the project for awhile.
>>
>> A couple of people have already expressed interest in helping out!  I
>> am hoping that the Ubuntu-SugarTeam can holding some informal
>> packaging Sugar for Ubuntu classes next week.  As a project Ubuntu has
>> a lot (too much) packaging information available.  If we can sort out
>> the important stuff, it shouldn't take too long to get some more
>> packagers on board.
>>
>> david
>> ___
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>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
> Trying to install sugar-platform in Ubuntu 9.10 leads to  a dependency 
> problem.
>
> sudo apt-get install sugar-platform
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
> or been moved out of Incoming.
> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
>
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>  sugar-platform: Depends: sugar-fructose (>= 0.86.2) but it is not
> going to be installed
> E: Broken packages
>
>
> Sameer
>

Running a simulated install of "sugar" leads to this:

sudo apt-get -s install sugar
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libblas3gf libgfortran3 libhippocanvas-1-0 liblapack3gf
python-decorator python-hippocanvas python-numpy python-wnck
python-xklavier sugar-artwork sugar-base sugar-datastore
  sugar-presence-service sugar-toolkit xserver-xephyr
Suggested packages:
  python-numpy-doc python-numpy-dbg python-nose
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libblas3gf libgfortran3 libhippocanvas-1-0 liblapack3gf
python-decorator python-hippocanvas python-numpy python-wnck
python-xklavier sugar sugar-artwork sugar-base
  sugar-datastore sugar-presence-service sugar-toolkit xserver-xephyr
0 upgraded, 16 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Inst libgfortran3 (4.4.1-4ubuntu8 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst libblas3gf (1.2-2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst liblapack3gf (3.2.1-1 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst python-decorator (3.0.0-1 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst python-numpy (1:1.3.0-3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst python-wnck (2.28.0-0ubuntu1 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst python-xklavier (1:0.2-1~ppa2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst sugar-base (1:0.86.0-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst sugar-artwork (1:0.86.0-1~ppa4 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst sugar-datastore (1:0.86.1-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst libhippocanvas-1-0 (1:0.3.0-1~ppa2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst python-hippocanvas (1:0.3.0-1~ppa2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst sugar-presence-service (1:0.86.0-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst sugar-toolkit (1:0.86.1-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst xserver-xephyr (2:1.6.4-2ubuntu4 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Inst sugar (1:0.86.2-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf libgfortran3 (4.4.1-4ubuntu8 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf libblas3gf (1.2-2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf liblapack3gf (3.2.1-1 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf python-decorator (3.0.0-1 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf python-numpy (1:1.3.0-3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf python-wnck (2.28.0-0ubuntu1 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf python-xklavier (1:0.2-1~ppa2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf sugar-base (1:0.86.0-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf sugar-artwork (1:0.86.0-1~ppa4 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf sugar-datastore (1:0.86.1-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf libhippocanvas-1-0 (1:0.3.0-1~ppa2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf python-hippocanvas (1:0.3.0-1~ppa2 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf sugar-presence-service (1:0.86.0-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf sugar-toolkit (1:0.86.1-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf xserver-xephyr (2:1.6.4-2ubuntu4 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)
Conf sugar (1:0.86.2-1~ppa3 Ubuntu:9.10/karmic)


Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] 'apt-get install sugar-platform' available for Ubuntu9.10.

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:50 PM, David Farning  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:29 AM,   wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>> After a couple of weeks of reading tutorials, help from Aleksey, and
>>> some Ubuntu developers there are Sugar packages available for Ubuntu
>>> 9.10.
>>
>> Thank you for your work. After some testing, I wrote a small blog-entry with
>> some screenshots on OLPC France's blog, here:
>>
>> http://olpc-france.org/blog/2009/10/un-cartable-numerique-pur-sucre/
>>
>> The Ubuntu variant used ist UNR 9.10.
>>
> Thanks Samy,
> We have been struggling on the Ubuntu side of the project for awhile.
>
> A couple of people have already expressed interest in helping out!  I
> am hoping that the Ubuntu-SugarTeam can holding some informal
> packaging Sugar for Ubuntu classes next week.  As a project Ubuntu has
> a lot (too much) packaging information available.  If we can sort out
> the important stuff, it shouldn't take too long to get some more
> packagers on board.
>
> david
> ___
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> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>

Trying to install sugar-platform in Ubuntu 9.10 leads to  a dependency problem.

sudo apt-get install sugar-platform
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  sugar-platform: Depends: sugar-fructose (>= 0.86.2) but it is not
going to be installed
E: Broken packages


Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] voip.sugarlabs.org

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Bernie Innocenti  wrote:
> A few months ago, I've set up a VOIP box based on Trixbox
> (<http://www.trixbox.org/>) with the goal of providing conference rooms
> for the Sugar community, especially the less geeky teams.
>
> Since then, this VM has been sitting idle on bender (and later on
> treehouse), waiting for me to find some time to finish testing it and
> transition it into production.
>
> Would anyone want to take over and complete the work form here? I know
> Trixbox very well because I've used it in production for 3-4 years in
> Italy. It used to be a bit messy and kludgy, but very reliable and
> feature-complete.
>
> The ideal candidate for this job would would have strong background on
> Asterisk and PBX-side SIP in general, but enthusiasm for this technology
> can certainly compensate lack of experience. I can offer guidance on IRC
> and via VOIP (when it works).
>
> Anyone interested please send your resume to syst...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> complete with your IRC contact information. Pay: $0.00/h non-negotiable.
> Benefits: free VOIP and shell access on prestigious server, work with
> dynamic team in a professionally stimulating environment, help save the
> world, and all that.
>
> --
>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
>
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>

Hi Bernie,
What's the purpose of this VoIP box?

Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] Photos From Audubon MS Project

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 3:09 AM, Gerald Ardito  wrote:
> Caryl,
>
> Thanks for sharing these pictures.
> Can you share more details about this project, like:
> How many XOs are there?
> How many students?
> Which grades/age groups?
> How were the teachers/students trained?
>

Maybe start a wiki page about this school and put details there.

Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] Audubon MS Photos

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:56 AM, Caryl Bigenho  wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have posted some photos from the Contributors Program project at the FAMLI
> (Foundation for Arts, Mentoring, Leadership and Innovation) after school
> program at Audubon Middle School in south central Los Angeles on my FaceBook
> account. If you have access, you might want to check them out!
>
> I am having problems with Flickr and general exporting for uploading to the
> wiki so it may be a few days before you will see them there.
>
> Caryl
>
>
>
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>

Caryl,

Facebook provides a link to photo albums accessible without a Facebook
login. Look at the bottom of your album page and post it!

Sameer
-- 
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Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Montessori madness...

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Gerald Ardito  wrote:
> I wanted to add something to this conversation.
> I am a public middle school science teacher, and, as some of you know, the
> technology facilitator in my building working with our 5th grade students
> and teachers with a set of 150 XOs.
> I am sympathetic to the thread of this conversation about Montessori
> schools. "Small classes and passionate teachers," somebody said. I think
> that this does a disservice to the passionate teachers in all kinds of
> settings (and I work with very passionate teachers). I spend much of my
> non-teaching time with teachers who are very interested in transforming
> education. They have real demands (state and federal assessments, for
> example) along with student needs, parent expectations and demands, etc. But
> this does not make them less patient.
> I believe that transformation takes place in situ. It does not wait for (or
> need) an ideal situation.
>
> My point is that I think that Sugar with and without the XOs has an enormous
> possibility of empowering children AND their teachers to do great things.
>
> Best,
> Gerald
>

This I agree with. I think Sugar itself provides transport to children
and teachers, while the XO acts as a Pinzgauer/Unimog in tough
environs (I have an unhealthy desire for machines). It has to be
supporting of the current method, while acting to facilitate the
change. Most public school environments (including public higher ed)
doesn't have the leeway to switch methods overnight.

In my opinion, Montessori is an example of what can be done outside of
the usual model of schools, but is subject to the constraints of size
and manageability. A school (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bhagmalpur)
that I work with in India has 1100+ kids in 8 grades, managed by
teachers who are a few shades away from shepherds, with little formal
training. ...they naturally gravitate to bamboo canes (interestingly,
so did my Catholic school teachers/nuns, but that's another post).

I wouldn't dream of "teaching" them the Montessori method in its
entirety, but just a few hours with two XOs revealed a spark in their
eyes, which I take to be hope for something better than whipping
non-conforming kids.

Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] Montessori madness...

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Martin Langhoff
 wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
>> I've been reading "Montessori Madness" for a few hours now, and I find
>
> Another good one is "Montessori Today"
> http://www.amazon.com/Montessori-Today-Comprehensive-Education-Adulthood/dp/080521061X
>
> The funny thing is that since I've been exposed to Bryan Berry's
> poignant "theory" of education, I can't help looking at Montessori and
> thinking that it is excellent, but not because Montessori's approach
> and materials are inherently better.
>
> It is excellent because
>
>  - Montessori teachers are teachers who are clearly smart and
> passionate about education, and the school environment (principals,
> etc) share the smarts and the passion.
>
>  - Parents sending kids to a Montessori school are smart and
> passionate about education.
>
>  - The group of kids is small and manageable, so the smart and
> passionate teachers can work their magic.
>
> And that wins. They could teach with computers, or abacuses or post it
> notes or books written in Esperanto. It's all a catalyst that brings
> the 3 (purely human!) elements above together. Indirection. A social
> mind trick.
>
> Of course, I like most of Montessori's approach. But remove the human
> elements and... poof! it's effects will be gone. Montessori strategies
> in a crowded group with an unenthusiastic teacher have very slim
> chances.
>

Indeed. My kid goes to a Montessori (which is why I was reading this
book) but we've seen several M schools around here, where an
indifferent teacher destroys the environment. It reverts to a Pink
Floyd'ish assembly-line of faceless students processed into pink
filler meat (Cue 4:21 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VUhoD3vM9Q).
Interestingly, my current discussions with them are about the
introduction of Sugar in that environment (after-school sessions,
maybe) but they think the kids are too young. They would like for the
kids to be 5 at least...

> Bryan, you need to postulate your theory more formally :-)
>

Or, become a Maria incarnate...I'm sure a born-again Montessori will
get you tremendous following ;-)

cheers,
Sameer
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[IAEP] Montessori madness...

[Sameer Verma]

I've been reading "Montessori Madness" for a few hours now, and I find
that it has interesting parallels with some of the discussions here
(and in other related forums). http://www.montessorimadness.com/ The
site has an excerpt pdf.

Thought I'd pass it along.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] Schools kill creativity...

[Sameer Verma]

In my typical Friday afternoon TED Talk overindulgence, I came across
this one. Its hilarious and informative. It also talks to some of the
things we've argued about in this project.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Fwd: w7sins FUD

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> Thanks to all who made the FSF change this.
>
> - Bert -

+1

Sameer

> On 02.09.2009, at 08:14, Bill Kerr wrote:
>
>> Yes the new paragraph is more reasonable:
>>
>> Microsoft is now targeting governments who are purchasing XOs, in an
>> attempt to get them to replace the free software with Windows. It
>> remains to be seen to what degree Microsoft will succeed. But with
>> all of this pressure, Microsoft has harmed a project that has
>> distributed more than 1 million laptops running free software, and
>> has taken aim at the low-cost platform as a way to make poor
>> children around the world dependent on its products. The OLPC
>> threatens to become another example of the way Microsoft convinces
>> governments around the world that an education involving computers
>> must be synonymous with an education using Windows. In order to
>> prevent this, it is vital that we work to raise global awareness of
>> the harm Microsoft's involvement does to our children's education.
>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:08 AM, Bobby Powers
>>>  wrote:
>>> in any case, the text appears to be fixed now in a much more
>>> reasonable fashion.
>>>
>>> bobby
>>>
>> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Sebastian
>> Silva wrote:
>> > 2009/8/31 Walter Bender 
>> >>
>> >> I don't think anyone on this list was suggesting that Windows on
>> OLPC
>> >> was/is a good/appropriate solution for learning. But there is a
>> free
>> >> software alternative, Sugar, that is designed to be appropriated by
>> >> the local community/culture. We were asking, why doesn't the FSF
>> >> promote alternatives (Sugar or some other free learning platform)
>> in
>> >> parallel with their anti-cultural-imperialism message?
>> >>
>> >> -walter
>> >>
>
>
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] FSF attitude to xo and sugar

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:10 PM, Bill Kerr wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Bastien 
> wrote:
>>
>> After a discussion with the FSF, they agreed the picture was not really
>> appropriate and that the text should clearly distinguish OLPC from Sugar.
>>
>> They will make an update - stay tuned.
>
> the picture is gone but the words are still there:
>>
>> As a result, it is expected that the main effect of the OLPC project -- if
>> it succeeds -- will be to turn millions of children into Microsoft
>> dependents. That is a negative effect, to the point where the world would be
>> better off if the OLPC project had never existed
>
>
> still over zealous, purist and FUD

I think you are giving them too much credit :-) They simply didn't do
their homework on this one.

Sameer
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[IAEP] Fwd: Designing for Children - Conference, Educational Meet, Exhibition at IDC IIT Bombay

[Sameer Verma]

FYI.
--
Sameer


-- Forwarded message --
From:  
Date: Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:18 AM
Subject: Designing for Children - Conference, Educational Meet,
Exhibition at IDC IIT Bombay
To: olpc-in...@googlegroups.com




 2nd - 6th of February 2010 at IDC, IIT Bombay



--
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/




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[IAEP] bundling Wikijunior

[Sameer Verma]

Has anyone bundled Wikijunior or a part of it?
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior

Sameer
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http://verma.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Deployment feedback braindump

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz <
bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Daniel Drake wrote:
> > What you are saying makes sense -- it is indeed a nice idea to keep
> > SugarLabs as more of a loose structure, as a place for collaboration
> > on anything that might further the general mission.
> >
> > It is a sensible idea to keep SugarLabs away from doing too much work
> > on the OS building and deployment implementing side of things, because
> > as you point out, even when you exclude those broad topics there is
> > still a lack of resources on the bits that remain.
> > That said, in a way, the "gap" that we're discussing is in some ways
> > more important than any of the Sugar features currently being worked
> > on, because the large majority of sugar users are currently a long way
> > away from even having access to the features that were finished 6
> > months ago. Difficult.
> >
> > I disagree about local labs being key to filling the gap. While a nice
> > idea, I think it is necessary for there to be a central and
> > location-independent deployment-focused upstream, otherwise there will
> > be a lack of coordination accompanied by lots of duplication of work.
>
> I agree... and I think the only way this will happen is for someone to
> start a company.  You would be an ideal person to do such a thing.
>
> Consider the Gnome Foundation.  The organization is composed principally
> of software engineers, working on a technical problems.  They do not
> attempt to manage deployments or provide end-user support.  They do not
> produce operating systems, apart from a few Live CDs for testing and
> validation purposes.  They employed no one for many years, and now employ
> only one person, purely for administrative duties.
>
> Gnome is widely deployed, and supported, but this is done by organizations
> like Debian, Canonical, Slackware, and Red Hat.  These deployers have both
> the incentive and the ability to respond quickly to user demands, by
> customizing their Gnome installation.  They also communicate with Gnome
> upstream, getting their modifications into mainline and pushing for
> development that addresses their users' needs.  In fact, most of the Gnome
> developers are actually employed by deployers, like Novell, and the Gnome
> Foundation is merely the place where all the deployers' engineers come to
> work together.
>
> Sugar Labs is explicitly modeled on the Gnome Foundation.  I agree that
> there is a gap between Sugar Labs and deployment, but this is best
> addressed by a similar two-layer model.  OLPC is part of that second
> layer, and so is Solution Grove, but we certainly need more.
>
> As for "local labs"... the term seems to have been used for many things.
> Some non-profit deployment organizations might request recognition as a
> "local lab" if they think it helps their marketing, and Sugar labs would
> likely be happy to confer the title upon them.
>
>
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This comparison of roles between Sugarlabs and GNOME Foundation is helpful.
It allows me to think about how efforts have been successful (and have
failed) when it comes to distros like Ubuntu and companies that support the
process (Canonical in this case). The Ubuntu side of things doesn't get to
see much of say, what conspires between Canonical and Dell.

This is a much needed discussion.

cheers,
Sameer
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Associate Professor of Information Systems
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http://verma.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] Next run of Sugar Labs Sticks

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Sameer Verma  wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 4:54 PM, Caroline Meeks <
> carol...@solutiongrove.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm going to place an order for more Sugar Labs branded USB sticks.
>> The cost will be in the $7.50 to $9 per 2GB stick, depending on how
>> many I order.
>>
>> Would anyone like to go in on the order so I can bring up the volume?
>>
>> I want them without caps this time so I'm going to go for this style
>> (Saratoga) in red.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Caroline
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Caroline Meeks
>> Solution Grove
>> carol...@solutiongrove.com
>>
>> 617-500-3488 - Office
>> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>>
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>>
>>
> Hi Caroline,
>
> Looks like OLPC-SF will get at least a dozen sticks. I'll send you more
> precise numbers once I hear from others.
>
>
> Sameer
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>


Hi Caroline,

24 sticks confirmed from our side (OLPC-SF and OLPC-Jamaica). I'll pay for
these and distribute them individually.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] sounds in Speak

[Sameer Verma]

Hello everybody,

This afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a Montessori teacher,
about Speak. She asked me why Speak says "a" when "a" is pressed and not the
*sound* of the letter "a". Montessori teachers teach the shape and sound of
letters first, and then the name of the alphabet. I did not have an answer
for her, but I wondered if it would be possible to have an option in Speak
to do so.

I'd imagine that the sound of the letter would vary depending on language,
right?

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] Next run of Sugar Labs Sticks

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 4:54 PM, Caroline Meeks
wrote:

> I'm going to place an order for more Sugar Labs branded USB sticks.
> The cost will be in the $7.50 to $9 per 2GB stick, depending on how
> many I order.
>
> Would anyone like to go in on the order so I can bring up the volume?
>
> I want them without caps this time so I'm going to go for this style
> (Saratoga) in red.
>
> Thanks,
> Caroline
>
>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> carol...@solutiongrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
> ___
> Marketing mailing list
> market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>
>
Hi Caroline,

Looks like OLPC-SF will get at least a dozen sticks. I'll send you more
precise numbers once I hear from others.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Localization] Fwd: sugar on a stick localized in farsi or pashto or both

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 9:07 AM, jim wrote:
>
>   wait wait: i hope i wrote that mtsa is a
> set of people who together have fluency in
> english, dari, and pashto as well as some
> computer familiarity.
>   that any one person combines some useful
> subset and also has time to chip in work is
> an unknown. we can cast about to see.
> jim
>
>

Hi Jim,

Greetings from Jamaica!

A point of clarification. Is MTSA interested in

a) Farsi and Pashto
b) Dari and Pashto
c) Farsi, Dari and Pashto?

cheers,
Sameer
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Re: [IAEP] Google Docs and Power Point

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Jim Simmons wrote:
> Sameer,
>
> The Read Activity can display PDFs fullscreen.  You need to open the
> PDF the usual way and then press Alt-Enter.  Currently Read displays
> documents as continuous pages, but I believe that evince can display
> one page at a time and perhaps the Read Activity could be made to do
> that at some point too.  It would make looking at PowerPoint
> presentations in full screen more like using the Power Point viewer
> and might use less memory too.
>

+1
The one page at a time display would be greatjust what I'm looking for.

PS: cc'ing the list again.

Sameer

> James Simmons
>
> On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Sameer Verma wrote:
>> On 7/3/09, Jim Simmons  wrote:
>>> Sameer,
>>>
>>>  The issue of what to do with existing Power Point slides can probably
>>>  be handled by using Google Docs, which can import existing Power Point
>>>  presentations from your hard drive.  Once imported you could download
>>>  them as PDF's for the Read Activity.  I haven't tried importing a
>>>  presentation from Power Point yet (people keep sending them to me but
>>>  I don't keep them) but from what I've seen of Google Docs so far I'd
>>>  be surprised if it wasn't a workable solution.  Google Docs can also
>>>  import presentations from Open Office.
>>>
>>
>> Googledocs is fine, but I am looking at environments where we don't
>> have net access. Additionally, Read can display PDFs but I was looking
>> for fullscreen presentation mode of evince.
>>
>> Sameer
>>
>>>  For teachers authoring presentations Google Docs should be fine.
>>>  Students can and should use Turtle Art, Etoys, View Slides, etc. as
>>>  they see fit.
>>>
>>>  James Simmons
>>>
>>>  On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:07 AM,  wrote:
>>>  > Send IAEP mailing list submissions to
>>>  >
>>>  > There is also the issue of existing materials that are already
>>>  > authored in Powerpoint and need to be "imported" into a format that's
>>>  > processable by an activity on the XO. Re-doing all such material in
>>>  > yet another format is painful. Maybe something that can take a ppt
>>>  > file and push png of each slide to the Journal for view slides or TA
>>>  > to pick up. Powerpoint itself will export each slide to a jpg or png,
>>>  > but I haven't had much luck with OOo for batch export (it does the
>>>  > export one slide at a time). The other option is to run PDFs full
>>>  > screen like evince. All these approaches take care of display, but
>>>  > still do not address authoring in Sugar.
>>>  >
>>>  > cheers,
>>>  > Sameer
>>>  ___
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Re: [IAEP] Google Docs and Power Point

[Sameer Verma]

On 7/3/09, Jim Simmons  wrote:
> Sameer,
>
>  The issue of what to do with existing Power Point slides can probably
>  be handled by using Google Docs, which can import existing Power Point
>  presentations from your hard drive.  Once imported you could download
>  them as PDF's for the Read Activity.  I haven't tried importing a
>  presentation from Power Point yet (people keep sending them to me but
>  I don't keep them) but from what I've seen of Google Docs so far I'd
>  be surprised if it wasn't a workable solution.  Google Docs can also
>  import presentations from Open Office.
>

Googledocs is fine, but I am looking at environments where we don't
have net access. Additionally, Read can display PDFs but I was looking
for fullscreen presentation mode of evince.

Sameer

>  For teachers authoring presentations Google Docs should be fine.
>  Students can and should use Turtle Art, Etoys, View Slides, etc. as
>  they see fit.
>
>  James Simmons
>
>  On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:07 AM,  wrote:
>  > Send IAEP mailing list submissions to
>  >
>  > There is also the issue of existing materials that are already
>  > authored in Powerpoint and need to be "imported" into a format that's
>  > processable by an activity on the XO. Re-doing all such material in
>  > yet another format is painful. Maybe something that can take a ppt
>  > file and push png of each slide to the Journal for view slides or TA
>  > to pick up. Powerpoint itself will export each slide to a jpg or png,
>  > but I haven't had much luck with OOo for batch export (it does the
>  > export one slide at a time). The other option is to run PDFs full
>  > screen like evince. All these approaches take care of display, but
>  > still do not address authoring in Sugar.
>  >
>  > cheers,
>  > Sameer
>  ___
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Re: [IAEP] View Slides an alternative to PowerPoint?

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 2:43 AM, David Van Assche wrote:
> A real simple alternative to powerpoint/impress that looks and smells
> like it, but with maybe really limited functionality would be loved by
> teachers everywhere, At least, all the teachers I have met rely very
> heavily on powerpoint in one form or another, be it integrated into
> other software like moodle or an LMS, or used with an interactive
> whiteboard/touchpad soft, or just used by itself. But normally it is
> used in a very limited fashion, and without much of the fancy
> transitions/coloring/themeing/graphing and all that stuff... IF they
> want something like that, it would make sense to steer them to
> turtleart... but there needs to be something much much simpler...
>
> David
>

+1

There is also the issue of existing materials that are already
authored in Powerpoint and need to be "imported" into a format that's
processable by an activity on the XO. Re-doing all such material in
yet another format is painful. Maybe something that can take a ppt
file and push png of each slide to the Journal for view slides or TA
to pick up. Powerpoint itself will export each slide to a jpg or png,
but I haven't had much luck with OOo for batch export (it does the
export one slide at a time). The other option is to run PDFs full
screen like evince. All these approaches take care of display, but
still do not address authoring in Sugar.

cheers,
Sameer

> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Walter Bender 
> wrote:
>> And we also have Turtle Art as a presentation option (it can keep to a
>> prearranged order :)
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 4:04 PM, James Simmons 
>> wrote:
>>> I deleted the digest that contained someone asking about putting Open
>>> Office on an XO to get alternatives to Excel and PowerPoint, but I'd
>>> like to suggest that with the features I added to View Slides over the
>>> weekend you *could* use View Slides to create and view presentations.
>>> What you could do is create individual slides using the Record Activity
>>> or one of the Paint Activities.  These would create separate image files
>>> in the Journal.  Then you'd fire up View Slides to add these images to a
>>> slide show, arranging them in sequence by renaming the images in the
>>> show, and deleting images that aren't needed.  Then View Slides could be
>>> used to view the presentation.  You can even hide the mouse cursor and
>>> view the images full screen.
>>>
>>> It isn't Power Point, but on the other hand, it isn't Power Point.
>>>
>>> The pictures at http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4039
>>> tell the story.  Unfortunately they tell the story out of sequence.
>>> There doesn't seem to be any way to arrange the pictures in order.
>>>
>>> James Simmons
>>>
>>>
>>> ___
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>>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> ___
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>>
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[IAEP] Fwd: sugar on a stick localized in farsi or pashto or both

[Sameer Verma]

Forwarding request from Carol Ruth Silver
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Ruth_Silver) and Jim Stockford
(http://www.sf-lug.org/). This is a big opportunity for SoaS
deployment in Farsi and Pashto. I'm heading out to Jamaica for their
pilot, so my bandwidth is a bit limited for the next few days. Please
cc them on replies.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

-- Forwarded message --
From: jim 
Date: Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 10:22 AM
Subject: sugar on a stick localized in farsi or pashto or both
To: Sameer Verma 



Hi, Sameer,
  regarding carol ruth silver's upcoming trip
to afghanistan, i'm hoping we can get sugar on
a stick localized in both farsi and pashto:
best case a single stick would boot and ask
the user to choose either; having a grub-like
menu choice would be good; having it come up
in one but allow re-tuning to the other would
be okay; having two different sticks, one in
farsi and the other in pashto would be
acceptable.
  do you know anyone in sugarlabs that can    <
facilitate getting us something approximating
the above fast?
jim
415 823 4590 my cellphone, call anytime
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Re: [IAEP] Open Office on XO?

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 9:37 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi...
> Has anyone out there in Sugarland been able to run Open Office on an XO?  I
> have someone doing a project that sounds like he may need a spreadsheet
> program and a presentation program for.
> Caryl
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>

There's SocialCalc (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SocialCalc). You can
also try Gnumeric, although its not Sugarized
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Spreadsheet).

Some folks have tried OpenOffice for kids on the XO.
http://olpc-france.org/blog/2009/04/ooo4kids-openoffice-for-kids-on-the-xo/

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] Fwd: [support-gang] OLPCorps blogs

[Sameer Verma]

FYI


-- Forwarded message --
From: Sameer Verma 
Date: Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: [support-gang] OLPCorps blogs
To: "Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond to \"help AT
laptop.org\"" 
Cc: olpc-o...@lists.laptop.org, grassro...@lists.laptop.org


On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote:
> South Africa/Gettysburg College Blog
> http://gtech-olpc.blogspot.com/
>
> Rwanda/Utah State University/Ungana Foundation
> http://www.unganaxo.blogspot.com/
>
> Kenya/Baylor/UT at San Antonio/Invisible Children
> http://ubcolpc09.wordpress.com/
>
> Mauritania/University of Miami/University of Minnisota
> http://africaxo.blogspot.com/
>
> Mauritania/Cornell
> http://www.cornellolpc.com/
>
> Uganda/UC Berkley Blog
> http://berkeleyolpc.wordpress.com/
>
> Tanzania/Tumaini University
> http://mot-tumaini.blogspot.com/
>
> Ethiopia/Dalarna University and The Royal Institute of Technology(KTH)
> http://www.olpc2009ethiopia.blogspot.com/
>
> Sierra Leone/Princeton/University of Maryland
> http://olpcsm.blogspot.com/
>
> Nigeria/University of Lagos
> http://olpc4nigeria.blogspot.com/
>
> Nigeria/University of Ibadan
> http://abledisableinxo.blogspot.com/
>
> OLPCorps Tulane University & UC Davis – Sierra Leone
> http://olpckenema.wordpress.com/category/olpcorps/
>
>
>
>
> ___
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> support-g...@lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang
>
>

Thanks, Yama! I'm cc'ing olpc-open and grassroots-l

I've aggregated all the feeds into one OPML file. You can import this
into Google Reader or any other Feed Aggregator.  You can also find it
at 
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F04644957024613667662%2Flabel%2FOLPCorps?hl=en

cheers,
Sameer
--
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/



OLPCorps Africa - Aggregated Blogs


http://abledisableinxo.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://abledisableinxo.blogspot.com/"/>
http://berkeleyolpc.wordpress.com/feed/"; htmlUrl="http://berkeleyolpc.wordpress.com"/>
http://cornellolpc.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://cornellolpc.blogspot.com/"/>
http://africaxo.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://africaxo.blogspot.com/"/>
http://olpc2009ethiopia.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://olpc2009ethiopia.blogspot.com/"/>
http://olpcsm.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://olpcsm.blogspot.com/"/>
http://olpckenema.wordpress.com/feed/"; htmlUrl="http://olpckenema.wordpress.com"/>
http://mot-tumaini.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://mot-tumaini.blogspot.com/"/>

http://gtech-olpc.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://gtech-olpc.blogspot.com/"/>
http://ubcolpc09.wordpress.com/feed/"; htmlUrl="http://ubcolpc09.wordpress.com"/>
http://unganaxo.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"; htmlUrl="http://unganaxo.blogspot.com/"/>



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[IAEP] learning implode...

[Sameer Verma]

My daughter, who is 3 years and 7 months old has largely stayed away
from the XO (or for that matter computers in general) other than
mimicking me by turning on the XO and giving our guests/visitors an
unexpected short speech on "let me show you this computer. This is the
one laptop per child". She still likes her crayons and Lego blocks.

She's on her summer break at home these days, which has forced me to
get creative and keep her engaged. I introduced her to implode
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Implode) today. I showed her how to move
the "arrow" (she insists that I call it an arrow and not a mouse
because calling it a mouse is just silly) start a new implode game and
select three or more blocks of the same color. The goal is to get that
smiley face at the end of the game. One demo, plus some hints, and in
under three minutes, my daughter has become an implode player.
I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E !!! She even taught her mother how to play the
game later this evening.

For all the arm chair naysayers out there, get with the program!
Children are amazing!!!

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Fwd: An interesting project I stumbled across

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Frederick Grose wrote:
> Forwarding to the community...
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: William Schaub
> Date: Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 6:31 PM
> Subject: An interesting project I stumbled across
> To: Frederick Grose 
>
>
> This looks like something that is right up the alley of the OLPC groups and
> sugar labs etc.
>
> http://www.wizzydigital.org/index.html
>
> using UUCP and memory sticks and couriers they are able to connect schools
> to the internet in areas where there is ZERO connectivity.
> ...
> However this whizzy digital courrier could be VERY successfully used on a
> classroom server or a specially outfitted XO laptop with some extra storage
> via an added USB storage device.
>
>
>
>
> ___
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> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>

+1

Some similar approaches: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sneakernet and
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Motoman

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:45 PM, James Simmons wrote:
> Caryl,
>
> I can certainly understand expecting the worst here.  I do think the
> idea has potential, even if it takes awhile to achieve it.
>
> My niece went to the Illinois Math and Science Academy, a public
> boarding school for gifted kids.  One of the things that impressed me
> about this school was that they don't use textbooks at all.  The
> teachers create all the class materials.  Her father's complaint about
> the school was that, "The teachers don't teach!"  I don't think anyone
> missed having textbooks, though.
>
> Creating textbooks has a lot of politics involved in it.  School boards
> cannot be offended by anything in History or Biology textbooks, and the
> dumbest, most easily offended school boards in the country end up
> choosing what textbooks get used by most of the country.  A couple of
> years ago I took a vacation in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, etc.  I
> learned a lot of things about U.S. History that I wish I had learned as
> a kid.  For instance, the first ships in the U.S. Navy were captured
> from the British by pirates.  In colonial Williamsburg, church
> attendance was required by law, and you could be punished for arriving
> late.  If you wanted to attend a church other than the official one you
> could only do that with permission from the government, and you still
> had to tithe to the official church.  What is the likelihood of any of
> that information making it into a high school textbook?
>
> I read a story that a Biology teacher got in trouble for pointing out
> that men and women have the same number of ribs!  Mike Huckabee claimed
> during the last election that most of the signers of the Declaration of
> Independence were clergymen, and *nobody* corrected him.
>
> Having digital textbooks might be a way to get around that, because
> different states could publish their own books at a low cost.  States
> could use each other's books, etc.  I'm not saying it would be easy but
> it would be possible.  The school boards in Texas and elsewhere would
> not be able to hijack the whole process.  Eventually this should lead to
> better textbooks.
>
> If the books were in the public domain (and they should be) then cheap
> printed copies of the textbooks should also be available.
>
> James Simmons
>

Hi James,

As I read your post, it reminds me of my own education in India, where
I grew up and went from kindergarten all the way to college. Our
history books were very selective as well. For instance, there is no
mention of any of the details of WWII and its role in Indian
independence. Entire sections of historic movements are missing. I've
learned so much more about history from independent sources than from
my history classes, that I sometimes feel cheated :-)

So, an entire nation grows up to believe that Indian independence was
obtained due to Gandhi's non-cooperation. While I do not for a minute
underestimate Gandhi's role and contribution in the independence
process, it took much more than Gandhi and his refusal to cooperate.
Unfortunately, most Indian children don't know that, and will grow up
not to care...unless, they have access to a wealth of independent
sources, and some (not all) will be curious enough to read it.

Some people argue that books can only cover so much. Well, paper books
are limited. Electronic books are not. Syllabi are designed to address
specific teaching goals in limited time. I use syllabi every semester,
and I'm not against that approach. However, if books were delivered
electronically, and children had free access to content, then learning
would take on a different shape...at least for some.

This talk about writing books to replace existing ones is interesting.
It is very much in line with what happened in the FOSS world. Someone
decided to write free replacements for expensive proprietary software,
thereby reducing the cost barrier (although poorly written FOSS titles
steepen the learning curve). I deal with publishers every semester, so
I know that game all too well.

We can create modules or chapters based on topics and be able to mix
and match chapters and create what we need. Easier said then done, but
it needs to be said first. Just like following APIs and standards for
making code talk across systems, we will need standards for making
chapters collate into a book, but those are tactical issues. We need
to address strategic matters first.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

>> Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 09:53:04 -0700
>> From: Caryl Bigenho 
>> Subject: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In Cali

Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] Project process visualization

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 4:55 PM, David Farning  wrote:
> Hey Gaurav,
>
> The diagram is great!  This is what I had originally envisioned for
> our getting started page on the [www|wiki].sugarlabs.org.
>
> The best part about the diagram is how it communicates how all of the
> different pieces fit together to make the ecosystem work.  Yet,
> individuals can drill down to specific , manageable, areas which they
> can learn more about.
>
> It would be great if you could work with Fred, Christian, Eben, Gary
> and the rest of the wiki/web guy to create this into an interactive
> 'map' for the project.
>
> FWIW, this rest of us will likely kibitz loudly about your choices for
> naming and categorization:)
>
> David
>
> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Frederick Grose  wrote:
>> Hi Gaurav,
>> I like your visualization of the social communication process for the
>> OLPC project.  The icons are simple and fun to associate with a concept, the
>> cycles nicely emphasize the iteration needed in all domains, and the overlap
>> with intersections demonstrate the coordination that is needed.
>> I can imagine versions where nodes would be expanded in subsets to show more
>> detail of a process.  For example, we could use such a map to explain and
>> guide newcomers to the software development cycle and community tools.
>> Could you share the icons and tools you used to allow others to work on
>> prototypes and drafts for their processes?
>> We could start using more of these and similar icons for tagging concepts in
>> our wikis and Sweet software, and we could use the maps as a navigational
>> aids.
>> Thank you for your contributions!
>>        --Fred
>> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Gaurav Bhushan  wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> While I was a student of information design at National Institute of
>>> Design, India, I worked on brainstorming and visualizing an ecosystem to
>>> support the OLPC project in India.
>>>
>>> I am attaching a poster representing the same. The idea was to trigger
>>> advocacy among key players in Education, Technology and Outreach.
>>>
>>> It is still very crude, and I can take out more time to work on it if you
>>> guys have some feedback and inputs. I feel a lot more can be done in terms
>>> of making it interactive.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Gaurav Bhushan
>>> User Experience Design
>>> Google, India
>>>
>>> --
>>> Gaurav Bhushan
>>> Information Design
>>> National Institute of Design, India
>>>
>>>
>>> ___
>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>>
>> ___
>> Marketing mailing list
>> market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>
>>
> ___
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> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>

Hi Gaurav,

Its good to finally see your model on the lists here. I'm also quite
pleased that you are done with school and are at Google (Hyd I
presume?). Congratulations!

I saw Gaurav's model last year when I was visiting Reliance/DBF in
India - this is the group that did Khairat
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khairat_school). Obviously, Gaurav has put
a lot of effort into it. My suggestions were to (1) release it under a
CC style license and (2) maybe explore an interface (AJAX or
otherwise) that would allow "Zoom in" and Zoom out" of different
cycles and levels for big picture and drill down details with
explanations and links at each level.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] Sugar on Nokia N810

[Sameer Verma]

One of my all time favorite devices gets one of my all time favorite
environments! Read on.
http://guysoft.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/nokia-n810-running-olpc-sugar/

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
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Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] OLPC in Kindergarten

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Christoph Derndorfer
 wrote:
> Hola Alejandro,
>
> I'm currently not aware of any other OLPC or Sugar projects working with
> children at that age. Most pilots and deployments currently seem to be
> focused on primary-school children (age 6 to 10).
>

We have a local Montessori that has two XOs and is considering using
them with the 4 to 5 year olds. They haven't started yet, but it would
be interesting to see what their experience is like once they begin in
the summer.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

> What kind of educational activities did you have in mind?
>
> One really great activity is the TypingTurtle
> (http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4026), the Memory
> activity also seems to be really popular with the the first-graders in
> our small Austrian OLPC / Sugar pilot.
>
> By the way, I'm also copying the "It's an education project"
> mailing-list (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep), people there
> might have some good pointers for you.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Christoph
>
> Alejandro Fernandez schrieb:
>> Hi,
>>      I'd like to get in contact with those using XOs with kids under 5.
>>
>>      I am helping a group of kindergarten teachers use a pair of OLPC
>> I got for them. Last year we made a small experience teaching kids to
>> use the XO to take pictures and video. Then, they took the XO home,
>> taught their family how to use it, recorded greetings, and browsed the
>> greetings and pictures left by other families. They enjoyed it.
>>
>>     This year we are planning to use them as educational tool (that
>> is, adding value not just technology).
>>
>>     Pointers to books, blogs, pedagogical patterns, activities, and
>> notes are welcomed.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Alejandro
>>
>>
>
> --
> Christoph Derndorfer
> co-editor, olpcnews
> url: www.olpcnews.com
> e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
> ___
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> grassro...@lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots
>
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[IAEP] Sugar on LTSP

[Sameer Verma]

Hello,

I had a conversation with our tech folks on campus yesterday, and
Sugar via LTSP (http://www.ltsp.org/) came up. The original discussion
was about LTSP and thin and fat clients, but this group is in the
College of Education, so the conversation drifted towards Sugar. We've
 talked about this before, but I'll poke the embers again. Is Sugar
usable via LTSP? Espcially the collaborative part via ejabberd?

We plan on having a Jaunty-based showcase running in three weeks or
so. If Sugar is usable in that environment, we'll definitely push for
it in this lab. The lab is used by faculty and students from early
childhood ed. and other departments inb CoE. They'd love to bring in
teachers and children from local schools to showcase it.

I'm cc'ing David Van Assche in case he's not on this list (highly
doubtful, though). I am currently using his fatclient script
(http://www.nubae.com/ltsp-linux-terminal-server-project-netbooted-fat-client-for-ubuntu-hardy-and-intrepid)
on Intrepid+GNOME.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
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Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] format for lessons/content

[Sameer Verma]

Hi,
Forgive me if this has been discussed and resolved before - it perhaps
skipped my radar.

I ran into Jason Cole (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529185/)
today at OSBC (http://www.infoworld.com/event/osbc/) and mentioned the
problem of creating content/lessons for Moodle. IIRC, Bryan Berry had
raised this issue - what should teachers author lessons in? HTML,
Flash, PDF, etc.

Jason's suggestion for teachers building content on their own was to
use Moodle-on-a-usb stick
(http://docs.moodle.org/en/Student_projects/SQLite#Moodle.2FSQLite_on_a_stick).
Plug the stick into a computer, fire up Moodle on a stick, create a
course, backup the course to a zip file and restore it on Moodle on
the school server.

Has anyone tried this? I haven't yet using Moodle on a stick (although
I have backed up and restored Moodle courses several times...in fact
every semester) but will do so once I wrap up with OSBC. Thought I'd
pass this along for comments.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] OLPC on public radio

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Jameson Quinn  wrote:
> you can find a stream at www.publicradiofan.com
>

http://www.wpr.org/book/visionaries/index.html

Sameer

> On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Edward Cherlin  wrote:
>>
>> To the Best of Our Knowledge, with Jim Fleming, has a segment on OLPC
>> in the show starting in five minutes. Also Larry Lessig will be on.
>>
>> --
>> Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
>> And Children are my nation.
>> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
>> http://earthtreasury.net/ (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
>> ___
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
> ___
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Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] you volunteers are nuts :)

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Adam Holt  wrote:
> I didn't even call a meeting, and 10+ ppl still showed up 4PM Sunday--
> your Loyalty to the cause is insane^h^h^h^h^h^hWONDERFUL :))
>
> Topics discussed -- also posted to
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_meetings :
>
>    * Sameer's researching how we might start a VoIP-on-XO project--I
> strongly favor this prjct--keep recruiting!
>       http://iaxclient.sourceforge.net/iaxcomm/
>       http://www.astlinux.org/
>       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Asterisk_eXchange
>       http://iaxclient.wiki.sourceforge.net/
>
> http://www.slideshare.net/sverma/voice-over-internet-protocol-voip-using-asterisk
>       http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-IAX+versus+SIP
>

Just added a (somewhat incomplete) page on the wiki about IAX.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IAX

Haven't tried an IAX client on Sugar/XO as yet. Please jump in! I do
have a Asterisk server set up, so let me know if I can help.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Topics & deliverables from Marketing IRC meeting 03-03-2009: Sugar 8.4 launch date set!

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 6:59 AM, Luke Faraone  wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Bert Freudenberg 
> wrote:
>>
>> Nice idea, but it's not google-compatible. Rather unlikely that "sugar
>> chocolate" will lead one to discover 0.82 ... It's too bad "Sugar" is
>> such a generic word :(
>
> How about "Sugar Labs Chocolate"? :)
>
>

Isn't "Sugar on a Stick" a lollipop?

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Design ideas for a.sl.o and sugarlabs

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:51 PM, ,Josh williams
 wrote:
> Hi Wade,
>
> I agree with you that there needs to be a unity between the websites and
> things are definitely confusing. That design I made is basically a wire
> frame to give us an idea for the layout. I wanted it to follow the HIG
> guidelines, take into account Mick's comments, and just be simple for
> kids to use. A friend recently let me borrow an XO, so I'll be able to
> make something that's more to scale soon.

Sugar sites that kinda look like Sugar? That would be neat!

Sameer

> Thanks for the infrastructure
> ideas as well, they're a good start and I'll bring them up at the design
> meeting.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Josh
>
> Wade Brainerd wrote:
>> Hey Josh, thanks for the offer of help!
>>
>> I definitely like your simple and kid-friendly theme for addons. I
>> wonder off the top of my head though, if it makes sense to make
>> addons.sl.o look *more* like the other sl.o sites?    Things are kind
>> of confusing right now with the different styles of wiki, trac,
>> addons, schools, gitorious, api, buildbot, etc.  planet is the lone
>> exception, it seems to follow wiki.sugarlabs.org
>>  nicely :)
>>
>> It would be great if the Design Team could comment on this decision.
>>
>> Here are a couple other web infrastructure ideas:
>>
>> + Improve theming consistency among various SL.o sites.
>> + Single sign on cookie among all SL.o sites - perhaps OpenID based.
>> + Standard nav header atop all SL.o sites rather than the various nav
>> headers in different places, with different links.
>> + Better splash page for Gitorious, looking more like GitWeb - a page
>> with a small search box at the top and the rest being a list of
>> projects, sorted by recent activity, showing owner and last commit details
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Wade
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:10 AM, ,Josh williams
>> mailto:joshcwilli...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi, I'm working on the design of sugar labs add-ons with Mick Weiss.
>>     I've created a mock up at http://sugarlabs.org/go/AddonsPortal/Design
>>     but I've haven't been able to contact anyone on the design team as of
>>     yet. I would also like to volunteer some of my time for other
>>     projects.
>>     I'm primarily a front-end designer with XHTML/CSS JavaScript
>>     skills, but
>>     I also know some PHP/MySQL and have a background in Linux. I also
>>     enjoy
>>     creating icons, so if there are any activities developers that need
>>     icons please contact me. My portfolio is over at
>>     http://tucsonlabs.com .
>>
>>     If you're a member of the design team or have some use for my skills,
>>     please let me know.
>>
>>     Thanks
>>
>>     Josh
>>     ___
>>     IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>     IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org 
>>     http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>>
>> 
>>
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>
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Re: [IAEP] Great Photo

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Caroline Meeks
 wrote:
> http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/6300789/
>
> This one is great! We don't seem to have many photos showing what kids are
> actually doing with Sugar.  Can we use this one in marketing?
>

Sure. I just changed the license on it. I need to figure out how to
bulk-change licenses in Zooomr...

Sameer

> Anyone else have pictures that show kids + what is on their screen and shows
> off Sugar or an activity well?
>
> Thanks,
> Caroline
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> carol...@solutiongrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
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Re: [IAEP] Adults and Sugar

[Sameer Verma]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Albert Cahalan  wrote:
> Caryl Bigenho writes:
>
>> One man sat in front of the XO for several minutes with a puzzled
>> look on his face.  Finally he asked, "Where is your file manager?"
>> I explained that he needed to forget everything he knew about
>> computers and just pretend he was a child again.  He got up in
>> disgust and left.
>
> He asked a simple question and you blew him off. Adults use
> communication to avoid wasting time.
>
> Had you tried to explain, you might have gotten better feedback.
> Of course, then you need to avoid being dismissive of the feedback.
>
>> Meanwhile, nearby, a little boy, about 8-years-old was happily
>> exploring Sugar.
>
> I'm sure he was, but "exploring" is not the same thing as being
> productive.

Why does it have to be about being productive, and not about
exploring? I deal with plenty of college students who all try to be
"productive", but never really learned to explore. Guess what? We have
become a sausage factory of sorts! Crank the handle and out comes
ground meat, ready to be packaged and sold. Critical thinkers? No.
Analytical? No. Monkey see, monkey do? All the time!

Seeing children in Khairat use the journal with ease removed any
doubts in my mind as to why Sugar doesn't have a file manager. These
kids don't even know what a "file" looks like! Why bother with a
metaphor that is as clear as mud for them?

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] First competitor?

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Bernie Innocenti  wrote:
> Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
>> Let us know what you think of it, it's somewhat hard to get a real idea
>> of what this thing does by looking at the little information given on
>> the Web site itself and in the two articles they link to:
>>
>> "From the educational ones I included GCompris and Childsplay," as well
>> as "not-so-educational but still entertaining clones" including LinCity,
>> Super Tux and Super Tux Kart, Mhall119 explained."
>> (http://linuxinsider.com/story/The-Karmic-Koala-and-the-Linux-Port-of-the-World-of-Goo-66264.html?wlc=1235710087)
>
> The ISO image appears to be based off a live Ubuntu.
>
> I couldn't test the actual environment because on QEMU, it boots all
> the way into X11, but then leaves me with an empty desktop.
>

Here are some screenshots. http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/sets/44422/
Its Xubuntu + GCompris+Etoys etc. No real surprises.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] First competitor?

[Sameer Verma]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Albert Cahalan  wrote:
> Christian Marc Schmidt writes:
>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Caroline Meeks > gmail.com>wrote:
>>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt >> gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> I think we'd need to know the specific points of contention.
>>>> I can't imagine which design decisions might work less well
>>>> on PCs. Sugar remains significantly easier to use than
>>>> standard PC operating systems...
>>>
>>> Put Sugar in front of the average adult sitting alone, without
>>> any instruction, for 20 minutes.  I doubt many of them would
>>> agree with you.
>>
>> Caroline, I agree this is a challenge.
>>
>> Of course I would argue that this is due to our familiarity with
>> current desktop-based operating systems and the difficulty of
>> breaking old habits. Sugar was designed from the ground up, and
>> hence does require a bit of a learning curve for those of us who
>> use other systems (but for new users should prove much easier to
>> learn). So our marketing needs to continuously address that Sugar
>> is not designed for adults, but for children!
>
> Never mind the adults. Think of the children!
>
> "should prove much easier" is a hope, not a fact.
>
> Children struggle HORRIBLY with Sugar, especially if they don't
> have a real mouse to use. They do like playing with it, sure, at
> least until the frustration sets in.
>
> I have never seen a child successfully use the journal. That's not
> surprising; it is a black hole for data as far as I can tell.
>

I've seen several children in Khairat
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khairat_school) use the Journal quite
deftly. They pulled up videos from two months ago and showed it to me
when I was there last year. This was build 656. I also saw them use
the zoom keys quite naturally. What surprised me the most was that
they had *no* prior exposure to computers whatsoever. The teacher (Mr.
Surve) would yell out in Marathi "Go to the neighborhood, join the
mesh". The children not knowing what "neighborhood" or "mesh"means,
would press the zoom key and join the shared activity. I personally
found their level of ease somewhat incredible, considering that they
had the XOs for 10 months at that point.

BTW, to see the typical din of this classroom, here's a clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL3OXaM9s0c

> I have never seen a child successfully use the hover palettes.
> They also totally kill user efficiency and are incompatible
> with the long-awaited touchscreen.
>

Again, I didn't see Khairat children struggle with palettes. They
actually used it while I watched over their shoulders and drew scenes
quite nicely. Here's one
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/6300776/

> I have never seen a child successfully use the frame. It's always
> there when you don't want it, and usually not there when you do.
> Regular computers have an interaction device that is essentially
> always there but leaving at least two sides of the screen free of
> trouble. (original MacOS menu, OS/2 Presentation Manager thing,
> Windows taskbar, fvwm GoodStuff, etc.)
>
> I guess the thing to learn is that getting rid of time-tested GUI
> design is unlikely to produce good results.
>

Not so sure, because what you are saying is that time tested GUI
designs are a finite set, and all the good designs are taken.

Sameer

> Uh, now what?

Keep plugging away :-)

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] CORRECTION: 2ND Weekly Deployment Chat: Tues 3PM & 11:59PM EST [TODAY]

[Sameer Verma]

FYI, I'm on gmail, and for some reason, the URL *shows*
http://forum.laptop.org/chat but still *points* to
http://support.laptop.org/chat

Correct URL is http://forum.laptop.org/chat
--
Sameer

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Holt  wrote:
> 1) See you in just less than 3hours, at 3PM EST (popular!) or 11:59PM EST
> (new!!!)  The Corrected URL is:
> http://forum.laptop.org/chat
>
> Then type:
>/join #olpc-deployment
>
> 2) Peru deployment leader Hernan Pachas hopes to join us for the early show
> :)
>
>
> Holt wrote:
>
> Call is open to everyone with a Heart:
>teachers, volunteers, Flash learning content creators, Obamanic govt
> re-inventors, utopia-smoking Sugar hackers rich & poor, greedy MBA's who
> actually deliver...
>
> We will discuss small deployments in América del Sur,
> centre-of-the-universe: (and why not a few others, depending on speakers!)
>* Bolivia/La Paz (Ploskonka & Silva)
>* Paraguay (Drake)
>* Peru/Lima's http://www.ata.org.pe community repair center & creative
> space (Mayorga)
>* Oceania (Waugh)
>* Nigeria (Bennett)
>* Nepal (Berry)
>* Austria (Derndorfer)
>* Birmingham (Woodworth)
>* Massachusetts' http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cambridge_Friends_School_Pilot
> (Sigalos & Foley)
>* Kiva Model (Daswani)
>* How to start your very own XO Laptop Lending Library, to seed
> initiative in your country (Holt)
>   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program
>
> Help reshape above agenda to your liking, by editing:
>http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_meetings
>
>
> See you 3PM EST (popular!) or 11:59PM EST (new!!!) TUESDAY:
>http://supportforum.laptop.org/chat
>
> Then type:
>/join #olpc-deployment
>
> Free Conf Call, if ya like People too :)
>+1 (866) 213-2185or+1 (609) 454-9914
>Access Code: (ask on above live chat, call is free using SkypeOut)
>
> Senior Stone's Awesome Recap From Last Week:
>http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_meetings/20090120
>
>
> ___
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> olpc-o...@lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
>
>
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[IAEP] Mitra's talk on hole in the wall

[Sameer Verma]

Just saw Sugata Mitra's talk at Lift (http://liftconference.com/) on
the hole-in-the-wall experiment and the data they collected. Most
impressive was the concept of self-organized learning that happened in
these places. 
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html
It goes against all the talk about teacher training, etc.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] Fwd: Call for Participation Now Open

[Sameer Verma]

Is anyone sending in proposals for OSCON 2009?

This year it will (sadly) be in San Jose. I saw many XOs at OSCON in
2007 (Rob Savoye had the most visible one...he was walking around with
it), but only two in 2008 - I had one and the OSUOSL guys had one. I
also heard a lot of misleading opinions from the attendees
(Windows/MSFT drama). So, at the very least, we should have a
significant presence in the exhibit areas. Some of you Sugarheads
should really present in sessions as well!

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


-- Forwarded message --
From: O'Reilly Open Source Convention 
Date: Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 4:45 PM
Subject: Call for Participation Now Open
To: sve...@sfsu.edu


If you cannot read the information below, click here.

News & Coverage
Sponsorship opportunities
Media partnership inquiries

Be Part of OSCON 2009
O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, "Open for Business" as It Begins
Its Second Decade

O'Reilly Media invites developers, designers, sysadmins, community
leaders, inventors, CTOs and CIOs, evangelists and activists,
researchers, strategists, and entrepreneurs to lead conference
sessions and tutorials at the eleventh O'Reilly Open Source
Convention, July 20-24 in San Jose, California.

The Call for Participation is now open. Submit your proposal by
midnight PST February 3, 2009

With the global economy on shifting ground, the world is looking to
the tech industry for solutions to a wide range of challenges.
Ubiquitous computing, with smart phones at the leading edge, continues
to expand. Open source is at the core of so many emerging
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tools as well as its principles — contribute to making a difference in
the business of computing? How can it help to create a sustainable
lifestyle? In an uncertain economy, how can open source empower us?

The first ten years of OSCON were about opening the minds of big
business to the philosophy of open source. The next ten will be about
opening the minds of the open source community to the practical
possibilities of its future. As OSCON "goes to eleven" in 2009, we
want to turn up the volume on efficiency, knowledge transfer, and
working smarter within constraints to achieve more with what we
already have—or even with less.

What can you contribute?
We want to hear about your winning techniques, favorite life-savers,
and the system you've made that everyone will be using next year.
We'll have tracks for sessions and tutorials on Linux, PHP, Perl,
Python, Ruby, Java, Databases, Desktop Applications, Web Applications,
Mobile, Administration, Security, People, Business, and Emerging
Topics.

We're seeking proposals for 45-minute sessions, 45-minute panel
discussions, and 3-hour in-depth, hands-on tutorials. Some of the
topics we want to consider at OSCON 2009 include:

Doing more with less—finding opportunities in a constrained economy
Design and usability—tools, techniques, and success stories
Open source in smart phones and mobile networked devices
Cloud computing, openness in distributed services
Parallelization, grid, and multicore technologies
Open web, open standards, open data
AI, machine learning, and other ways of making software smarter than
the people using it
Open source in democracy, politics, government, and education
Best practices for building a business model around open source
Virtualization and appliances—their creation and deployment

This is just to get you started. We want to hear your ideas, your
stories, your successes (and failures). Focus your proposal on
hands-on instruction and real-world examples to provide conference
participants with information they can put to use immediately and
inspiration that will propel their work for months to come.

If you're passionate about open source, the open technologies shaping
our future, building communities, crafting beautiful code, designing
for users, or just getting things done, we invite you to answer the
call for innovation and submit a proposal now, see the submission
guidelines

Meeting July 20-24 in San Jose, OSCON is the crossroads of all things
open source, a deeply technical conference that brings community
ideals face-to-face with business practicality. Join 3,000 of the
best, brightest, and most interesting people to explore what's new and
to help define, maintain, and extend the identity of what it means to
be open source. OSCON is the place to be inspired and challenged,
renew bonds to community, make new connections, and discover the most
relevant projects and products to help you do your best.

Early registration opens in March. To receive advance notification and
stay informed on the program as it develops, sign up for the
conference newsletter

If you have ideas for s

Re: [IAEP] Balanced Scorecard experience?

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Caroline Meeks
 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm working on the project planning for the Sugar on a Stick pilot at the
> Gardner School.  I'm considering using a Balanced Scorecard as one of the
> management tools and I'm doing the research on it.  This is just a quick
> call out to see if anyone here happens to be experienced in Balanced
> Scorecard methodology or has an example from an educational project.
>
> 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
>

We've used it in one of our classes and in campus projects. Let me
know if I can be of any help. School's out though, so digging out
samples will be a bit difficult. I'll look for examples.

I'm curious about how you plan on using BSC in this scenario.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] teams vs. projects

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In my opinion we  should use a customized trac for project management, i
> don't like to have too many resources to take into
> count, we already have the necessary ones (Trac, mediawiki..moodle)
>

+1

Sameer

> The Gantt plugin it's a good solution there.
>
>
> Rafael Ortiz
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Sameer Verma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Bernie Innocenti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> wrote:
>> > Sameer Verma wrote:
>> >> dotProject (http://www.dotproject.net/) and Project.net
>> >> (http://www.project.net/) are good candidates. They are both FOSS,
>> >> although I haven't had much luck locating Project.net's FOSS license.
>> >> Their Bus. Dev. guy tells me that the next release will be GPLv3.
>> >
>> > dotProject is marked as "other/proprietary license" on SourceForge.
>> >
>>
>> Actually dotProject is under GPLv2
>> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/dotproject/), while Project.net is
>> marked Proprietary/other. Project.net is under "commercial open
>> source" license, whatever that means. I did not get a clear answer out
>> of their Business Dev VP. He kept talking in circles and finally said
>> that the next release was going to be GPLv3.
>>
>> > Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/) seemed like a promising clone of
>> > trac more oriented towards project management.
>>
>> Yes, I remember Bryan Berry (OLE Nepal) mentioning it a while back.
>>
>>
>> > I proposed evaluating
>> > it some time ago, but the developers are too used to trac to consider
>> > switching.
>>
>> Trac does have a Gantt module written in Python
>> (http://willbarton.com/code/tracgantt/) and we looked at it a while
>> back for SF State. We use Trac for managing our iLearn (branded Moodle
>> install) system and wanted some PM charts such as Gantt. We found the
>> granularity provided by this module to be too large to be useful. It
>> tracks milestones instead of tickets.
>>
>> Maybe someone here could hack it to make it more suitable.
>>
>> cheers,
>> Sameer
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>> San Francisco State University
>> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>> ___
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
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Re: [IAEP] teams vs. projects

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Bernie Innocenti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Sameer Verma wrote:
>> dotProject (http://www.dotproject.net/) and Project.net
>> (http://www.project.net/) are good candidates. They are both FOSS,
>> although I haven't had much luck locating Project.net's FOSS license.
>> Their Bus. Dev. guy tells me that the next release will be GPLv3.
>
> dotProject is marked as "other/proprietary license" on SourceForge.
>

Actually dotProject is under GPLv2
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/dotproject/), while Project.net is
marked Proprietary/other. Project.net is under "commercial open
source" license, whatever that means. I did not get a clear answer out
of their Business Dev VP. He kept talking in circles and finally said
that the next release was going to be GPLv3.

> Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/) seemed like a promising clone of
> trac more oriented towards project management.

Yes, I remember Bryan Berry (OLE Nepal) mentioning it a while back.


> I proposed evaluating
> it some time ago, but the developers are too used to trac to consider
> switching.

Trac does have a Gantt module written in Python
(http://willbarton.com/code/tracgantt/) and we looked at it a while
back for SF State. We use Trac for managing our iLearn (branded Moodle
install) system and wanted some PM charts such as Gantt. We found the
granularity provided by this module to be too large to be useful. It
tracks milestones instead of tickets.

Maybe someone here could hack it to make it more suitable.

cheers,
Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] teams vs. projects

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 6:18 PM, Caroline Meeks
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> In our case, it's harder, but might still make sense.  If we go
>> this route, let's make sure we support projects involving multiple
>> teams.  For example, "Sugar on a Stick" would touch Development,
>> Infrastructure, Marketing...
>
> I am going to be setting up LiquidPlanner, a free for nonprofits, Web 2.0
> Microsoft Project like program.

dotProject (http://www.dotproject.net/) and Project.net
(http://www.project.net/) are good candidates. They are both FOSS,
although I haven't had much luck locating Project.net's FOSS license.
Their Bus. Dev. guy tells me that the next release will be GPLv3.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

> I've used it some for projects. Its pretty heavy weight for agile open
> source development. I want to use it for planning for Gardner's Sugar on a
> Stick deployment because I will need to create some fairly formal plans for
> a variety of audiences so having some nice graphics with Gantt Charts etc
> seems like a good idea.
>
>  I'll set it up and everyone who is involved, please join in and help with
> the planing.   But I don't want to push it as a "fits everyone and
> everything" solution, I think for a lot of what people do a wiki with a TODO
> list is a more efficient solution.
>
> Cheers,
> Caroline
>
>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> 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
>
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Re: [IAEP] Calendar goodness

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 7:18 PM, David Farning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Check out the new wiki feature Bernie add to w.s.o.
>
> http://sugarlabs.org/go/WikiTeam/Meetings
>
> We can now embed gcalendars directly into the wiki:)

Sweet!!!
--
Sameer

>
> thanks
> david
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[IAEP] Fwd: [vox] Tux Paint code_swarm'd

[Sameer Verma]

This is interesting. Bill Kendrick ran code_swarm against CVS logs of
TuxPaint. Wonder what code_swarm of Sugar will look like...

Code Swarm: http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm/

Sameer

-- 
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Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/




-- Forwarded message --
From: Bill Kendrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:42 AM
Subject: [vox] Tux Paint code_swarm'd
To: LUGOD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



I ran code_swarm agains the ~6yr worth of CVS logs for Tux Paint, and
posted it to YouTube (so the quality's not so good, and it scaled up a bit
from the 320x240 that I had code_swarm render it at):

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dahUFdiago4

Enjoy! :)

--
-bill!
"Tux Paint" - free children's drawing software for Windows / Mac OS X / Linux!
Download it today!  http://www.tuxpaint.org/
___
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Re: [IAEP] Best video introduction to sugar?

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 9:40 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 6:07 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> Am 07.10.2008 um 14:04 schrieb Marco Pesenti Gritti:
>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Interesting - how did you get it to display synchronously on two XOs?
>>>
>>> By making them play at fixed times (and syncing the clock, sort of).
>>
>>
>> Is that code available? Or at least a full-screen flash player? When showing
>> http://interdimensionmedia.com/scratch/MoMA/demo.html in Browse on the XO,
>> unfortunately the demo cannot go to an unembellished full screen.
>
> Eben, do we have the latest image somewhere?
>
>> And, what would it take to translate the demo?
>
> I think Eben hacked the presentation up in Flash or Illustrator. So he
> would need to translate and regenerate the video.
>
> Marco
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
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>

I did a quick-and-dirty grab of Firefox using gtk-recordmydektop but
left the address bar visible so that if someone wanted to see the
actual Flash demo, they can go to the site directly. If the Ogg is ok
for sharing, I'll upload it somewhere (16.7 MB).

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Nirav Patel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Sameer Verma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> This just came to me while sitting in traffic - a stylized bumper
>> sticker: "My other XO is in Mongolia" (or Rwanda, Haiti, etc.
>> Randomize the stickers or give them a few to choose from:-)) We have a
>> lot of creativity on these lists. Let it rip!
>>
>
> I really like this idea.  I whipped up something quick in Inkscape:
> http://eclecti.cc/files/myotherlaptop.png
> http://eclecti.cc/files/myotherlaptop.svg
>

These look neat. BTW, www.laptopgiving.org is going away based on what
Seth said. Point it to amazon.com/xo

Maybe we should start putting these up on the wiki under G1G1v2 marketing
--
Sameer

>>> Massive buzz could be generated by
>>> another technique Apple has used for years: the education discount.
>>> Offer the pair at $375 for educators and university students, and $425
>>> for others. Imagine thousands of educators holding an XO in their
>>> hands, the community feedback potential.
>>
>> This brings the overhead of verifying whose an educator etc. Apple
>> already has this in place. How do we handle it?
>
> I'm not sure how to integrate this with Amazon, but having a form
> asking the person to provide a .edu email address would be a simple,
> though certainly not foolproof method.
>
> Nirav
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Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))

[Sameer Verma]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Sean DALY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Effective marketing is targeted. Last year's typical G1G1 donor was
> probably a generous IT type with a positive viewpoint concerning Free
> software, curious about Sugar and perhaps even willing to be an
> ambassador of the OLPC project. This market doesn't need a marketing
> message; they are ready to donate and merely eager for practical
> information (cost, available by Christmas or not, available outside
> the USA, if so with localized keyboards or not, at same price or not,
> ...). All that market needs is a press release today answering those
> questions, and a press conference on November 17th, both of which
> would probably get very complete media coverage. A three-minute film
> demonstrating the laptop, showing OLPC people working on it,
> mentioning and showing places around the world it is in use,
> enumerating challenges, and finally asking for a donation in time for
> the holidays, could be posted to YouTube during the press conference
> (and an MPEG-2 broadcast version offered to the media for download).
> Even a homey home video would be fine, perhaps even preferable.
> Imagine G1G1 donors posting video responses The challenge this
> time is fulfillment, but that seems well in hand with the Amazon
> partnership. The most effective merchandising could be what Apple has
> done for decades: a few decals/stickers slipped in the box before
> shipment -- easily designed and printed with negligeable
> picking/packing and shipment cost.

+1

This just came to me while sitting in traffic - a stylized bumper
sticker: "My other XO is in Mongolia" (or Rwanda, Haiti, etc.
Randomize the stickers or give them a few to choose from:-)) We have a
lot of creativity on these lists. Let it rip!

> Massive buzz could be generated by
> another technique Apple has used for years: the education discount.
> Offer the pair at $375 for educators and university students, and $425
> for others. Imagine thousands of educators holding an XO in their
> hands, the community feedback potential.

This brings the overhead of verifying whose an educator etc. Apple
already has this in place. How do we handle it?

> Seen from the outside, the far more important target market that may
> need work is governments and education ministers. That group doesn't
> need merchandising, they need reassurance that they will be
> accompanied, that risks can be foreseen and contained, that there is
> indeed a correlation between learning via an interface optimized for
> children and later aptitude with office productivity software. IT
> vendors invest fortunes in such "decision-maker" marketing, and
> perhaps the best approach there is to find a small (or not), talented
> ad agency willing to work pro bono for the exposure, experience, and
> good citizen credentials.
>
> I would venture that the less said about the XO-2 at this time, the
> better. I believe the priority should be to combat the perception that
> OLPC has fallen short and discussing the future version might merely
> confuse everyone, in particular leading to speculation that something
> is not right with the XO-1. What G1G1 can do is remind everyone that
> hundreds of thousands of OLPC XO-1s have shipped and are shipping, and
> are serving children from Birmingham to Kigali.
>

+1

The shipment numbers are impressive, and must be highlighted as much
as possible. Everyone I've spoken to at first thinks of this as a
faltered project, but then they hear the numbers and their eyes light
up. Numbers assure that the project is alive and kicking.

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


> I am not sure I can offer any useful assistance, but I do have
> expertise in transcoding video formats, it seems there was a DVD
> produced last year which may just need to be transcoded to web
> formats?
>
> Sean.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 1:09 AM, Sameer Verma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Edward Cherlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Update: Some of the computer press has picked up the story.
>>>
>>> But we could be all over the Mainstream Media, including having
>>> Nicholas, Walter, Alan and others on all the talk shows. If they are
>>> willing. Are any of you? This is the one time of year when ordering
>>> something you can't get is a positive. We should aim for something
>>> ridiculous, like a million units. (Although we shouldn't say that to
>>> the media in so many words.) And then we should provide daily track

Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))

[Sameer Verma]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Edward Cherlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Update: Some of the computer press has picked up the story.
>
> But we could be all over the Mainstream Media, including having
> Nicholas, Walter, Alan and others on all the talk shows. If they are
> willing. Are any of you? This is the one time of year when ordering
> something you can't get is a positive. We should aim for something
> ridiculous, like a million units. (Although we shouldn't say that to
> the media in so many words.) And then we should provide daily tracking
> of order numbers and of production lead times, to encourage yet more
> people to order as early as possible.
>
> We should be playing up the connection with the 40th anniversary of
> the Dynabook idea, and of Doug Engelbart's Mother of All Demos. I have
> been in contact with him and his people, and I know that they are keen
> on that. We should be doing T-shirts, mugs, stickers, replica mice,
> and all the rest of the merchandising, and getting several books
> published. Why anybody at OLPC would want to waste the best marketing
> time in the year is utterly beyond me.
>
> If you don't think my opinion counts, ask Amazon.
>

I agree with Ed Cherlin in that if G1G1v2 begins in 5 weeks, now is
the time to get the campaign going. Five weeks isn't a lot of time.
What I'd look for in the efforts this year is something a bit more
orchestrated. Materials (posters, cards, stickers, shirts, etc) all
coming across with a consistency in branding, image, look-n-feel, etc.
If we do merchandise from somebody like Cafepress, we don't have to
get into the business of printing, cutting etc.

I cannot setup shop at Cafepress because the logos involved aren't my
copyright, but if someone from OLPC initiates, I'd be glad to help.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Edward Cherlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> This is the first time I have heard that G1G1 will start up again on
>> Nov 17. As far as I can tell, nobody in the outside world has picked
>> up on this yet.
>>
>> Is this a leak? Is it true? Has there been any outside announcement?
>> Since it doesn't show up in Internet news searches, I am certain that
>> there was no press release. Should I Slashdot this?
>>
>> This is a Hell of a way to run a global non-profit. We have one of the
>> world's biggest brands, and we do nothing with it. We could be The
>> Must-Have Gift for this Holiday season without any advertising
>> expense, if we would just let the media have the story. Even with the
>> manufacturing delays that we can predict. That's one of the draws for
>> the Must-Have Gift of the year. Cabbage Patch died the moment you
>> could get one off the shelf.
>>
>> There is a great deal more I could say about this and other management
>> issues, but this is not the place for it. If you want to hear any of
>> it, you know where to find me.
>>
>> But!! I have a better idea. Who wants to fork the PR program, and help
>> write an Open Source press release? We'll have to reverse engineer
>> most of the content, but I have confidence in our community's
>> abilities.
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Jim Gettys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Community News
>>> A weekly update of One Laptop per Child September 29, 2008
>>
>>> Our appearance outside the Marriott attracted a lot of people to out
>>> tables; some of them were as far as from Finland; many of them knew
>>> about "those laptops for children" and were asking about the ways to
>>> acquire the laptops (we even got questions: are you selling the
>>> machines?). So, in addition to conducting our scheduled testing, we also
>>> served as "unofficial" OLPC marketing representatives, steering people
>>
>>> to the Nov 17 opening of the G1G1 event through amazon.com. The time we
>>
>>> were outside wasn't even the peak lunch time for people to fill that
>>> square; just imagine the level of attention, if we were there at the
>>> lunch time!
>>
>> --
>> Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
>> fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
>> http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
> fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
> http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
> ___
> Olpc-open mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
>
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Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Samuel Klein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yikes.  Undersaturated billboard markets...  I wonder how such things
> impact the desire to 'launch' new announcements.
>
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> FWIW, I saw a billboard in the Indianapolis airport this weekend
>> advertising last year's G1G1 program!!
>
>
> Ed, you're right that there isn't much visibility yet on the net.  We
> should do better (and earlier!) this year, and target more focused
> communities of interest.  I'm sure that the PR group will deal with
> things like billboards and print/radio/tv media, but there are
> hundreds of thousands of people already deeply engaged in missions
> aligned with ours whom we can reach more directly.
>
> You might add to the lists here:
>   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_media
>
> Especially groups of interested people  (like the readers of
> boingboing and slashdot, which generally pick up OLPC news, but also
> specific mailing lists that only hear fringes of information about the
> project, like environment and sustainable dev groups, retired
> grandparents, &c).
>
>
> Last year we didn't draft much in the way of specific language for
> different audiences, but we should.   Notes I send to my family about
> the program are very different from the more generic emails that go
> out.
>
> SJ
>

Marketing largely happens through two channels: Mass media and
Word-of-mouth. Billboards, TV etc are mass media while talking to your
friends, or SJ's family is word-of-mouth. Lately, the network effect
has added to the power of word-of-mouth, hence the concepts of viral
marketing, etc.

One of the most interesting word-of-mouth channels has been the people
who come by your table at a cafe or bookstore or the airport when you
use your XO, or pretend to use it :-)  Obviously, these parties are
interested. So, an elevator pitch + pointing them in the right
direction should do the trick. I used to carry small slips of paper
with URLs and other information (sort of like a business card) last
year during G1G1. I'm thinking of doing actual business card size
templates with G1G1v2 information and some URLs + a line where I can
write down my e-mail address or phone as necessary (maybe a
double-sided business card). These are cheap to print and impressive
to hand out. Perhaps we can do "officially blessed" designs early on
this year.

Of course posters etc. at your neighborhood stores and malls are also
helpful. We did these last year. http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/426

I even renamed my hotspot SSID to laptopgiving.org for a couple of
months in the hopes that my neighbors would pick up on the hint :-)

SJ - any specific mailing list to join for marketing efforts?

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


> Ed writes:
>
>> This is the first time I have heard that G1G1 will start up again on
>> Nov 17. As far as I can tell, nobody in the outside world has picked
>> up on this yet.
>>
>> I s this a leak? Is it true? Has there been any outside announcement?
>> Since it doesn't show up in Internet news searches, I am certain that
>> there was no press release. Should I Slashdot this?
> ___
> Olpc-open mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
>
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Re: [IAEP] Deployment meetings

[Sameer Verma]

I found it. make sure you search for "sugar labs meetings" and not
"sugarlabs meetings".

Sameer

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Nate Ridderman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I wasn't able to find the meetings in Google calendar. I guess it's possible
> that it hasn't been indexed yet on the Google servers, but I would be
> surprised. I tried searching for the exact text you sent, as well as other
> combinations.
>
> Thanks,
> Nate
>
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:56 PM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>>
>> Try searching for "Sugar Labs meetings" in Google calendar. I've just
>> added a few meetings so far. Does anyone know how to make meetings
>> repeat bi-weekly in Google calendar?
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:44 PM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Sameer Verma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Walter Bender
>> >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >>> Every other Wednesday at 14:00 UTC. I announced this one in the Sugar
>> >>> Digest (and Rafael announced in on OLPC-Sur) but apparently not too
>> >>> many people saw the notice (or were interested/able to join us).
>> >>>
>> >>> -walter
>> >>>
>> >>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:14 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti
>> >>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >>>> Are those weekly? At which time?
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I realized I lost today one from the wiki, but I didn't seen an
>> >>>> announcement (possibly my fault).
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Marco
>> >>>> ___
>> >>>> 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
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> Can we do a Google calendar or something equivalent for Sugar and
>> >> other meetings/events so that others can subscribe to the ical feeds?
>> >>
>> >> Sameer
>> >> --
>> >> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>> >> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>> >> San Francisco State University
>> >> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>> >> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>> >> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>> >>
>> >
>> > good idea. let me look into it.
>> >
>> > -walter
>> >
>> > --
>> > Walter Bender
>> > Sugar Labs
>> > http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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 -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
___
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Re: [IAEP] Deployment meetings

[Sameer Verma]

http://groups.google.com/group/google-calendar-help-howto/browse_thread/thread/934b50932332c400/ba7cfa06d350eb18?pli=1

Sameer

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Try searching for "Sugar Labs meetings" in Google calendar. I've just
> added a few meetings so far. Does anyone know how to make meetings
> repeat bi-weekly in Google calendar?
>
> -walter
>
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:44 PM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Sameer Verma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>> Every other Wednesday at 14:00 UTC. I announced this one in the Sugar
>>>> Digest (and Rafael announced in on OLPC-Sur) but apparently not too
>>>> many people saw the notice (or were interested/able to join us).
>>>>
>>>> -walter
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:14 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Are those weekly? At which time?
>>>>>
>>>>> I realized I lost today one from the wiki, but I didn't seen an
>>>>> announcement (possibly my fault).
>>>>>
>>>>> Marco
>>>>> ___
>>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>
>>> Can we do a Google calendar or something equivalent for Sugar and
>>> other meetings/events so that others can subscribe to the ical feeds?
>>>
>>> Sameer
>>> --
>>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>>> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>>> San Francisco State University
>>> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>>> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>>>
>>
>> good idea. let me look into it.
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
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Re: [IAEP] Deployment meetings

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Every other Wednesday at 14:00 UTC. I announced this one in the Sugar
> Digest (and Rafael announced in on OLPC-Sur) but apparently not too
> many people saw the notice (or were interested/able to join us).
>
> -walter
>
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:14 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
> wrote:
>> Are those weekly? At which time?
>>
>> I realized I lost today one from the wiki, but I didn't seen an
>> announcement (possibly my fault).
>>
>> Marco
>> ___
>> 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
>

Can we do a Google calendar or something equivalent for Sugar and
other meetings/events so that others can subscribe to the ical feeds?

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
___
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Re: [IAEP] Fedora Live CD for Sugar

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Greg Dekoenigsberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I have:
>
> * A livecd for Fedora 10 devel (rawhide) that allows a Sugar 0.82 boot
> option via GDM.  We're missing activites, but as those make their way into
> rawhide for F10, we will close these gaps quickly.
>
> * A kickstart file that can be used by any Fedora user to generate such an
> image trivially.
>
> So.  Where shall we host them?  Somewhere in Fedora-land, or somewhere in
> Sugar-land?
>


Why not both, and torrent it up on http://linuxtracker.org/ ?

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Teacher in Uruguay enchanted to see his ideas integrated into global Sugar update [pr mockup]

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Martin Langhoff
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Carol Lerche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> The reactions to my post remind me of the story of the lumberjacks
>
> Fantastic story. However, in practice a CMS is often inferior to a
> wiki in that it appoints "keepers". The cook amongst the lumberjacks
> has to cook daily and cannot decide not to feed a particular
> lumberjack. The keepers of the CMS can get antagonistic, or just
> ignore their duties, and that just kills community collaboration.
>
> Same with CVS and SVN - the centralisation spawns politics.
> Distributed control is the right thing -- for all its flaws, the wiki
> *social dynamic* rules -- you get lots of contnet, perhaps a bit
> disorganised, and a thriving community around it. CMSs are
> hierarchical and mere observation shows what they do to community.
>
> All the observations that Linus Torvalds (in various flamerwars :-) )
> has made on the social and political flaws of CVS and SVN apply
> squarely to classic CMSs. Clay Shirky's "Designing social software"
> essay is also relevant here.
>
> cheers,
>
>
> m
> --
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 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
>

I think Carol's point was one of structure, more so than ownership or
hierarchy. The hierarchy can be incredibly flat, but lend itself to a
good structure. For example, in Drupal, you could use the taxonomy
module to set up a structure so that when content is created, it has a
home to live in and not be a free floating node in the Wiki sea. Even
in the CVS vs Git type argument, there is some structure to the
process.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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[IAEP] Kahlil Gibran on children...

[Sameer Verma]

In talking to one of my colleagues about how wonderful children are in
learning, discovering and not having to worry about the "cost" of
trying different things and how we (grown-ups) can never even hope to
be like them again, Kahlil Gibran's "Prophet" came up.
http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html

>From the chapter on Children:

"You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."


Enjoy!
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Sad

[Sameer Verma]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 2:02 AM, Martin Sevior <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 4:40 PM, Simon Schampijer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Martin Langhoff wrote:
>>> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>> The other sad thing is that the spreading of FUD and misinformation is
>>>> already rampant. This is just a pilot. But we need to rally around
>>>> FOSS and Sugar and make sure that the signal emerges from the noise.
>>>
>>> Yes. 55K Sugar/GNU/Linux machines are being shipped every month to
>>> kids. A tiny pilot is run with Windowsas the OS and... "OMG! End of
>>> teh World!" cry the sensationalist journos.
>>>
>
> Just remember that Journos are paid by the number of people who read
> their stuff. My day job has me involved in the ATLAS experiment on the
> LHC. All the sensationalist stuff about the LHC destroying the
> Universe has probably substantially increased our profile although it
> was really annoying to see obvious bad Science disseminated to people.
> I think "we", that is sugar-labs, can use this to our advantage by
> writing counter-point articles about the ground breaking UI we already
> have as well as the 55 K/month shipments to children.
>
> So the point is that there is a strong counter-story about sugar-labs
> and the current shipments. We need to make sure that story gets out
> too.
>
> Cheers
>
> Martin
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>

Just posted this: http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/562 Should show up
on the planet feed shortly.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Individual Membership

[Sameer Verma]

> Although it is difficult to specify a precise definition

[snipped]

This creates ambiguity. If it doesn't add to the process, I suggest we
remove it altogether.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] membership definitions

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Greg Dekoenigsberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 8 Sep 2008, Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos wrote:
>
>> Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
>>> Yes... but why build a complicated membership management structure to do
>>> that?
>>>
>>> There's a reason I'm asking.  Keeping track of who is and isn't a "member"
>>> can turn out to be surprisingly acrimonious and political, and will take
>>> more overhead to properly manage.
>>>
>>> IMHO, there's little reason not to extend some privileges to basically
>>> whomever asks.  Email address?  Sure.  Logo usage, within clearly
>>> circumscribed guidelines?  Sure!
>>
>> Your suggestion resonates well with me. What is the model that existing
>> organization follow, such as Fedora, Debian, etc.?
>>
>>> Voting for the board?  Sure!
>>
>> I'm not really sure about this. Maybe you need to be involved in the project
>> for some time until you get a vote. Say, you can have a voting right > arbitrary number of months> after your application -during which time you
>> will have all the above that you mentioned-.
>
> In the latest Fedora board election, we had about 10% of our entire
> membership vote.  It's really easy to get lost in the vagaries of voting,
> but in my experience, most people just aren't going to be that interested.
>
> I mean, what's the fear?  That a bunch of M$ employees will storm the
> membership system, take control of numbers, and vote in a bunch of free
> software hating stooges?  Having a SABDFL can help mitigate this.  Give
> Walter a Big Hammer, with the understanding that he will only use it
> during the most extreme circumstances.
>
> --g
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>

I agree with Greg. Keep the membership as open as possible (default
ACCEPT) and have effective mechanisms to DENY if necessary in case
someone becomes troublesome or subversive. The overhead with periodic
assessment will take time and focus away from the project.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs mission statement.

[Sameer Verma]

Edward Cherlin wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 5:47 AM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   
>> The way I had been using platform is somewhere in between: not
>> OS-specific, but not all aspects of the ecosystem, which would even
>> include low-power, alternative energy, etc. These are important, but
>> outside of the scope of Sugar Labs, IMHO.
>> 
>
> Well, then, whose scope is it in? Earth Treasury takes a much more
> inclusive view of the overall mission, as in "whatever it takes"
> rather than "the bits I would prefer to work on". 

I agree with Walter on this one. The scope of what Sugarlabs addresses
should lie within what the Sugar platform does. So, for instance, if we
want to run Sugar on an XO, or a Eee PC, the power saving mechanisms
shouldn't be something Sugarlabs should have to address. Those bits
should come from the underlying OS, be in Linux, BSD or even Windows.

Sameer

> Thus, textbooks,
> curricula, electricity, Internet connectivity, microfinance, linking
> schools, teaching children business...
>
> We are accepting volunteers, resources, and ideas. Anyone care to help
> us with a Web site?
>
>   
>> ---
>>
>> The Sugar learning platform reinvents how computers can be used for
>> education: it promotes sharing, collaborative learning, and
>> reflection. Through Sugar's clarity of design, children and their
>> teachers have the opportunity to use computation on their own terms;
>> they are free to reshape, reinvent, and reapply both software and
>> content into powerful learning activities. Sugar is a community
>> project; it is available under the open-source GNU General Public
>> License (GPL) to anyone who wants to extend it.
>>
>> Sugar Labs is a non-profit foundation whose mission is to produce,
>> distribute, and support the use of the Sugar learning platform; it
>> serves as a support base and gathering place for the community of
>> educators and software developers who want to extend the platform and
>> who have been creating Sugar-compatible applications.
>>
>> ---
>>
>> The details can be found on http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs.
>>
>> -walter
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 2:52 AM, Sameer Verma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
>>> David Farning wrote:
>>>   
>>>> On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 22:25 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Arjun Sarwal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>   
>>>>>> IMHO the mission statement should also  include a mention of how
>>>>>> educators  are an integral part of defining and structuring the
>>>>>> ecosystem.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 
>>>>> I hope that the mission and the ecology include bringing teachers,
>>>>> students, and parents together on creating the new curriculum and a
>>>>> new kind of Free textbook incorporating Sugar software capabilities.
>>>>>   
>>>> I am reluctant to start enumerating specific groups in the community.  I
>>>> welcome anyone who shares the goals of 'building an educational platform
>>>> based on the principles of collaboration, reflection, discovery.'
>>>> 
>
> Inclusion is the issue, not enumeration.
>
>   
>>> How would you define "platform". Is it specific as in OS, or generic as
>>> in "ecosystem"?
>>>
>>> Sameer
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>>> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>>> San Francisco State University
>>> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>>> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>>>>  I
>>>>> am concerned that we are putting so much effort into software and
>>>>> essentially nothing into new textbooks. (FLOSS Manuals and some
>>>>> developers are doing a great job on documentation, but that is a
>>>>> separate issue.)
>>>>>
>>>>>   
>>>> Sugar Labs is a community project;)  If anyone is not happy with the
>>>> community direction 'patches are welcome.'
>>>> 
>
> What does that mean in practice? I'm willing to work on these issues,
> and have proposed several such projects in the past. But now I am told
> again that my ideas are "out of scope".
>
>   
>>>> thanks
>>>> dfarning
>>>> 
>
>   


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Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs mission statement.

[Sameer Verma]

David Farning wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 22:25 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Arjun Sarwal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
>>> IMHO the mission statement should also  include a mention of how
>>> educators  are an integral part of defining and structuring the
>>> ecosystem.
>>>   
>> I hope that the mission and the ecology include bringing teachers,
>> students, and parents together on creating the new curriculum and a
>> new kind of Free textbook incorporating Sugar software capabilities.
>> 
>
> I am reluctant to start enumerating specific groups in the community.  I
> welcome anyone who shares the goals of 'building an educational platform
> based on the principles of collaboration, reflection, discovery.'
>
>   

How would you define "platform". Is it specific as in OS, or generic as
in "ecosystem"?

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


>>  I
>> am concerned that we are putting so much effort into software and
>> essentially nothing into new textbooks. (FLOSS Manuals and some
>> developers are doing a great job on documentation, but that is a
>> separate issue.)
>> 
>
> Sugar Labs is a community project;)  If anyone is not happy with the
> community direction 'patches are welcome.'
>
> thanks
> dfarning
>
>
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>   

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Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs mission statement.

[Sameer Verma]

Edward Cherlin wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Arjun Sarwal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   
>> IMHO the mission statement should also  include a mention of how
>> educators  are an integral part of defining and structuring the
>> ecosystem.
>> 
>
> I hope that the mission and the ecology include bringing teachers,
> students, and parents together on creating the new curriculum and a
> new kind of Free textbook incorporating Sugar software capabilities. I
> am concerned that we are putting so much effort into software and
> essentially nothing into new textbooks. (FLOSS Manuals and some
> developers are doing a great job on documentation, but that is a
> separate issue.)
>
>   
The mission of an organization is typically strategic in nature and does
not have the tactical bits needed to achieve it. The mission statement
drives the organization. Goals are "destination points" that the mission
will help reach. You can always have multiple goals (goal congruency).
Vision of the organization is the picture that you can "see" as you look
towards your goals and beyond.

Mission statements are short and overarching strategic statements. So,
the mission statement of Sugarlabs shouldn't address the nitty gritty of
how we intend to fulfill our mission. On the other hand, objectives
should address specific items that are measurable.

Mission --> Goals --> Objectives (measurable)
VISION----->

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

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Re: [IAEP] New XO-LiveCD

[Sameer Verma]

alan c wrote:
> Kurt Gramlich wrote:
>   
>> dear friends
>>
>> Wolfgang Rohrmoser writes:
>>
>>
>> Since OLPC joyride releases begin to stabilize after the
>> transition to
>> Fedora 9 and the SUGAR developper team has  done a lot of
>> reorganization work,
>> a new release of the XO-LiveCD is available. You  currently can
>> download it
>> from:
>>
>> ftp://www.rohrmoser-engineering.de/pub/XO-LiveCD/XO-LiveCD_080812.iso
>>
>> This release is based on a recent joyride build 2282 and
>> demonstrates
>> many new SUGAR features. Activities have been added and
>> updated to recent versions.
>>
>> I don't have access to upload the XO-LiveCD to the OLPC-site
>> anymore,
>> so I am waiting for suggestions if there is still some interest
>> to
>> make this LiveCD available and where it could be hosted.
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>>   Wolfgang
>> 
>
> Thanks!
>
> Consider using a torrent? I would be one of those who would be happy 
> to keep a seed open and although speeds would be modest, it is an easy 
> way to share a resource among (volunteers) people
>
>   
I have it running at
http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=0902d803b94822a07b7a5da6193147c10e0c83d8
although my at&t connection isn't very reliable.
> also - an md5sum for the iso might be a good idea.
>
>   
Indeed. I have 9493690dad63a345cf9fb8f90476

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

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Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs - Good starting position.

[Sameer Verma]

Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Aug 2008, David Farning wrote:
>
>   
>> I would like to apologize for my absence over the last weeks.  I have 
>> been trying to determine if Sugar is a viable project and if Sugar Labs 
>> is a viable organization.
>>
>> For the weeks prior to my break, I have been working on community 
>> outreach.  Community outreach has meant contacting grassroots 
>> organizations with an interest in technology and education.  After 
>> establishing contact, I start a discussion about about how establishing 
>> a relationship between Sugar Labs and their organization can be 
>> beneficial to both of us.
>>
>> On the plus side:
>>
>> 1.  We have a working piece of software.  We are lucky enough that OLPC 
>> funded us long enough to create a functional system.  The vast majority 
>> of projects fail in the pre-alpha stage.
>>
>> 2.  We have a core group of experienced developers.  Over the past 
>> several years OLPC has attracted a number of professional developers and 
>> helpful community members to participate in the project.
>>
>> 3.  There is a large public demand of our product.  OLPC has proven that 
>> on a large scale through their deployments.  At a more local, there are 
>> thousands or individuals who are interested in improving their local 
>> school system.
>>
>> 4.  Sugar Labs has a functional infrastructure on which we can build.
>>
>> On the negative side:
>>
>> 1.  Lack of commitment.  The main reason organizations have stated for 
>> not becoming involved in Sugar Labs is our lack of commitment.  There is 
>> a significant fear that OLPC will withdraw their support.
>> 
>
> That's not the sense I get here at 1CC.  Can you tell me where this fear 
> comes from?
>
>   

Its a perception thing and perception is a powerful concept.  Just ask
anyone from marketing!

I got the same sense from people at OSCON a week ago. I saw a total of
two XOs at the meeting - mine and one at the OSU OSL table. I was a bit
surprised to see no XOs at all! Upon asking people and chatting on the
expo floor, I got a sense from many people that "OLPC had abandoned
FOSS", and so they weren't interested any more!

I think its important to change that perception because people who are
not on the lists don't see the traffic but do remember the media trash
that flew around back when the "Windows thing" happened.

How do we improve perception? Visibility and outreach come to mind. In a
sense, we have to keep the momentum going past the hype cycle. This
project needs to start permeating across from the "technology" pool to
the "real world" pool where common folk can grasp and understand its
value proposition.

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


>> 2.  Lack of vision.  The second reason organizations hesitate to become
>> involved with Sugar Labs is our lack of vision.  There is a perception
>> that Sugar development has stalled.
>> 
>
> I agree that it's vital to get people who love Sugar together to 
> articulate a strong vision.  My take on that vision: making Sugar the 
> archetypal interface for "sharing by default".
>
>   
>> Moving forward:
>>
>> 1.  Diversify our base of stakeholders.  Currently, we have only two 
>> public stakeholders: OLPC and Redhat.  This number should be greater.
>> 
>
> Success is what brings more shareholders.
>
>   
>> 2.  Balance support and development resources.  The single biggest issue 
>> that we face is how to balance our resources between supporting existing 
>> deployments and pushing development forward.
>>
>> My conclusions:
>>
>> 1. OLPC, Sugar, and Sugar Labs are worth pushing forward.  While not the
>> greatest thing since sliced bread,  OLPC and Sugar represent
>> technologies which can enhance learning for current and future
>> generations.
>>
>> It's a Learning Projects.
>> 
>
> :)
>
> --g
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Re: [IAEP] information - 65 uk pounds (90 euros) laptop report

[Sameer Verma]

alan c wrote:
> extract:
> Taiwanese vendor Carapelli has taken the wraps off what it claims is 
> the world's cheapest laptop, coming in at just £65.
>
> The Impulse NPX-9000, which has a seven inch screen, is light on 
> specifications with a 400MHz processor, 

Its a 400 MHz MIPS processor, not an x86. I have a 450MHz MIPS that runs
reasonably well as a server (Cobalt Qube 2) with 128MB RAM. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture for MIPS processors.
Incidentally, support for Cobalt Qube 2 ran out years ago, so I run
Debian on it.

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


> 128MB RAM and 1GB of flash 
> storage – slightly less powerful than a top of the line PC from ten 
> years ago, but with its low price tag has the potential to upset the 
> market.
>
> http://www.pcretailmag.com/news/30256/65-laptop-launched
>   


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