Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
Kevin Pato, Thanks so much for the heads-up around this issue. These are definitely issues I was thinking about. I've spoken to our after-school coordinator about getting together a small group to trial this with, and she is pretty excited about the idea. 1. What size of USB will you use? Last year we had a usb donation drive for our older students who use them in the standard way. It was an overwhelming success, yielding far more than we need for the older students, and drives in all shapes and sizes. I've been using 2 gig drives in my testing, but I can see how that would fill up fast with the video recording activity. We took videos of our traditional rhymes. I love these! More importantly I think the more traditional teachers at my school would love it too! Too bad my spanish is so poor! 2. Will your computers boot from USB? I've already confirmed that I can configure the BIOS to boot from USB if present! No problem here. 3. Sticks will fail at a high rate. As I mentioned in my first post, we have about a 20% failure rate on our sticks every sessions. Yesterday, one student had to try 3 sticks before we got one that would work. This is pretty distressing to me, as a reliable persistant save space is really the biggest reason for doing this in my book. Hopefully with the benefit of your experience we can improve on that 20% figure. This means we always take a lot of back-ups. Can I infer from this that the XS server does some sort of automated backup? I've been trying to figure out how essential the server is, and whether it is worth the effort to set up, but that's probably a discussion better suited to the SOAS tech list. We were able to figure out that one computer was the problem, not the sticks, so be prepared to be methodical in tracking the sticks and computers. Did you figure out what the issue was with the PC? Do I need to bother with tracking if all PCs are hardware identical? The problem diminished some when we teach these students the meaning of the flashing LED on the usb. If you had blinked, you had to wait. My notion is that I will train the students to watch the PC's power light rather than the read/write light on the USB stick. Possible rhyme for remembering to do so: Don't take it BACK until the light goes BLACK! Thanks so much for the advice. I will keep in touch as the project progresses, with blog entries to come! -John ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
Hi: 1. What size of USB will you use? Last time I looked, Sugar Labs recommended 1 GB. We use 4GB. Our Computer Science student wishes we had gone with 8GBs. We do get frozen computers when students open too many activities. If they save video items from Record, you will want more persistent space, and getting young kids to record poetry or songs will be a big hit! We took videos of our traditional rhymes.http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x2c6un_SugarLabsChile_soas-sugar/1#video=xeflf1 Initially we used record activity but found better results recorded directly from dailymotion through browser activity (flash playerconectivity required). Both are registered in our planning published in WikiEducator.http://wikieducator.org/Editing_User:Werner/My_sandbox/Integracion_Curricular_Sugar/Planificaciones_NB2_Expresi%C3%B3n_Oral 2. Will your computers boot from USB? At one school, kids hit F12 on start-up, that gives them a boot menu, and they choose the USB stick. At the other location, the IT staff changed the boot order on all the computers so the computers now look for the USB stick first, then the hard drive. The later would probably be better with young kids. +1. That said, your lab may or may not allow you to access your boot order. We have run into a lot of home computers that do not allow students to access boot order. Your IT people will obviously have a lot to say about how the sticks will be accessed. 3. Sticks will fail at a high rate. As I mentioned in my first post, we have about a 20% failure rate on our sticks every sessions. Yesterday, one student had to try 3 sticks before we got one that would work. This means we always take a lot of back-ups. We have been at this location for 7 weeks, one hour / week, and only one out of 10 students was still using the same stick we gave him on day one. Most are on their second, and a few 3 or more. We were able to figure out that one computer was the problem, not the sticks, so be prepared to be methodical in tracking the sticks and computers. UUff, this is a big problem. Our initial hypotesis was to found that computers produced more damaged sticks. Moreover, we find some correlation between students anxious / usb failed / PC or netbook with higher failure rate. The problem diminished some when we teach these students the meaning of the flashing LED on the usb. If you had blinked, you had to wait. A critical moment for us was closing time. Allow sufficient time for safe removal. There is a compression and decompression process that must be completed to avoid damaging the USB Stick. Cheers, Pato AcevedoSugarLabs Chile ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
I use the liveinst command (fedora anaconda installer) in sugar root terminal [# ] to install to a 4 GB USB (with a led activity indicator) Teach the students to wait for the flashes to stop before removing them. These USB can be very cheap (I purchased some EMTEC 4GB for $9.95 recently) Look at this tutorial: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Tutorials/Installation/Install_with_liveinst Other sugar related tutorials are located here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Tutorials This installs a real file system to the Soas USB. This is a much more robust form of SoaS Stick. It does not rely on a frangible persistence file Tom Gilliard satellit on #sugar IRC freenode On 11/22/2012 08:24 AM, Pato Acevedo wrote: Hi: 1. What size of USB will you use? Last time I looked, Sugar Labs recommended 1 GB. We use 4GB. Our Computer Science student wishes we had gone with 8GBs. We do get frozen computers when students open too many activities. If they save video items from Record, you will want more persistent space, and getting young kids to record poetry or songs will be a big hit! We took videos of our traditional rhymes. http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x2c6un_SugarLabsChile_soas-sugar/1#video=xeflf1 Initially we used record activity but found better results recorded directly from dailymotion through browser activity (flash playerconectivity required). Both are registered in our planning published in WikiEducator. http://wikieducator.org/Editing_User:Werner/My_sandbox/Integracion_Curricular_Sugar/Planificaciones_NB2_Expresi%C3%B3n_Oral 2. Will your computers boot from USB? At one school, kids hit F12 on start-up, that gives them a boot menu, and they choose the USB stick. At the other location, the IT staff changed the boot order on all the computers so the computers now look for the USB stick first, then the hard drive. The later would probably be better with young kids. +1. That said, your lab may or may not allow you to access your boot order. We have run into a lot of home computers that do not allow students to access boot order. Your IT people will obviously have a lot to say about how the sticks will be accessed. 3. Sticks will fail at a high rate. As I mentioned in my first post, we have about a 20% failure rate on our sticks every sessions. Yesterday, one student had to try 3 sticks before we got one that would work. This means we always take a lot of back-ups. We have been at this location for 7 weeks, one hour / week, and only one out of 10 students was still using the same stick we gave him on day one. Most are on their second, and a few 3 or more. We were able to figure out that one computer was the problem, not the sticks, so be prepared to be methodical in tracking the sticks and computers. UUff, this is a big problem. Our initial hypotesis was to found that computers produced more damaged sticks. Moreover, we find some correlation between students anxious / usb failed / PC or netbook with higher failure rate. The problem diminished some when we teach these students the meaning of the flashing LED on the usb. If you had blinked, you had to wait. A critical moment for us was closing time. Allow sufficient time for safe removal. There is a compression and decompression process that must be completed to avoid damaging the USB Stick. Cheers, Pato Acevedo SugarLabs Chile ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
John Landis, A few things you will need to figure out in your traditional lab set up before using SoaS. 1. What size of USB will you use? Last time I looked, Sugar Labs recommended 1 GB. We use 4GB. Our Computer Science student wishes we had gone with 8GBs. We do get frozen computers when students open too many activities. If they save video items from Record, you will want more persistent space, and getting young kids to record poetry or songs will be a big hit! 2. Will your computers boot from USB? At one school, kids hit F12 on start-up, that gives them a boot menu, and they choose the USB stick. At the other location, the IT staff changed the boot order on all the computers so the computers now look for the USB stick first, then the hard drive. The later would probably be better with young kids. That said, your lab may or may not allow you to access your boot order. We have run into a lot of home computers that do not allow students to access boot order. Your IT people will obviously have a lot to say about how the sticks will be accessed. 3. Sticks will fail at a high rate. As I mentioned in my first post, we have about a 20% failure rate on our sticks every sessions. Yesterday, one student had to try 3 sticks before we got one that would work. This means we always take a lot of back-ups. We have been at this location for 7 weeks, one hour / week, and only one out of 10 students was still using the same stick we gave him on day one. Most are on their second, and a few 3 or more. We were able to figure out that one computer was the problem, not the sticks, so be prepared to be methodical in tracking the sticks and computers. If you are hoping that students will use a stick all year and save their work, our experience is that most students will lose their work at some point (sooner rather than later) unless you can also back up to a server. We don't have a server supporting our program, and our CS people are having a terrible time figuring out how to set up an XS server. Gerald Ardito set one up for his school, I think, so it can be done! If anyone has ideas for improving the success rates of our sticks, we would sure like to hear those ideas. Good luck. I know some faculty in Philly if you do want to reach out to higher ed. Kevin -- Kevin Brooks Chair Department of English Dept 2320, Box 6050 Morrill 219A North Dakota State University Fargo ND 58108-6050 701-231-7147 http://english.ndsu.edu/faculty/kevin_brooks/ The computer's true function is to program and orchestrate terrestrial and galactic environments and energies in a harmonious way. -- Marshall McLuhan ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
Thanks so much for the warm welcome. Particularly to Patricio, Harriet, and Kevin for sharing such fascinating links. If it's okay, I'm going to use this list as a sounding board for my thoughts as I explore Sugar. Again, if there's a better place for this type of thing, please let me know! So far, I'm getting the impression that Sugar on A Stick is more or less limited to experimental university-school partnerships, and hasn't yet reached a phase of wide deployment in the hands of schools. Is this an accurate assessment? The reason I'm interested in SOAS is that I work in the traditional computer lab setting that is so familiar in K12 schools in the US. This setting has a lot of restrictions and drawbacks. A big one is that, even though the students are surrounded by computers in my lab, and to varying degrees at home, they have no opportunity to take ownership of these devices. They can't monkey about with the precious computers that we adults see as far to precious to fully hand over to children. A very basic symptom of this is that the students simply can't save their work. A save dialog box on most computers is very difficult to learn for the uninitiated. Add to this that all files which don't make it onto a shared network or USB drive are basically instantly lost given the shared nature of school computers. If the kids can't do something as simple as save a piece of writing, the computer is far less useful than a notebook. In this light, SOAS looks very appealing. The promise of handing a student their own _persistant_ computer where they are free to explore is exactly what I've been looking for. (to say nothing of sugar's Journal which I think is a brilliant answer to the above problem). I'm curious, how do my motivations match up with how you guys think about sugar? -John ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 6:10 PM, John Landis j...@johnlandis.net wrote: Thanks so much for the warm welcome. Particularly to Patricio, Harriet, and Kevin for sharing such fascinating links. If it's okay, I'm going to use this list as a sounding board for my thoughts as I explore Sugar. Again, if there's a better place for this type of thing, please let me know! So far, I'm getting the impression that Sugar on A Stick is more or less limited to experimental university-school partnerships, and hasn't yet reached a phase of wide deployment in the hands of schools. Is this an accurate assessment? No, it's not. It's been used in a number of school environments that I'm aware of quite successfully in a number of different countries. The reason I'm interested in SOAS is that I work in the traditional computer lab setting that is so familiar in K12 schools in the US. This setting has a lot of restrictions and drawbacks. A big one is that, even though the students are surrounded by computers in my lab, and to varying degrees at home, they have no opportunity to take ownership of these devices. They can't monkey about with the precious computers that we adults see as far to precious to fully hand over to children. A very basic symptom of this is that the students simply can't save their work. A save dialog box on most computers is very difficult to learn for the uninitiated. Add to this that all files which don't make it onto a shared network or USB drive are basically instantly lost given the shared nature of school computers. If the kids can't do something as simple as save a piece of writing, the computer is far less useful than a notebook. In this light, SOAS looks very appealing. The promise of handing a student their own _persistant_ computer where they are free to explore is exactly what I've been looking for. (to say nothing of sugar's Journal which I think is a brilliant answer to the above problem). That's basically it, it certainly isn't without it's quirks but it generally works pretty well. I'm the lead developer for SoaS. Peter ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
Hi John, I would say your summary is pretty well on target taking into account Peter's comments and the continued improvements he has been making with each SoaS release. I would be happy to have a conversation with you on Skype or phone and give you some ideas on how you might want to approach the local Universities to establish relationships in Computer Science and Education schools to build up a support system. I think you mentioned your in Philadelphia so Temple and Drexel would be great options as well as the other smaller schools. I have been collaborating with Dr. Kevin Brooks and his Great Fargo project since its inception. I met Kevin at the Computers and Writing Conference at Purdue in 2010, where I helped put on a Sugar Workshop with Dr. Gerald Ardito, and Walter Bender who joined via Skype. In turn I joined Kevin and his graduate student Chris Lindgren at the University of Michigan at ComputersWriting 2011 for another Sugar Workshop. I think this would be a great place for you to talk about the education portions of the project,for the technical questions/issues and updates on that front the Soas list would be best. It's Great to see you trying to help out your learners in this manner. Let me know if I can be of assistance. Best! John Tierney Skype: jt4sugar #248-613-7392 From: j...@johnlandis.net Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:10:41 -0500 To: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS Thanks so much for the warm welcome. Particularly to Patricio, Harriet, and Kevin for sharing such fascinating links. If it's okay, I'm going to use this list as a sounding board for my thoughts as I explore Sugar. Again, if there's a better place for this type of thing, please let me know! So far, I'm getting the impression that Sugar on A Stick is more or less limited to experimental university-school partnerships, and hasn't yet reached a phase of wide deployment in the hands of schools. Is this an accurate assessment? The reason I'm interested in SOAS is that I work in the traditional computer lab setting that is so familiar in K12 schools in the US. This setting has a lot of restrictions and drawbacks. A big one is that, even though the students are surrounded by computers in my lab, and to varying degrees at home, they have no opportunity to take ownership of these devices. They can't monkey about with the precious computers that we adults see as far to precious to fully hand over to children. A very basic symptom of this is that the students simply can't save their work. A save dialog box on most computers is very difficult to learn for the uninitiated. Add to this that all files which don't make it onto a shared network or USB drive are basically instantly lost given the shared nature of school computers. If the kids can't do something as simple as save a piece of writing, the computer is far less useful than a notebook. In this light, SOAS looks very appealing. The promise of handing a student their own _persistant_ computer where they are free to explore is exactly what I've been looking for. (to say nothing of sugar's Journal which I think is a brilliant answer to the above problem). I'm curious, how do my motivations match up with how you guys think about sugar? -John ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
John, Also if you would like support with Etoys, I would be happy to help and live not that far from Philadelphia. Please check out the lesson plans on etoysillinois.org They have a wonderful set of lesson plans for K-6. Steve Thomas On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 1:50 PM, John Tierney jtis4...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi John, I would say your summary is pretty well on target taking into account Peter's comments and the continued improvements he has been making with each SoaS release. I would be happy to have a conversation with you on Skype or phone and give you some ideas on how you might want to approach the local Universities to establish relationships in Computer Science and Education schools to build up a support system. I think you mentioned your in Philadelphia so Temple and Drexel would be great options as well as the other smaller schools. I have been collaborating with Dr. Kevin Brooks and his Great Fargo project since its inception. I met Kevin at the Computers and Writing Conference at Purdue in 2010, where I helped put on a Sugar Workshop with Dr. Gerald Ardito, and Walter Bender who joined via Skype. In turn I joined Kevin and his graduate student Chris Lindgren at the University of Michigan at ComputersWriting 2011 for another Sugar Workshop. I think this would be a great place for you to talk about the education portions of the project,for the technical questions/issues and updates on that front the Soas list would be best. It's Great to see you trying to help out your learners in this manner. Let me know if I can be of assistance. Best! John Tierney Skype: jt4sugar #248-613-7392 From: j...@johnlandis.net Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:10:41 -0500 To: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS Thanks so much for the warm welcome. Particularly to Patricio, Harriet, and Kevin for sharing such fascinating links. If it's okay, I'm going to use this list as a sounding board for my thoughts as I explore Sugar. Again, if there's a better place for this type of thing, please let me know! So far, I'm getting the impression that Sugar on A Stick is more or less limited to experimental university-school partnerships, and hasn't yet reached a phase of wide deployment in the hands of schools. Is this an accurate assessment? The reason I'm interested in SOAS is that I work in the traditional computer lab setting that is so familiar in K12 schools in the US. This setting has a lot of restrictions and drawbacks. A big one is that, even though the students are surrounded by computers in my lab, and to varying degrees at home, they have no opportunity to take ownership of these devices. They can't monkey about with the precious computers that we adults see as far to precious to fully hand over to children. A very basic symptom of this is that the students simply can't save their work. A save dialog box on most computers is very difficult to learn for the uninitiated. Add to this that all files which don't make it onto a shared network or USB drive are basically instantly lost given the shared nature of school computers. If the kids can't do something as simple as save a piece of writing, the computer is far less useful than a notebook. In this light, SOAS looks very appealing. The promise of handing a student their own _persistant_ computer where they are free to explore is exactly what I've been looking for. (to say nothing of sugar's Journal which I think is a brilliant answer to the above problem). I'm curious, how do my motivations match up with how you guys think about sugar? -John ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
Hi there, Not sure if this email list is the proper place to post, but I wanted to introduce myself to the community. I work in Philadelphia, teaching technology and media literacy at a K-6 (ages about 4-12) charter school. I'm interested in using Sugar on a Stick with my 5-7 year old students. I need a bit of guidance as I explore this new territory, both on the technical and the pedagogical side of things. So, first question: have I got the right community or should I be posting elsewhere? -John Landis ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
There is a list specific to Sugar on a Stick technical questions [1], but Sugar pedagogy questions should be address to this list. regards. -walter [1] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 7:10 PM, John Landis j...@johnlandis.net wrote: Hi there, Not sure if this email list is the proper place to post, but I wanted to introduce myself to the community. I work in Philadelphia, teaching technology and media literacy at a K-6 (ages about 4-12) charter school. I'm interested in using Sugar on a Stick with my 5-7 year old students. I need a bit of guidance as I explore this new territory, both on the technical and the pedagogical side of things. So, first question: have I got the right community or should I be posting elsewhere? -John Landis ___ 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
