Re: [sugar] OLPC Afghanistan
Hi Ebtihaj, I came across two pages in our wiki which refer to OLPC Afghanistan: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/One_Laptop_Per_Child_Afghanistan and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Afghanistan They are very similar but not exactly the same. Can you collapse them both in to a single page? By tradition, we use the OLPC_Afghanistan naming convention. Whatever works for you as long as we have a main, single place to look. Thanks, Greg S *** Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:50:19 -0800 (PST) From: Ebtihaj Obaidi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [sugar] OLPC Afghanistan To: Localization [EMAIL PROTECTED], sugar@lists.laptop.org, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi dears. finally OLPC Afghanistan started its official work from Afghanistan. For details just visit: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/One_Laptop_Per_Child_Afghanistan OR http://www.olpc.blogsky.com Sohaib Obaidi Ebtihaj BSc. (Hons.) Economics, IIIE-IIUI OLPC Afghanistan Community Development Liaison. +923349072974 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.eqtisad.co.cc http://www.olpc.blogsky.com http://www.olpc.af ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Sbuntu 8.10: Sugar for Ubuntu Live USB, updated
I have updated sbuntu (Sugar for Ubuntu Live USB) to Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). This solves many issues that were present in the earlier version. http://dev.laptop.org/~probono/sbuntu/ Basically, you just need to add one file to a stock Ubuntu Live USB system made from the official ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso and you will have a Ubuntu 8.10 Sugar Live USB system. Let me address some questions and concerns that came up on the Sugar mailing list earlier: Caroline Meeks asked: Is there a way I can I copy my USB and make the new one bootable so I don't have to go through the whole process again? If you have more than one USB stick with the exact same size, you can clone the entire stick using the dd command. Boot a Linux distribution, attach the source and the target USB sticks. Find out their device names. In the following example I will assume that the source device is /dev/sdb and the target device is /dev/sdc. CAUTION! These names will likely be different on your system and using the following command is DANGEROUS as it will WIPE the target device. Unmount both sticks. Then as root, run: dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=8M This will clone the contents of the source stick (sdb) to the target stick (sdc). This is a standard procedure that should work with any kind of bootable USB stick. Walter Bender asked: I've tried with a 1 GB and a 2 GB USB. In both cases, it complains that I don't have enough space. Anyone have any experience getting this to work? Also, creating the USB image was **very** slow. These were known bugs in the liveusb tool, but starting with Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu includes a different tool called usb-creator (System - Administration - Create a USB startup disk). Caroline Meeks asked: This particular setup doesn't let you escape out of Sugar back down into Ubuntu as far as I could figure out. Sbuntu is configured to launch Sugar by default. But if you log out from sugar (press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace), you get the Ubuntu (GDM) login screen which lets you choose your session type from the settings menu in the bottom-left corner. Select Gnome, and login as user ubuntu with no password. This will give you the standard Gnome desktop, with the Sugar Emulator available from the applications menu. Caroline Meeks asked: Please provide instructions on exactly what to download. I picked liveusb_0.1.1_all.deb Then also provide instructions on exactly what the user should do to install it. This step is no longer necessary since starting with Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu itself includes a tool called usb-creator (System - Administration - Create a USB startup disk). Caroline Meeks asked: If you use the persistence option, you need to replace casper/initrd.gz This step is no longer necessary since the bug has been fixed in Ubuntu 8.10. Caroline Meeks asked: Add the file sugar.squashfs to the directory casper/ on the USB stick Again the write protection on Casper made this more of a challenge then might be expected. If you want to modify the USB stick you are currently running from, do: sudo mount /cdrom -o remount,rw Starting with Ubuntu 8.10, this will remount the USB stick writable by root. Tomeu Vizoso asked: Have already been any discussions about adding Subuntu to the list of official Ubuntu derivatives for the next release? Sbuntu is a customization (add-on file) to an existing Ubuntu Live system, not a derivative distribution. (This has advantages... you can update the sugar portion by exchanging 1 file, without having to remaster the underlying Ubuntu distribution itself. Also the download is much smaller.) Caroline Meeks asked: Is there an easier way to help people create USBs? If there is enough demand, one could make a Sugar activity that would clone the currently running USB stick to a blank USB stick. Please report Sbuntu issues to me, and issues related to usb-creator to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usb-creator Of course, ideas for improvement are welcome! -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Sbuntu-8.10%3A-Sugar-for-Ubuntu-Live-USB%2C-updated-tp1599461p1599461.html Sent from the Sugar mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [Sugar-devel] OLPC + Sugar
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Jameson Chema Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: o OLPC management and staff have never communicated effectively with the outside world. Not with volunteers, not with partner organizations, not with the public. I am working on this problem, and have established a tenuous connection with Nicholas and some of management, but don't hold your breath. I presume you mean to include the OLPC contractors (Tomeu, Sayamindu, Morgs) and the more available of the staff (Eben, for instance) in the general category with volunteers, since it seems clear to me that they are capable of effective communication, but also clear that they do not receive effective communication from OLPC higher-ups. Quite right. Thanks for the more precise and more correct restatement. Jameson -- 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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Sugar Digest 2008-12-01
=== Sugar Digest === 1. Bonjour: I gave the keynote at the first Netbook World Summit in Paris (See [[Presentations]]). The opening welcome was delivered by Hervé Yahi, CEO of Mandriva, and indeed Mandriva was well represented at the congress. Yahi asked, How big will the netbook market become? He (and almost every subsequent speaker) broke the market down into two categories: a primary tool in the emerging market and a second device in the developed world. In my talk, I suggested that the netbook was at the forefront of the emerging cultural and technological battle between telephony and computing—i.e., the culture of service and the culture of creation. Inviting children into the community of learners and problem-solvers is ''the'' opportunity afforded by giving them access to computation and learning as a verb. OLPC's Bastien Guéry (of Haiti-deployment fame; soon moving to Lebanon) and Patrick Ferran, director of a educational netbook company, Gdium.com (a MIPS platform running Mandriva), held a panel discussion on education. Collaboration was the hot topic—the Sugar model is attractive even in the developed world. And, as always, how to change the culture of learning in schools remains a conundrum. The netbook hardware session featured a panel with representatives from ASUS, Samsung, Qualcomm, Lenovo, and MSI. ASUS is interested in offering a network bundle with web storage and Linux application bundles. Their original idea was the laptop as a second PC, but now they are also targeted to the first PC market. Samsung has entered the netbook market recently and has big, but ambiguous plans. They are also thinking hard about connectivity. (It is ironic that roughly 15-years ago, when I was on the IBM mobile computing advisory board, I tried to convince them to make connectivity a product differentiator. Their response was to sell off their Global connectivity business. Sigh.) Qualcomm, which has 30% of the handset market, announced a new chipset to compete in the netbook space. Their chips provide connectivity and the multimedia functionality in phones. The always connect/always on nature of a phone is the kind of experience that they are trying to bring to the netbook market. Its focus is a mobile device—moving towards phone-like experience. Lenovo is game—they are thinking in terms of corporate buyers for a variety of categories, including education. MSI is a French OEM that makes the Wind product. They are explicitly targeting education in the emerging market. Their Wind Box is a fanless, screenless brick, which may have potential for a low-end school server. The moderator asked what are the criteria for choosing for the OS on these devices: Lenovo sees predominately new users to date. (Although the world-wide economic slowdown is playing a role as well.) Their education customers are Linux-focused; consumers are asking for both. Qualcomm sees this as a new market—the best of the wireless world and the best of the laptop world—a new device. Samsung thinks the user wants something simple for the second PC—web browsing. The first-PC market is looking for standard systems (XP). ASUS is also splitting their strategy between emerging and mature markets. Everyone agreed that netbooks are not cannibalizing the traditional notebook market (but they are having an impact on price). But also everyone seems to be drifting towards larger screens, a hard disk, and Windows—along with a higher price. 10 inches is where the market is going. The retail market is asking for XP, but the professional and vertical markets, e.g., education are asking for Linux. The follow-on panel was pretty depressing: Are netbooks mobile device or PC replacements. Mozilla opined always-on connectivity is essential, the browser is ''the'' application and nothing else is important, e.g., the OS doesn't matter and running non-web-based applications is old think. In contradiction to this, Linux has momentum and it is a place for innovation; you innovate because you can. [http://www.thinkgos.com/ gOS], who makes Cloud, a Linux distribution that focuses on a browser, with an application doc in the browser. It is a dual boot machine, but the Linux distribution is instant on to a browser. Xandros argued that Economics drives adoption of Linux from the OEM perspective; but now there is a race in the application space. There is a 20-Euro difference in the OEM price between XP and Linux, but that is not enough to convince an OEM to switch away from the mainstream. The netbook started as a new type of device, but now it is marketed as a mini-laptop, which is why Windows is getting a larger market share: the consumer as consumer. The final panel featured service providers. SFR (www.sfr.com) has its base of customers using their services for web access from mobile phones; they have recently expanded into the netbook (specifically, the eeePC market) by offering 3G connectivity. Comwax (www.comwax.com) offers a touch-based (iPhone on a notebook)
Re: [sugar] Sugar Labs introduction
Hello, I realize I should have jumped into this discussion earlier. Please excuse me, I've just put myself thru an intense matrixesque self-learning weeks around learning communities, communities of practice, community learning, critical pedagogy, radical pedagogy, network logics (economies, brains, forests, evolution, the internet), network economics, ecology, emergent control, beekeeping, and de-centralized governance... it's been fascinating. My research question has been ¿how to jumpstart an ecosystem? The reason for my research is because I've been looking for a sustainability model for our FuenteLibre.Org grassroots initiative. I'll briefly relate our story: Born peruvian, raised in Chile, came to Lima where I have familiy a year ago to volunteer for OLPC. Got into suport-gang, eek, support for G1G1? So Walter comes, brings me an XO laptop, I meet Hernan Pachas from the ministry, and I offer to organize volunteers for support and training, etc. At the time, they had their hands full (and their heads), so they informed me they would not be working with volunteers, they would handle it and that I should not worry about it. I understood immediately that for this project to succeed, it needed community involvement and transparency. I rallied for volunteers and got over 150 emails from educators, techies and all sorts of people accross Perú interested in helping out. I tailored a Xubuntu+Sugar LiveCD in spanish for download. Alas, as yama puts it, I was nobody, so we were left out of helping out in the deployment and were pointed to boring (but important) stuff like translating the wiki. This was very frustrating and I will not make this mistake again. This is not to say we wont translate - its part of our mission too. Now back to the point, Regional SugarLabs. I investigated the Ubuntu LoCoTeam model if there is such a thing. I found none, sorry to say, only a Howto describing very crude how to run a team and what a team can do. It does not go into the relation to the mission a local group should have, the relationship it would have with SL central (explicit connections outside mantra). It also does not touch into the organizational principles or the strategies or goals of a relationship. The ubuntu LoCo team is explicitly compared to Linux user groups, that is, interest groups, fan clubs. That is what it is, basically, a fan club. Now I know sugar has fans, I'm one of them, but ubuntu has a large user base and great momentum, neither of which sugar has. In the spirit of the message being the medium, nobody is getting the message. Regional SugarLabs should be highly autonomous, carry their own identity and mission (which should significantly overlap or include central sugarlabs's mission). They should agree on similar set of values / principles and also joint set of goals. We just want to be community centers, nodes in a network, not Regional Offices. Basically this means recognition as local partners and ability to collect donations for our efforts. The reason for this perhaps is obvious: ¿How are we to expect peer recognition if our own structure is vertical? I'm thinking the problem is the underlying model of aid - developed countries helping developing countries. How are we hoping to bridge the divide with this mental model? I suggest a diffent approach, an education project aproach for de-centralized massive collaboration for learning communities. FuenteLibre leverages Sugar fot this and hopes to explore the realm of libre social networking (integrating Elgg with the schoolserver for instance). This way the medium is the message. For supporting this model I'll point you to some strategies in this book: http://www.kk.org/newrules/ New Rules for the New Economy by Kevin Kelly, in summary: 1) Embrace the Swarm. 2) Increasing Returns. 3) Plentitude, Not Scarcity. 4) Follow the Free. 5) Feed the Web First. 6) Let Go at the Top. 7) From Places to Spaces 8) No Harmony, All Flux. 9) Relationship Tech. 10) Opportunities Before Efficiencies. So paraphrasing NN, regional sugarlabs Are Educations Projects, not Software development projects. This is important, because as such, we will be more involved in deployment / integration / training. FuenteLibre, is currently involved in a potential deployment of 2300 desktop computers with Sugar and Ubuntu, and will be offering a community learning workshop model for the regional education direction tech team that will be deploying and supporting these 200 computer labs. We would be more like a community managed education technology consultant non profit, community partner of sugarlabs and working closely in accordance to whatever we agree. One of FuenteLibre's goals is also to explore replicable / scalable governance model for learning communities, so we would encourage more local groups with diverse models / missions, and support and incubate them, provided they agree to the givene set of principles. This brings us to the principles, which I'm currently
Re: [sugar] Sugar Labs introduction
Oh, also found this to be relevant: http://www.creatinglearningcommunities.org/etcetera/selflearning.htm http://www.creatinglearningcommunities.org/book/internet/lamoreaux1.htm http://alcob.com/new/alcom_alcob/alcom_alcob_disp.html Cheers! Sebastian 2008/12/1 Sebastian Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hello, I realize I should have jumped into this discussion earlier. Please excuse me, I've just put myself thru an intense matrixesque self-learning weeks around learning communities, communities of practice, community learning, critical pedagogy, radical pedagogy, network logics (economies, brains, forests, evolution, the internet), network economics, ecology, emergent control, beekeeping, and de-centralized governance... it's been fascinating. My research question has been ¿how to jumpstart an ecosystem? The reason for my research is because I've been looking for a sustainability model for our FuenteLibre.Org grassroots initiative. I'll briefly relate our story: Born peruvian, raised in Chile, came to Lima where I have familiy a year ago to volunteer for OLPC. Got into suport-gang, eek, support for G1G1? So Walter comes, brings me an XO laptop, I meet Hernan Pachas from the ministry, and I offer to organize volunteers for support and training, etc. At the time, they had their hands full (and their heads), so they informed me they would not be working with volunteers, they would handle it and that I should not worry about it. I understood immediately that for this project to succeed, it needed community involvement and transparency. I rallied for volunteers and got over 150 emails from educators, techies and all sorts of people accross Perú interested in helping out. I tailored a Xubuntu+Sugar LiveCD in spanish for download. Alas, as yama puts it, I was nobody, so we were left out of helping out in the deployment and were pointed to boring (but important) stuff like translating the wiki. This was very frustrating and I will not make this mistake again. This is not to say we wont translate - its part of our mission too. Now back to the point, Regional SugarLabs. I investigated the Ubuntu LoCoTeam model if there is such a thing. I found none, sorry to say, only a Howto describing very crude how to run a team and what a team can do. It does not go into the relation to the mission a local group should have, the relationship it would have with SL central (explicit connections outside mantra). It also does not touch into the organizational principles or the strategies or goals of a relationship. The ubuntu LoCo team is explicitly compared to Linux user groups, that is, interest groups, fan clubs. That is what it is, basically, a fan club. Now I know sugar has fans, I'm one of them, but ubuntu has a large user base and great momentum, neither of which sugar has. In the spirit of the message being the medium, nobody is getting the message. Regional SugarLabs should be highly autonomous, carry their own identity and mission (which should significantly overlap or include central sugarlabs's mission). They should agree on similar set of values / principles and also joint set of goals. We just want to be community centers, nodes in a network, not Regional Offices. Basically this means recognition as local partners and ability to collect donations for our efforts. The reason for this perhaps is obvious: ¿How are we to expect peer recognition if our own structure is vertical? I'm thinking the problem is the underlying model of aid - developed countries helping developing countries. How are we hoping to bridge the divide with this mental model? I suggest a diffent approach, an education project aproach for de-centralized massive collaboration for learning communities. FuenteLibre leverages Sugar fot this and hopes to explore the realm of libre social networking (integrating Elgg with the schoolserver for instance). This way the medium is the message. For supporting this model I'll point you to some strategies in this book: http://www.kk.org/newrules/ New Rules for the New Economy by Kevin Kelly, in summary: 1) Embrace the Swarm. 2) Increasing Returns. 3) Plentitude, Not Scarcity. 4) Follow the Free. 5) Feed the Web First. 6) Let Go at the Top. 7) From Places to Spaces 8) No Harmony, All Flux. 9) Relationship Tech. 10) Opportunities Before Efficiencies. So paraphrasing NN, regional sugarlabs Are Educations Projects, not Software development projects. This is important, because as such, we will be more involved in deployment / integration / training. FuenteLibre, is currently involved in a potential deployment of 2300 desktop computers with Sugar and Ubuntu, and will be offering a community learning workshop model for the regional education direction tech team that will be deploying and supporting these 200 computer labs. We would be more like a community managed education technology consultant non profit, community partner of sugarlabs
[sugar] Drexler sings Plan Ceibal
Jorge Drexler, a noted Uruguayan singer/composer, released a song for Plan
Ceibal, the OLPC/Sugar deployment in Uruguay
(a spot of free translation of part of the lyrics)
...I'll go navigating
by the Southern sky,
without leaving my heart
by the shade of the ceibo-tree...
('ceibal' is the ceibo tree, the ceibo being the national flower of Uruguay)
_of_course_ the link to a sound file is .ogg, playable on an XO!
http://www.pilas.net/archivos/Drexler_Alasombradelceibal.ogg
Thanks to Rodolfo Pilas for the announcement,
Jorge Drexler creo e interpretó una hermosa canción (como no podía ser
de otra manera) para el proyecto Ceibal en Uruguay.
http://www.pilas.net/20081201/drexler-le-canta-al-plan-ceibal/
Saludos,
Rodolfo Pilas
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