[IAEP] Sugar on a Stick - How might a Sugar USB experience work in practice?

[alan c]

Caroline Meeks wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
>>  David and I
>> will be helping set up a Sugar classroom in a Boston public school
>> that trying to make use of some old Pentium IV desktop machines;
> 
> 
> 
>>
>> 2. LiveUSB: It seems that a LiveUSB offers the most simple way to
>> experience Sugar on a preexisting hardware base, such as a school
>> computer lab. (One advantage of a LiveUSB approach—where user data is
>> stored in a disk partition—is that the same key can be used at school
>> and at home, emulating the experience of a one-to-one laptop program,
>> where the laptops go home with the children. The Fedora team has made
>> progress on a LiveUSB this week (See Item 11 below) and we are also
>> working to get "fresher" Sugar bits into the Ubuntu LiveUSB. However,
>> there remains a problem in that many computers do not have
>> boot-from-USB enabled in the BIOS. Steve Pomeroy suggested we look
>> into U3, a proprietary method of launching applications from a USB
>> key. This would provide a work-around for running Sugar on machines
>> that are running Windows (alas, this accounts for the majority of
>> hardware found in schools). Ben Schwartz pointed out that we could do
>> the same thing using autorun.inf (See
>>
>> http://www.exponetic.com/blog/blog/2006/07/07/autorun-an-executable-from-a-usb-key-in-windows-xp/
>> ),
>> launching an instance of Sugar in QEMU. Running Sugar in emulation
>> requires a reasonably fast machine in order to give an acceptable
>> experience. We need to do more testing in this arena, as it is a path
>> of least resistance for teachers and parents who are interested in
>> trying Sugar.
>>
> 
> 
> Here are some more details on the Boston project Walter mentions.  I am
> working on a project called "School Key" (schoolkey.org) as part of my
> graduate work at Harvard Graduate School for Education.  As Walter mentioned
> we met at the Open Minds conference and talked about doing a pilot of giving
> younger students Sugar on a USB Key.
> 
> We have quite a bit of work to do but this seems like a great community so I
> thought I'd share my thinking on the vision.
> 
> The goal is to increase access for students, both inside and outside of
> school.  Creating requires time; just having a computer for a few hours a
> week at school will not give children the access they need to explore and
> create.  However, if a child has access to their Sugar at school, at home,
> and at after-school, then they have that much more potential exploration
> time. I think one crucial point is it has to be their system, with their
> data and setup.  So we are actually not aiming at having people "try Sugar"
> but thinking about how we can create a quality computer learning environment
> in places like Boston without necessarily buying every student a laptop.
> 
> So the question is can Sugar be made to work well booting from a USB on
> computers that are in the places students are.  K-3 students tend to spend
> their time in a limited number of locations. We don't need to get this to
> work on *every* computer, just the ones they will be using.
> 
> We know not all computers can be set up to boot directly from USB.  However,
> its not hard to set up a "helper" CD. We did it for SLAX (details here:
> http://schoolkey.net/blog/one-entry?entry_id=1008372)
> 
> When schools, children's libraries, and after-school programs have computers
> and they can be changed to boot from the USB it's likely that the tech
> people will be willing to do so.  Especially in the K-3 age range they are
> probably using computers that are dedicated to younger children and the
> adults who maintain them will want to make them useful for them.
> 
> When changing the boot order is not possible for technical or other reasons
> then a few CDs can be kept near the computers for the students to use.  This
> is not that different from the user experience of putting a CD in to run a
> game.  We can also send home CDs for home computers.
> 
> The next challenge is getting computers into the schools, after-schools and
> homes that don't have them yet.  For the pilot at least we will solicit
> donated computers; many computers are thrown out each year and we can remove
> the disk drives from them before we put them in the field, which should ease
> privacy concerns by those donating as well as improving the computers'
> lifetimes in the field.
> 
> This is definitely a community computing model.  But perhaps one well suited
> for places like Boston.  Boston Schools are already doing a "Technology Goes
> Home Program" helping parents buy recycled computers.  Meanwhile, Boston's
> one-to-one pilot school, a middle school also in Dorchester, is not letting
> the students take home the Apple laptops they use in school due to safety
> concerns.  USB Keys are easy to transport and to replace.  I think this
> approach has promise in terms of incrementally providing greater access in a
> way that will empower students as creators.
> 
> Thanks in advance to Walter and John for offering to help us!  I will post
> updates on this list and on the schoolkey.org blog.
> 
> Friday we will be at the school seeing if the lab computers will run Sugar
> stable and with decent speed.
> 
> Thanks!
> Caroline

I have a passing thought - which others  may already have considered 
anyway.

In principle, when booting from a device and running a linux based OS, 
it is usually possible to obtain control of the host hardware somehow, 
for example by use of a terminal. I trust that whatever (high?) skill 
level the usb stick user has, it will not be technically possible to 
damage the host system's data?

The usual live CD or live USB stick with a popular distro  usually has 
an install me option and sometimes even a partition manager.
-- 
alan cocks
Kubuntu user#10391
Linux user #360648